Mama's Pincushion

It really isn’t anything special, that pincushion of Mama’s, but it held lots of surprises for me recently. I use the pincushion now. Mama died in 2014 at 102.5 years, and I have her sewing machine and pincushion. Oh, I have other fancier pincushions…several of them, in fact, but somehow I feel closer to Mama each time I pick up her pincushion.

I don’t know if Mama ever had a fancy pincushion. I remember the day she told me she had made herself a pincushion. She was proud of it as she held it up for me to see, and that’s it below. She made it from a bath cloth, I think, and stuffed it with polyester stuffing. It has served us both well.

The yellow pins are all mine. I use them when I block crocheted name doilies. I imagine there are still some of mama’s pins in the cushion somewhere. But the other night I felt something hard deep inside the cushion and decided to work it out to see what it might be. It was a needle. No doubt it was one of mama’s needles which she lost long ago. Finding that needle made me wonder if there were more, so I kept digging. Sure enough I found another one. Occasionally I stuck my finger, but I kept working needles out of the cushion until I decided I needed a medicine bottle to hold them. I surely didn’t want them loose on the sofa where I was seated. I got the medicine bottle and put the needles inside and kept digging. And then I started counting the needles. I found and rescued over 25 needles deep inside that little pincushion.

Mama’s pincushion held lots of secret needles. I couldn’t help but think there was a lesson for us in Mama’s pincushion. Deep inside the much used and old pincushion were secrets, some sharp and some dull, but still secrets unknown to those around the pincushion. We might say the secrets were held in the heart of the pincushion, and that’s where the lesson is held. Just like us, deep within our hearts we have secrets. Some are dull and some are sharp. Some are good and some are bad. And the only difference is that we on the outside couldn’t see the secret sharp and dull needles inside Mama’s pincushion. But God can see the secrets deep within our hearts. He knows and He looks upon our hearts. There’s no hiding from Him. One day all secret things will be known.

“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my Strength, and my Redeemer” (Psalms 19:14).