Trading Clothes

When is the last time you stared at your closet, full of clothes, and thought “I have nothing to wear”?  I can take a guess and say it was this morning, and if not I am pretty sure that it’s safe to say it hasn’t been longer than a week since those words (whether spoken or thought) ran across your mind.  Because we are girls and that’s what we do; we look at full closets and see nothing.  Nothing that hasn’t been worn fifty times, nothing that covers us in all the right places, nothing that is both comfortable and fashionable… nothing. 

 

It’s a gift really, like magic.  There are fifty shirts and we see nothing.

 

Just a few short months ago we moved into a new house and I reorganized my whole life.  I would like to pretend that that is an exaggeration but who am I kidding, I love organization and I seized the opportunity to go over every drawer/closet/box with a fine toothed comb and trash every unneeded thing.  It was glorious.  Until I came to my closet of course and then out of the shadows of my soul crept out this hoarder that couldn’t stand the thought of getting rid of “this shirt” or “those pants” because “one day I might want to wear them again”.  “I’ll need them one day”.  “Maybe I won’t, but I might, need them.”  So the battle between the Purger and the Hoarder began.  And in the end, they both won.

 

I put all of the clothes that I hadn’t worn in a while (or knew I shouldn’t wear again) in a trash bag… and then put the trash bag back into my closet.  Voila, compromise at its best.

 

And there, in the back of my closet, this bag has sat for three months.  I didn’t need it, but I just couldn’t get rid of it.  Because I might need it again.

 

This past weekend we held a “Shirts & Skirts Trade Event” for the girls of TheChurch at Visalia and it was so much fun to see everyone trading things they hadn’t worn in a while and going home with new-to-them clothes.  They had some delicious food, got their hair/makeup done, took some fun pictures, and shared in some great laughs.  But my favorite part of the night came at the very end when I had the opportunity to sit with them and look them in their eyes to share with them that it was time- time to trade clothes.

 

Trade clothes?  Didn’t we already do that?  Yes… and no. 

 

Proverbs 31 is a beautiful chapter of a crazy woman who wakes up at the butt crack of dawn to sew clothes, prepare meals, water fields, balance the check book, and conquer the world.  And whenever I need a swift kick in the backside in regards to being a wife and a mother I turn to Proverbs 31.  In verse twenty five there is this beautiful gem of a statement that was so fitting for our event.  It says, “she is clothed with strength and dignity”. 

 

Clothed.

 

She puts them on every day… as clothing… to cover her.  Strength.  And dignity.

 

In the Amplified version of the verse it goes even further to say that “her position is strong and secure”.  So it is safe to say that she wasn’t wearing a bikini in verse 25. Strong and secure.  If you know what I mean.  And if you are a girl, I know that you know what I mean.

 

So what does this verse mean for us?  How do we become strong and secure?  We trade.  We trade our clothing of insecurity, our clothing of guilt, our clothing of condemnation, our clothing of comparison, our clothing of compromise for the clothing of strength and dignity.  It isn’t good enough to bag all of the old stuff up and keep it in the back of our closet, because it is always there to drag out from time to time whenever we feel at our worst. 

And it is all too easy to stare at those old clothes hanging on the trading rack and think that no one would even noticed if they slipped back into your bag.   (Not that I wanted to claim my old clothes considering they were practically the only ones left after our clothes exchange; it's safe to say I must have crept into some mom style, unbeknownst to me, and now need to find my way back to this thing called "fashion".)  Just like that we are reclaiming what we know we should be giving up.  Just like that old habits creep back in.  Just like that we find our old excuses for why we need these things back in our lives.  But we don't. 

It isn’t a trade if you hold on.

 

So let it go.  And please don’t sing the song, if I hear it one more time I might go crazy.

 

You sang it, didn’t you?  *shakes head*

 

We need to wake up every morning, look at ourselves in the mirror, and choose to be strong and secure.  Just as you decide what you wear to school.  It is your clothing.  It is a choice. And just as our clothes sometimes take a beating (especially if you are me and are prone to find every hidden mud puddle or slippery patch of grass), our strength and dignity will take a beating as well.  “But when we are in Him, we are a new creation.  The old passes away [with all of its stains and tears] and EVERYTHING becomes new.”  So if you find yourself wearing dirty clothes put them in the washing machine of 2 Corinthians 5:17 and wake up to some new ones. 

 

You are beautiful.  You are strong.  You are secure.

 

And of course, you is kind, you is smart, you is important too!

 

 

 

Psalm 30:11

You changed my ·sorrow [mourning] into dancing.
You took away my ·clothes of sadness [sackcloth],
and clothed me in ·happiness [joy].