Knots

This morning I woke up to my very frustrated son, who handed me a big ball of yarn tangled in knots.

“Dad, can you fix this?”  

The yarn had been about 80 feet long, and it was clear my 8-year-old had been working on it with increasing frustration. There were a lot of tight knots.

He got up early to work on a STEM project his grandma had sent in the mail. He hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and in “hangry” frustration he’d started pulling madly at the loops and ends of the string, until the knots were very tight.

I grogglily rolled out of bed and sat on the sofa working on it for several minutes until my brain was awake enough to talk.

We talked about how the first step was to take a deep breath and remind yourself that we can figure this out. We needed to stop doing what felt instinctive: pulling hard in all directions.

It reminded me of a scene in a children’s book, Maniac Magee, where the boy conquers a legendary knot on a flagpole.

We worked to loosen all the tight knots, pinching 1 or 2 parts and wiggling them loose. We looked for loops that could just pull through (there weren’t many), and then we found the ends of the string and worked to unravel it by one or two passes at a time.

The ball of knots took about 45 minutes to unravel.

We talked about how life has a lot of knots. There are knots inside of us and knots in our relationships with people, and knots in our society. Sometimes we feel like just cutting the string, or throwing the whole ball away. We need to trust that God can help unravel all the knots in our emotions and our problems. It’s hard to be patient, and stop frantically pulling and tugging.  Doing things in our own way may make the problems harder and longer to unravel.

I don’t like knots. But I partly like the feeling of getting one hard loop of a knot looser, and I really like the feeling at the end when the whole string is free.

I realize that I am full of knots. I don’t like the ones inside of me. I have struggled with knots in my marriage, in my parenting, in my job, and we all see many knots in our country.  

Poverty is like a knot. Our bad habits and addictions are knots.

I believe in the power of our Father in Heaven to help unravel our knots. He can help, through the healing power of His Son, Jesus Christ. I have felt it in me and in my family, loosening one loop at a time.

It has been said that God is the Master, not the Magician, of the Universe. (Terryl and Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps). By that, we mean that God has a full and perfect understanding of the challenges we face. He obeys eternal laws, and does not just cut the string and magically reassemble it. His perfect knowledge and experience allow Him to comprehend and coach us in our complicated challenges. 

He knows some cases where pulling on just one loop would help the entire knot fall apart.  Through His prophets, our Father gives direction that can make life so much clearer and simpler.

He knows that some knots will take time, and He sometimes encourages us to focus on loosening just one particular tight loop so the others can come out later. The whole ball of knots might have to look messier before it gets better. Some loops might have to stay for a while, as we focus on the most important one first.

Knots are God’s work and His opportunity. He wants to show us His love. Our time wrestling with frustration, the feeling that some of our efforts are making it worse, and that we can’t do it on our own, can help us appreciate His help when it comes.

I know our Father in Heaven cares about our knots. He will help us with our knots as we turn to Him.