Organizing and Costumes and Love, Oh my!

Is it seriously February tomorrow? Wasn't Christmas just last week? I have enjoyed my break this month. Other than filing my sales tax, I have just taken a big break from business. It's been like a sweet breeze rushing through the house. I've spent time organizing my kitchen and decluttering and donating items we don't have a need for anymore. It's been like a long vacation. But our weather in St. Louis has been weirdly odd this winter and today, it feels like spring at 63F. Being a lover of snow, this doesn't make the little girl inside me very happy but even I must admit that today was simply gorgeous. I just wish we could have this weather in August. Can I get an amen??

Can I ask you something? Do you ever feel like....not enough? Unimportant?

Every year, the Marriage Ministry at our church puts on a Trivia Night. I love to transform myself into someone completely different occasionally and Trivia Night is an excellent opportunity to do so. Our table chose a Theater Theme and each couple dressed as a famous movie couple. The other couples were Lady and the Tramp, Han and Leia, and Danny and Sandy. Hubby and I chose Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane. I decided to go all Teri Hatcher with a wide collared white shirt, black vest and skirt and chose a hairstyle similar to hers. I even printed up a Press Pass and donned the square shaped glasses too. The shirt and skirt were no problem and two days before the event, I decided to go shopping for the vest. How hard could it be to find a suit vest, befitting a professional Daily Planet reporter? Those things were all over the place...just a few years ago.

For a costume piece I planned to use only one night, I headed to my favorite places...resale shops. I hit one...then two...then three... At the fourth one, the 20-something girl looked at me like I had grown antlers when I asked if she had any suit vests for ladies. Even after explaining what it was, she still couldn't imagine it. I admit, I had to think a little harder about how long ago those were popular and realized it was much further back than I had originally thought. I suppose *everyone* wears casual wear to work now?? At least in St. Louis that must be the case because before I knew it, I had spent way more time than I had planned, with no end in sight. I was getting antsy, knowing I needed to get home and also knowing I really wanted it to really make the costume work (yes, in some areas of my life, I have perfectionist tendencies. But very few).

Do you remember back....way back...when you were a tween? And you wanted something that was probably too young for you but you still wanted it...mostly for a desire to hold onto your fast fading childhood? And you asked your parents for it but felt, deep down, just silly for asking? That was the exact feeling I had. But my desire overrode the feeling and even though I felt silly asking for this, I asked God for His help. "Father, you know I'm just trying to get our costumes right and I'm just asking for your help to find a silly vest that will work because I need to get home to my family." Don't get me wrong, I ask God for big things all the time. Healing, heart changes, jobs, families, ministries, those being persecuted, marriages, moves, comfort in losses, etc. But something like a specific, apparently non-existent piece of clothing for a costume seems...I don't know...unimportant to ask the King of Kings to provide for me. But it was important...to me. And as much as I could have totally lived without it, I just really wanted my costume to be right.

I got out of the car and went into the next store. I went down the aisle, telling myself that this was the last shop. By then, my practical side (which usually looms very large in my life) had gotten the upper hand and I had to give it up and be logical. I needed to get home and I'd just have to "make do" with whatever was in my closet. I had told myself that God would consider my request unnecessary. I know He loves me but maybe some things are too small to bother Him with. I turned at the end of that aisle and there it was. A black professional vest, my perfect size, sitting right there for me. It was exactly the style I had pictured in my head that I wanted and was a precise fit. I was very happy....and then stunned....and then ashamed. I was stunned, not that I didn't think He would provide...but that He thought this was important to fulfill in my life. And ashamed because of my lack of faith in how far, how wide and how deep His love is for me...all the way down to a vest for one night. You mean God really *does* care about my silly vest? No, probably not the vest itself. But He cares about *me*. And He knew it was important to me, no matter how silly it might seem to probably everyone else in the whole wide world! And He wanted to take that moment in my life to show me that no matter how small, how insignificant I deem my requests, He wants me to bring them ALL to Him. Even the ones I think are too insignificant to bring to Him. Because He loves me.

Hey, He loves you too. Ask Him. He'll show you.

Matthew 7:11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!