Fall Wardrobe

For a girl who prefers warm weather, I’ve really grown to love the early September days in Virginia. It's still about eighty degrees at two o'clock in the afternoon, but the humidity is gone, and a cool breeze blows through and it's--perfect. I think the weather in heaven is going to be something like this.

And just as the birds know that the cool breeze means it is time to leave their nests and fly to sunny Sarasota, Florida (at least, that's where I would go if I was a bird), I instinctively know that the time has come for me to pull out the fall clothes. It's very important to have those sweaters out of storage, ready to be donned at the first sign of frost.

I inspected my autumn wardrobe last night, and to be honest, it seemed a little sparse.  So I gathered up the gift cards to the mall I'd been saving since spring and called the numbers on the back--only to discover there isn't as much money remaining on those cards as I had thought (Where'd it go? Has Jack been using these cards without telling me?).

What was really going on here? When you get right down to it, I can be ungrateful and dissatisfied with certain aspects of my physical appearance. I forget that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God Himself. And instead, so easily, so subtly, I can turn to the fashion industry to hopefully compensate for my perceived lack of beauty.

It’s a good thing Mom called today. She and Dad are on their way home from Little Rock, Arkansas where they have been speaking at a weekend retreat. And one of the messages Mom shared with the women was entitled: “True Beauty.” Just the mention of this message was a reminder to me of the truth it contains. It’s one of my favorites.

In this message Mom tells of Elisabeth Elliot’s interaction with the missionary, Gladys Aylward. Miss Aylward too was dissatisfied with her physical appearance. But she made a wonderful discovery. Here’s what happened:

“[Gladys] told how when she was a child she had two great sorrows. One, that while all her friends had beautiful golden hair, hers was black. The other, that while her friends were still growing, she stopped. She was about four feet ten inches tall. But when at last she reached the country to which God had called her to be a missionary, she stood on the wharf in Shanghai and looked around at the people to whom he had called her.

‘Every single one of them,’ she said, ‘had black hair. And every single one of them had stopped growing when I did.' And I said, ‘Lord God, You know what You’re doing!’”

Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1976), 32.

Instead of grumbling because I don’t have the fall wardrobe I desire, I want to praise the God who made me, just the way I am. And while I’m still going to use the gift cards that God has graciously provided, I want to be more preoccupied with doing kingdom work, just like Miss Aylward.