Provision

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. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:28-34)

All right. I have to tell this story, with the full awareness that it could sound shallow and vain. I am fully aware that it might sound bad and might reveal parts of my personality that I like to keep hidden, but God showed up in a big way in this so I have to share.

A few weeks ago, I went to a local sign store to order some signs for work. This was the same sign store I used to use when I worked for the property owner's association, and the girl there remembered me even though I hadn't seen her since I left the other position. We chatted for a minute about random things, then moved on to business chatter, and then I stepped out from behind the counter to leave. She gasped in shock, completely unaware that I'm pregnant. She had a baby in April, which I knew, and out of nowhere offered to let me use some of her maternity clothes. She is petite, like me, and said she understood how hard it can be to find cute maternity clothes when you're small. I was pretty excited, but didn't count on actually getting the clothes. I don't know her very well, after all, so she has no reason to be that generous to me. (My skepticism had nothing to do with her character; she is very, very sweet.) Some time passed, though, and I had literally forgotten all about it.

About a week and a half ago, one of my coworkers went to the sign shop to talk to her some more about the signs. When he came back, he waltzed into my office with.....a huge (I mean HUGE) plastic tub of maternity clothes. I was very, very excited, because not only were the clothes cute, but they were small, AND I had literally planned on going to the mall that afternoon to buy some clothes because I was scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as my wardrobe went. (I can't wear jeans to work, and that - as it turns out - is almost all I had in the way of maternity pants. I was going to buy some khakis and some black pants.....and what was in the box? Two pairs of khakis and two pairs of black pants, among many other things.)

When I got the tub home, I was so excited. Everything was really cute, and while some of the things were still too big for me, I had lots of things that I didn't have before, and was really grateful for that. I called her and thanked her emphatically.

A little while ago, I got a voicemail from the girl at the sign shop. She said she had done something bad and needed to apologize. My first thought was that she needed the clothes back now, for some reason, but that was not the case. As it turns out, she gave me the wrong tub of clothes. The ones she gave me were, in her words "the big and yucky ones." She has a whole other tub she wants to give me.

(Here, I'm trying not to think about the fact that I really, really liked some of the things in the first tub and have, in fact, been wearing them all....which means she thinks some of my taste is yucky. I think that's funny. But hey...if she's going to give me all of those clothes, she can think whatever she wants.)

So yeah. I'm going by there on my way home today to get the other tub which, in her words, "is way better."

I know this probably makes me sound like an incredible clothes horse and like I am really shallow and only think about things like this, but truthfully, this has been a concern. When I wasn't working, I could lounge around and look schlumpy every day. That was fine. Now, though, I have to look nice every day. I was looking at having to get a good number of new clothes, which I don't really have the money to do. (Didn't want to spend all of the money I'm making on clothes to make more money. Just somehow didn't make much sense, you know?) God saw that concern, though, and has blown me away with His provision. He is so good to care about things like that when I wish I didn't. He knows my heart, He knows my needs, and He wants to take care of it all.

Why do I ever worry about anything?