Knit Together: Discover God's Pattern for Your Life FaithWords - Trade Paperback November 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0446-69968-6 $13.99 U.S. / $15.50 CAN

Knit Together: Discover God's Pattern for Your Life FaithWords Hardcover September 2007 ISBN-10: 0446580872 $22.99 U.S. / $28.99 CAN

Macomber's work is both cheerful and cheering, and both faithful fans and newcomers will resonate strongly with her delightful message. - Publishers Weekly

Description

Debbie Macomber calls KNIT TOGETHER the project of her heart.  Whenever she speaks, her theme is simple: don't be afraid to dream. God created us for a reason, and when we come to recognize our deepest longing, we can discover His plan for our lives. Full of encouragement and divine empowerment for women, the book centers around the Bible's assurance that God knits each one of us together in our mother's womb. 

Debbie deftly weaves her own story throughout the book, using the knitting theme of her most recent bestsellers to create metaphors that explore God's handiwork in creating us for a purpose.

Excerpt

The passion in your purpose

I imagine that you're asking how I knew my purpose was to be a writer. Well, I didn't at first, not completely. But as I said earlier, I believe that God puts desires in our hearts through our dreams, through our passions, and through what brings us joy. When we can look through all of those things, we can find our purpose as we discover the customized blueprint, the pattern, God's made for each of us.

So, let’s take a look at the passion in our purpose. Ask yourself these questions: What is it that gets me excited? What do I love to do?

I believe that what you enjoyed as a child often provides hints of what you should be doing as an adult. When I was young, I loved to read and tell stories. Maybe you loved to dress up your dolls, creating elaborate new fashions. Maybe you liked drawing. Or maybe you thrived on helping other people, or taking care of the neighbor's dog. Perhaps you enjoyed playing school or house or caring for sick stuffed animals. Whatever you enjoyed most can give you clues to the purpose God has for you. As Rick Warren puts it so directly on the first page of The Purpose Driven Life, “It’s not about you.”

God has a plan for your life and a purpose that fits into His master plan. But He doesn't want you to float through life waiting for a giant bolt of lightning to point out what you're supposed to be doing. He gave each of us a brain as well as a heart. We have to listen to both to truly discover the pattern God has for our lives.

Unfortunately, when we talk about passion and purpose, we sometimes mistakenly equate anything we're passionate about to what we're supposed to be doing. Passion does not necessarily equal a calling to what your purpose or your dreams should be focused on. My husband is passionate about the Seattle Seahawks. We actually had season tickets for more than twenty-five years. Yet that doesn't mean he has the talent to play football. I love collecting cameos, and I buy a new one every year. I treasure my collection, but that doesn't mean I'm supposed to open a jewelry store or seek out seashells for the artisan to carve.

You can be passionate about a lot of things, but not everything you're enthusiastic about is what you're supposed to be doing. You need to watch only one episode of those auditioning for American Idol to understand that. Many of the people who step before the judges desperately want to sing. They love music, they breathe music, but they're so bad at it, they make the rest of us cringe and plug our ears!

When you are truly passionate about something that God has designed for you to do, things unexplainably click. You experience a profound sense of joy in what you do. It feels natural and it completes you. That's the way writing is for me. There are a lot of other writers out there who talk about how hard it is to sit down and write. It's not that way for me—I love to write. I enjoy everything about the process of writing—the plotting, even revisions. When the time comes for me to sit down and pen the story, I'm so passionate about it, I can barely stand still. In my heart, I know this book is going to make a difference, a difference in my life and the lives of my readers.

Another great thing about passion is that it is contagious. Have you ever noticed how people are irresistibly drawn to someone with a lot of enthusiasm? Passion doesn't just set your own footsteps on fire; it can also spur and motivate others.

I remember so well those early days when I first decided to write. I was happy—happier than I could ever remember being in my life. I was so in love with the story and the words that I felt the need to stop and pinch myself to make sure this wasn't a fantasy or that I’d wake up and discover this was a dream. I could hardly wait to start work each day, and it's like that even now. The passion was there along with the purpose. This of course doesn't mean that every day is Iike a trip to Disneyland—passion shouldn't always be equated with fun. But if what you're doing doesn't spur you to experience joy, or a sense of accomplishment, or provoke something inside you that makes you want to keep going, it's time to take a step back and reexamine what you're doing and whether the purpose you're pursuing is really the purpose God has in mind.