Life Lessons & Empty Bobbins

There are plenty of annoying things that happen in life… Perhaps lately for me, none more maddening than having to stop to reload the bobbin. (Insert reader blank stare here… Huh? What’s she talking about? Bobba-Who-da-Whata?) For those of you who know nothing about sewing machines, the bobbin is the spool of thread that goes in the bottom of the machine. It runs out at the most inopportune times. (The last sentence is a proven scientific fact, I swear.)

For my sewing peeps out there, I think you can pick up what I am layin’ down. Your blazing trails with your machine, country music blasting. You are really rockin’ out, and BOOM. It happens.

Machine stops.

(Insert fav 4-letter expletive.)

Empty bobbin.

(Insert eyeroll and possibly slight grumbling.)

I got to thinking since well, that’s what I do when I am sewing rows and rows of adorably amazing fabric. It made me remember how many times the empty bobbin is perfect practice for kicking-ass and taking names (or not) at life.

How many times are we going on our way, I mean really cruising along and BAM! Out of the blue, life happens. Life comes along and messes with our best-laid plans. How do we deal? Do we get irritated? Do we complain? Do we get all sassy-pants cray-cray? Or do we chalk whatever happened up to a casualty of being human? Do our reactions to life produce fruit or do they make us die a little inside?

For me the empty bobbin reminds me to be flexible. It reminds me to be patient. It reminds me that the bobbin is empty regardless of my attitude about it. I can be an upset jerk-face or I can take it in stride. I can look at it as an opportunity to practice not being annoyed that things didn’t go the way I had planned. If I had my way, the bobbin would never run out but that’s just not practical. In life nothing would suck, ever, but that’s not practical either.

It’s in the empty bobbins of life that we learn the virtues of life. Patience, diligence, humility. All good things. All learned from our empty bobbin moments.

It is my hope that your bobbin is always full. When it’s not (because it’s inevitable) it is my hope that you are powerful in that moment. I hope that you can use that small, seemingly insignificant moment, to practice something different. Something that will leave you in a powerful place.