Tattered and Mended: The Art of Healing the Wounded Soul

By Cynthia Ruchti

Artisans can reclaim exquisite beauty from the broken, frayed, and hopefully shattered—perhaps once thought beyond repair. But what about us? What of the wounds that keep us from living the life we want to live?

In Tattered and Mended, readers walk through a gallery of reclaimed and restored art as well as broken and restored lives of those who have gone before us. With a gentle touch and personable wisdom, Cynthia Ruchti shows how even the most threadbare soul can once again find healing and hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Jul 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781630888008

Cynthia Ruchti

Cynthia Ruchti tells stories hemmed in hope. She’s the award-winning author of 16 books and a frequent speaker for women’s ministry events. She serves as the Professional Relations Liaison for American Christian Fiction Writers, where she helps retailers, libraries, and book clubs connect with the authors and books they love. She lives with her husband in Central Wisconsin. Visit her online at CynthiaRuchti.com.

Book preview

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Half-Title Page

Tattered

and

Mended

Title Page

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Copyright Page

Tattered and Mended

The Art of Healing the wounded Soul

Copyright © 2015 by Cynthia Ruchti

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission can be addressed to Permissions, The United Methodist Publishing House, 2222 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., P.O. Box 280988, Nashville, TN 37228-0988, or e-mailed to [e-mail].

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ruchti, Cynthia.

Tattered and mended : the art of healing the wounded soul / Cynthia Ruchti.

1 online resource.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-63088-800-8 (e-pub) — ISBN 978-1-4267-8769-0 (binding: soft back) 1. Healing—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Spiritual healing. I. Title.

BT732

242’.4—dc23

2015010951

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations noted CEB are taken from the Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.com.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV™ are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked (NCV) are taken from the New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.

Scripture quotations marked (ISV) taken from the Holy Bible: International Standard Version®. Copyright © 1996-forever by The ISV Foundation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. Used by permission.

Scripture taken from The Voice™. Copyright © 2008 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (AMP) are taken from the Amplified® Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www .Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Dedication Page

Dedicated to those who bravely share

their tattered-soul stories

to give hope to those

in need of mending.

And to The Artistic Mender.

Epigraph

People are tattered.Some say, Then let’s make tattered fashionable.But God invites us to mend.

Contents

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One The Art of Mending the Soul

Chapter Two Sashiko and Boro Rescue: Elegance from the Tattered

Chapter Three Quilt Reconstruction: An Artful Mend

Chapter Four Metal Recycling: From Dumpster to Gallery

Chapter Five Tapestry Restoration: Beauty in the Ragged

Chapter Six Fine Art Reclamation: A Meticulous Mend

Chapter Seven Needlework Repair: Recaptured Wholeness

Chapter Eight Stained Glass Recovery: Starting Out Shattered

Chapter Nine Antique Doll Redemption: The Designer’s Touch

Chapter Ten Broken Furniture Refurbishing: Pre-Art

Chapter Eleven Jewelry Regeneration: Unfixable but Mendable

Beyond the End:

As You Mend

Mending Prayers

Stretching to Mend

With Deepest Gratitude

Notes

Introduction

Introduction

I’m not the writer whose primary audience is theologians. I’m a writer who speaks to the single parent, the brokenhearted grandmother, the person reeling from a prickly divorce, the young woman who feels as awkward in the world as a harmonica in the orchestra, the working woman who doesn’t usually have time to read nonfiction but will make time when she is handed a book by a trusted friend.

I write for the caregiver and the young widow and the older widow and the man or woman working three part-time jobs rather than one that could pay all the bills. I write for the jobless, the temporarily homeless, the speechless and dreamless and hopeless. The reader I hold to my heart as I write is the person who attends church regularly but isn’t sure why, or the person for whom faith is as involuntary as breathing, and for the person who almost closed the covers of the book because of the word faith.

Most of us walk through weeks or seasons or lifetimes when we ask Why me? as life’s circumstances shred our souls. I’ve heard the stories or lived them. If you extract strength or courage from these pages, it will be because your story intersects with God’s story. I am an observer-writer. I see and watch and feel and then attempt to express what others struggle to put into words.

