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Fiber artwork captures vision from God

Hensley said her family stopped attending church when she reached the third grade. By that time, the damage to her spirit had been done.
“My person was bruised,” she said. “My spirit was downcast. I didn’t feel worthy. It was inside, deep inside.”As an adult, Hensley asked God to show her what he saw when he looked at her—because she knew she didn’t see the same thing.
That was a significant twist in her journey.
Hensley was involved in 1999 in a Disciple 1 class at Coker UMC, San Antonio, where she and her husband, Gary, are members. The class was reading a passage from Ezekiel. In it the prophet laments the crumbling world around him. He sees a cloud with lightning and brilliant light.
Hensley remembers seeing a clear picture of a brilliant tapestry and feeling an overwhelming urge to create it. She sketched it on paper, a rough drawing of Jesus with his arms wrapped around the world.
She tucked the sketch away because she didn’t believe she could ever create something so intricate.
“Sewing was just a hobby,” Hens-ley said. “I didn’t realize it could be a service. I couldn’t believe I could make (the art).”
The vision didn’t fade during the ensuing months. Hensley visited with her pastor at the time, the Rev. Bob Allen, for some direction. He didn’t offer any, she said, because God needed her to work out the vision herself.
During her first year of struggle with the vision, Hensley made a quilt for a friend and decided to enter it in a show. She got cold feet just before the contest, but her friend forced her to follow through. Hensley won first place.
She said the honor provided the courage she needed to pursue what God intended for her.
Still, Hensley dragged her feet. She sewed other projects for the church—communion paraments, baptism handkerchiefs, banners—but soon realized that God wouldn’t let her run from the project he’d asked her to finish.
Throughout the years, she said, verses would come to her that she knew were supposed to have a place on the fiber art piece. Pictures would flash in her mind—the constellations that form the angels’ faces, the wheels of eyes, the rainbow.
Still she struggled with believing she could complete such a task.
Then Allen asked Hensley to draw her idea to scale. She agreed and began to sew it soon after.
The work became her lifeblood, her quiet time with God. She would spend hours every day stitching and praying. Some days, Hensley said, she could have talked herself out of going into her sewing room. But the work was a practice in discipline, and she knew she would miss her time with God.
As the days slipped by, her self esteem began to grow. Repressed anger from her childhood began to melt. The cloudy vision began to clear.

She finished the art piece June 8 and was a new woman.
Allen, now Kerrville District superintendent, said Hensley grew in miraculous ways—and even transformed her broken family.
“When I first met her,” he said, “she had very low self esteem. She didn’t believe in herself because she was taught not to believe in herself. It’s a journey, an odyssey, a witness to what God can do for whoever thinks the least of themselves. She wasn’t on the bottom rung. She wasn’t even on the ladder.
“Step by step she began to make progress up the ladder. Because of the strength she’s gained from God, the family that was so troubled is no longer. She came out of a family of brokenness, but she’s become whole. And she turned around and offered them wholeness through Jesus Christ. It’s a journey of her entire family.”
One side of the 6-by-7.5-foot fiber art depicts Jesus, outlined in glow-in-the-dark thread. He is placed against a sky of constellations that form angels. Jesus is wrapping his arms around the earth, and a rainbow extends from one of his hands. The Holy Spirit’s cloud sits in the center of the earth.
The back of the fabric displays the Lord’s Prayer.
Allen said the art has a power that he cannot fully explain.
“I’ve seen people break down because of the power of God that is contained in it,” Allen said. “It is probably one of the most incredible pieces I’ve seen in my whole life. It’s breathtaking. I’m not even sure you can take it in fully all at one time, just as you can’t take God in fully.
“When I saw it, it made me cry. It’s so awe-inspiring.”
The fiber art piece is made to travel, Hensley said. She knows with certainty that God wants her to share the piece.
She has welcomed groups into her home to view the piece. In January, she is to take the art to a United Methodist Women’s meeting.
Many have asked her to share technical details and stitching techniques, Hensley said. But she says it’s not about how she did it. It’s about what God is saying to each individual through the piece.
Hensley said she hopes the fiber art will speak truth into the lives of those who see it.
“I want to invite people into a relationship with Christ—maybe people who were emotionally crippled like me,” she said.
Allen said the fiber art’s power is sure to bring people into a closer relationship with Christ.
“I think Robyn is a mystic,” Allen said. “I’m not sure she would ever know that. But she’s entered into a mystical relationship with the living God. You see the majesty of God within that work. When you look at the tapestry, you’re seeing God through the eyes of Robyn.
“It’s going to be unique to every viewer. It’s such a piece that everyone is going to bring whoever he or she is into the work. The work itself is going to call forth to fruition the seeds that God planted in each individual.”
Hensley said the sewing changed her in ways she never would have expected. She keeps her first-place ribbon in her coffee table display. She has the relationship with her mother that she “always dreamed of having.” God has showed her he loves her just the way she is, and she believes it.
Hensley said she outlined Jesus in glow-in-the-dark thread so that when the lights go out and darkness comes, she can still see Jesus.
“When I go through the hard times, I hope I remember,” Hensley said.
For more information about the fiber art piece or to schedule a visit with Hensley, call (210) 479-7025.