100 Birthday Blankets

The last 26 blankets

Let’s get this out of the way first. In preparing to write this column, I wanted to quote Jesus’ counsel about not bragging when you do “acts of righteousness.” Wouldn’t you know it: when I opened my Bible to get the chapter and verse, it fell right open to Matthew 6:1: “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” What are the odds, in a study Bible of some 2,000 pages, of turning to that exact page? I think God wanted that top and center! As you read on, bring praise to God, not to me. Please!

Earlier this week, I delivered three bulging garbage bags containing 26 patchwork baby blankets to the obstetrics ward of our local hospital. With that delivery, I completed a goal of 100 donated blankets in time for my 65th birthday this week. Call it a “bucket list” item, if you wish.

The baby blanket story began last fall, when my church challenged its members to go out in the community as Jesus’ hands instead of showing up for morning services. Thus, folks from my church helped others as they painted, weeded, cleared brush, shoveled gravel, cleaned, hauled, wrote encouragement notes—you name it. As an asthmatic, I was reluctant to join a yardwork team and risk more breathing problems. But I can sew, and I had recently learned that blankets could be used by my local hospital to give the very needy or “crisis” deliveries. About 12-15 babies a month (about a tenth of total births) are born to families so poor or troubled that they're unprepared for their infant’s needs. They may live in their cars or come from another impoverished situation.

I began with sewing and donating about a dozen. And I kept going, regularly visiting thrift stores and yard sales for scrap fabric for the projects. By early summer I was approaching 65—a number I thought would be appropriate for my 65th year of life. Then one Saturday at a yard sale, I told the seller what I was going to do with the fabric I was buying. She said, “Give me your phone number. I have more.” A week later she dropped off a heaped box of fabric for more blankets. A seller at another yard sale gave me a large pile of batting scraps I could sew together. At a local thrift store I spotted old blankets (now designated “dog blankets” for $1 each) that I could wash and then cut for batting. Thus the new goal: 100.

I’m taking a break from sewing to return to writing. But I know I’ll make and donate more blankets in months ahead. A friend remarked to me how nice it would be to have a picture of a baby wrapped in one of my blankets. Because of hospital privacy rules, I know that won’t happen. But I’ve learned that when you do something for the Lord (usually something that’s irrational but Spirit-motivated), you fling it out there and let Him do the rest, even though you may never know the rest of the story.

Last weekend as I sat at our kitchen table, tying the last blankets with yarn, I remembered a quote from the writings of minister/author Frederick Buechner. He wrote: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

God probably won’t call you to sew 100 patchwork baby blankets. But you can be sure there’s a need out there that He wants you to embrace. Take the risk. I never imagined my “project” stretching me to sew 100, but it did. And it was with gratitude to God, and prayers for its unknown recipients, that I wrapped up this “birthday challenge” with—yes, deep gladness.