With my favorite lamp illuminating the desk, my favorite mug near it, and my fingers resting on the worn keys of my computer a little more than a year ago, I wrote a three-line premise that seemed to come not from my mind, but the deep end of my soul. It lingered with me, like a neglected but beloved pet begging for attention.

People are tattered.

Some say, Then let’s make tattered fashionable.

But God invites us to mend.

Tattered is not an irreversible condition, a label that indelibly marks us, our lot in life, or just-the-way-things-are-good-luck-with-that. Yes, what happens to us at the hands of others or as a result of our own poor judgment and mistakes can leave us battered and frayed on a soul level. God invites us to mend under his artistic hand and eye.

Brittle photographs damaged by sun exposure, creasing, or soot. Centuries-old artwork. Millenia-old pottery. Shredded jeans and moth-eaten sweaters and tattered quilts and the frayed edges of a historically significant tapestry. Once-vital health. A promising relationship. The job you thought perfect for you. The friendship you hoped would never fade. Your battered soul.

Beyond hope?

People are tattered—either more so these days than people once were, or more obviously so. Communication advances mean we hear about them almost as they’re happening. A popular approach is to adapt then to tatteredness and resign ourselves to the hopelessness of it all, which not only keeps us broken but convinces us healing is impossible . . . or worse, unnecessary.

Onto that scene comes the Divine Invitation—God calling us to himself to find healing for our raked-raw souls. The invitation is to watch the progress of his intricate, meticulous, compassion-rich artistry. It’s an invitation to lose our fears of the process and engage with him for our mending.

This is a book without formulas. It’s a book of observation—finding hope in ancient and modern mending techniques, stories of people with concerns like yours, and a gallery of wounds that have become works of art.

In some circles, tattered has become so fashionable that we can’t tell the homeless from the tasteless. That’s not a denegration of the homeless or a commentary on fashion trends, but an invitation to consider how that might translate to our internal health, our soul’s health. Have we become comfortable with our tatteredness, our brokenness? Rather than resign ourselves to desperately cling to fragile shreds of recovery, rather than discard our broken, threadbare, scarred relationships, we can rediscover the art of mending.

I’ll meet you in the pages.

—Cynthia

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

The Art of Mending the Soul

People are tattered. Some say, Then let’s make tattered fashionable.But God invites us to mend.

He woke that bleached-out morning with the taste of dust in his mouth. Sleeping on the ground will do that to a person. He pushed himself to a sitting position and only rubbed the sleep from his eyes because the crusty bits hurt, not because they interfered with his line of sight.

The sound of movement beside him pressed him to reach for the water bottle he’d used as a pillow in the night. It was gone. He tapped the ground in an arc far wider than the distance where it had lain. Some street kid thought it was funny to swipe the homeless guy’s water supply. Nice.

The man drew the ragged edges of his coat tight around him, a ridiculously inadequate protection. But it was all he had. The sun on his face felt warmest at chin-level. Not much past dawn. He stood, the ache in his bones more familiar and pronounced every day.

With his hand pressed against the stone wall that had been at his back through the night, he felt his way to the corner and waited, ears attentive. He crossed the cobbled street, arms extended, head bent. Another stone wall greeted his outstretched hands. He followed it to its end, the stubbled grasses now underfoot.

If he kept one sandal on dirt and the other on stubble, he could walk a straight line to the spot where the air on his face cooled slightly. Under the shade of the olive tree, he’d spend his day wrestling with himself. If a beggar didn’t look pathetic,who would notice him? If he did, how could he retain any thread of dignity?

He could have made something of his life . . . if he weren’t blind.

That may not be how morning started for Bartimaeus, as the gospel story recounts. But it might not be far from the truth. We have so many unanswered questions from his story told by Mark in the Bible.

Jesus and his followers came into Jericho. As Jesus was leaving Jericho, together with his disciples and a sizable crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, Timaeus’ son, was sitting beside the road. When he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was there, he began to shout, Jesus, Son of David, show me mercy! Many scolded him, telling him to be quiet, but he shouted even louder, Son of David, show me mercy!

Jesus stopped and said, Call him forward.

They called the blind man, Be encouraged! Get up! He’s calling you.

Throwing his coat to the side, he jumped up and came to Jesus.

Jesus asked him, What do you want me to do for you?

The blind man said, Teacher, I want to see.

Jesus said, Go, your faith has healed you. At once he was