1
" Life didn't come until Ezekiel spoke to the breath."
"What does that mean?" Harper hesitated. She had the strangest sensation of breathlessness, like after a long hike into high altitude just before cresting a mountain.
"Well, it's resurrection. From the ashes. From the dust. From the dead things. Your problem is, you're looking at the bones instead of breathing." Daddy sighed. "Maybe your dream was never about a shop at all. Maybe there's a second command, Harper Girl. Another place where you're supposed to breathe life."
Harper looked down to the blouse in her lap. To the thread and the needle.
She thought of Millie's buttons.
And then hope---glorious and beautiful hope---filled the landscape of her heart as the sunrise scatters new light over the mountaintops.
Of course! Why hadn't she seen it before? All this time, she had been focused on the store. But her gifting, her dream, was so much more than that.
Her gifting was repairing the broken places. Mending forgotten tears and weak seams. Breathing life back into the fabrics that told stories, into the buttons that bind them. "
― Ashley Clark , The Dress Shop on King Street (Heirloom Secrets, #1)
2
" Harper once read an article about hummingbirds, and how with certain kinds, the sunlight becomes a prism through their wings and the prism becomes a rainbow. All that's left is the shadow of the little bird in the photo and the rainbow wings that carry it through gardens. Moving from beauty to beauty, of kept promises with each open, living flower. Everlasting hope. Everlasting covenant.
Even dead seeds make roots, and roots underground sprout blooms, and the rain falls, and in due time and in due season the hummingbird returns, looking for nectar and hoping to find a harvest. Carrying her story in her rainbow wings, from generation to generation. "
― Ashley Clark , The Dress Shop on King Street (Heirloom Secrets, #1)
11
" Buttons may be tiny. Delicate, even. But they fasten together the fabric of an entire garment. The fabric wear day in and day out, the mundane cotton blouse and the lacy wedding dress. The fabric, the seams, that cover us, warm us, protect us. Binding dream to dream, story to story, but mostly, death to life.
With a particular kind of beauty that rises from the dust. The resurrection life of a second story, of the breath that mends us. "
― Ashley Clark , The Dress Shop on King Street (Heirloom Secrets, #1)