She shouldn't have taken the fabric, it's true. It was particularly pretty. She didn't think we'd need it. The anger flowed through my voice- harsh and strong. It brought the desired result- the fabric returned. But her face was sad, and she said she couldn't stay. I said I knew she thought we didn't need it. I said I now saw that many were taking items they assumed we wouldn't use. I announced what I hadn't realized needed announcing- that nothing should be taken away, whether it looked like we needed it or not.

But she didn't come back. And we missed her and her careful stitches and her steady manner and wide eyed son. One day, two days... and there she was.

She came into my office. I expected excuses, complaints. My initial harshness stared me in the face as she asks my forgiveness, says she knows she was wrong. But she talked about that time away. How she'd gone to the streets where she used to live. She saw her old life looking back at her and she knew she couldn't go back. She spoke of her young years, with a stepmother treating her as a slave. Never going to school. Never feeling love.

And she said this was the first place she'd felt love- CUP and Hand and Cloth. A training center and a job. A training center and a job.

I get so busy, and I see that we are not keeping up with orders. That I'm weeks behind. That my plans, policy projections are all horrendously out of date. I forget that it's a place they come to for love, for dignity, for making something beautiful, and simultaneously feeling something beautiful. And I'm humbled as my tears trickle down and my priorities are jumbled and I'm glad he's making me new too.