Fully Clothed
It was thirteen plus years ago and I had just had my first baby. I had quit my office position and instead had taken on a nannying job to make up some of my lost income. Of course, things were still tight and I was worried about trying to clothe this rapidly growing bundle of joy that we had been blessed with.
I fretted and fussed and fought insomnia trying to figure out how to eek out a clothing allowance from our squeaky tight budget. I prayed that somehow God would keep my baby clothed. Little did I know!
It did not take long for the calls to start coming in.
"I'm cleaning out our attic and I've got a few bags of baby clothing. Would you like them?" "Hey, my baby is 6 months older than yours. Would you like to take her clothes as she grows out of them?" "My sister's husband's second cousin once removed has some bags of clothing for you. Are you okay with hand-me-downs?"
I was thinking plastic grocery bag sized bags. What I didn't realize, however, is that when people said "bags", they usually meant 30-gallon trash bag sized bags!
Mountains of them.
I can recall sitting in the living room one afternoon, after more than a year of hand-me-downs flowing my way, being surrounded by the contents of no less than four of those mother-honking bags. As I surveyed the carnage of baby outfits sorted into keep for now, keep for later, pass along and what were they thinking, it dawned on me that aside from socks, I hadn't needed to purchase ANY BABY CLOTHING WHATSOEVER FOR OVER A YEAR!
I laughed to myself at the Lord's sense of humor. I had been worried about having enough clothes and here I was up to my eyeballs in them! I shot my hands up in surrender and acknowledged "Okay God, you win! Kayla now has so many clothes that she could go a month and not wear the same outfit twice!"
I had read it many times before, but I now understood the full meaning of this verse:
Matthew 6:25-29 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these."
Believe it.
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