Why You May Want to Darn Your Socks

Dear TEAMS,

Yesterday morning while M was doing school at the table, I brought down some mending.  I needed to put a button on a shirt for your dad, and I was wearing a pair of socks that my big toe was poking through on both feet.  I got the button put back on and then went to work on the holes.

Now, mind you, we can afford new socks for me.  In fact, your father is such a great provider for us all, I could buy socks any time I really want to.  I imagine your father, if he ever reads this post, will roll his eyes that I would even think to mend my socks instead of putting them in the wastebasket.  (Someday you need to ask me about the “discussion” we had about holey underwear…let me just say that punning on the homophone “holy” doesn’t amuse him.)

However, it struck me as M and I chatted about why mending your socks is called “darning” (and the subsequent [de-volving] into us saying, “Darnnit, Mom!” instead of “Darnnit, Mol” in the HISHE about Inception) that darning my socks actually improves my life in more important ways than just improving my bank account.  Here’s what I came up with:

Choosing to spend my time on a “petty” task keeps me humble.  Of the hundreds of things I do every day, me threading a needle and spending 5 minutes on a sock seems crazily unimportant and delegate-able.  However, me sitting down and forcing myself to do something I already know how to do and could pay someone else to do reminds me that I once did not know how to do it, nor had the resources to pay someone to do it.  It reminds me to be thankful for all I have come through and all I have learned.  It reminds me that I am where I am because of a gracious God who listened to me whine about mending my socks 20 years ago, who didn’t reject me but taught me instead.

Salvaging a quality item is satisfying.  There is something really enjoyable knowing that with just a little investment of insignificant thread and more significant talent, I made something useful again for probably a couple more years.  I did that, all on my own and barely thought about what I was doing.  I am talented and capable.  It’s a good feeling.

Doing some tasks takes less time than all that’s involved in buying new.  Had I decided to throw out the socks, I would have had to put them on the list, wait until I could get to the store, spend my time and gas to go to the store and shop for socks of equal quality, stand in line at the cashier, bring them home and unpack them and get them to my drawer.  Instead, I spent 15 minutes start-to-finish gathering supplies, mending the holes, then putting everything away.  And I never have to think about my socks again.  Precious time has now been created out of thin air.

Just because I have the resources to do something, doesn’t mean I should.  Buying new socks just because I can buy new socks when I need to seems rather robotic to me.  I don’t want to function on automatic pilot with the resources I have.  It would not be wrong for me to buy new socks if I wanted them, because it’s my money to spend as I wish.  But there is something liberating about being able to say, “I can, but I won’t.”  It keeps money serving me instead of the other way around.

Slowing down to tend to a small hole keeps me from speeding up past big ones.  Had I not found it important to darn my socks, I probably would have gained momentum and gotten faster and faster “doing” instead of “being.”  I miss so many things when I don’t just focus on letting God guide me throughout the jobs in my day.  That 15 minutes kept me listening to my child which led to laughter and made me not speed past more important parts of my day.

You notice I did not go to the cliché of “a stitch in time saves nine.”  That would be because my socks actually needed darned about a month ago.  But sure, if you want to go there, do.

Love,