What I Learned From the Ladies at Craft Club

God has been impressing upon me lately about the importance of multigenerational learning. I think He especially wants all of us to grasp the importance of learning and gleaning wisdom from people older, wiser, and more experienced than us. I think this is extremely important for upcoming generations. (I’ll talk more on this in future posts.) My mom and I were just discussing this concept not long ago, and we started talking about how much I’ve benefitted from something as simple as the Craft Club at our church.

Several years ago I decided to get involved at the Craft Club at my church. To be completely honest with you, I have NO IDEA why!! I am NOT crafty. At all. Not even a little. My mom, Jacki, and my sister, Shawna are the highly talented, crafty people in our family. Maybe I was just excited about Christmas (that, however, IS TOTALLY me!), and the Craft Club was making Christmas decorations for the church and for our Christmas Train event. I figured as long as they didn’t put me on sewing and they showed me what to do I’d be fine.

I think I benefited more than they did!

Well, I really think they got the raw end of the deal, but I had a GREAT time! Except for maybe scalding my hands one too many times with a hot glue gun. I’m sure they never ceased to be amazed at how long it took me to complete a project. Those ladies, especially my mom, ran circles around me with embroidery too. I think my mom finished 4 embroidery pictures in the amount of time it took me to complete one. They can’t say I didn’t warn them though! Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of my projects were lovingly “redone” or repurposed after I left! Ha!

Even if they didn’t get as much benefit from me, I sure will treasure the amount of wisdom, love, patience, empathy, fun, and knowledge (and I could go on) that I gained from my time with all of the amazing ladies that I worked with there. I will never forget some of the life lessons and multigenerational friends that I acquired over the years in Craft Club.

A sponge soaking up wisdom

I often say that I love being around older people and listening to them because I just feel like a sponge soaking up all of their wisdom. At the Craft Club we had women of all ages. However, we did tend to have a larger number of more “mature” women. Typically, we went to Craft Club during the daytime so it was really convenient for retired women. Each and every lady that I encountered there had a different lesson to teach me. Continue reading →