what to wear – I Just Have to Say…

“So, I’m telling you don’t worry about your life, what you’re going to eat or drink next, about your latest aches and pains, about what you will wear. Is a meal the most important thing in your life? Is what you wear more important than the body you put it on?” Jesus in Matthew 6:25

No, I thought. What I wear has become much less an issue since moving to the deep freeze (Wisconsin). The desire to look a certain way when seen, doesn’t know what to do with itself when I’m hardly ever seen anywhere. When I’m seen, I’m pretty much always wearing my coat.

I often go to Walmart but you know I’m not going to worry about looking good there. I’d rather blend in.

Even at church, where my childhood habit of wearing my Sunday best ought to kick in, I’m more often in my flannel shirt uniform. People who walk or drive long distances to get somewhere in freezing weather have to think about dressing to prevent hypothermia if their car breaks down or if there’s a stiff wind. I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a woman in a dress.

It’s a nice closet, and much better than squeezing into the one in our bedroom, with the husband’s things.

My clothes were a major part of what I packed to move up here. There were boxes of winter things, some of which had not seen much action in thirty years of Florida weather. I decided the large double closet in the garage was the most logical place for my things – it’s handy, right outside the kitchen door and only a few steps from our bedroom. I had to buy hangers, lots of them. Most everything fits there. It’s a little weird, but not a problem if I plan ahead.

But now that winter is here, and we’re keeping the garage at a lower temperature, I’m opting not to go out there as often. I have found that I can wear the same clothes for days at a time if I’m careful. My big accomplishment this week is going five days in the same pair of jeans. In a previous life this would have been wrong on several levels, but not here, not now. Don’t judge. Seattle daughter would be happy to know that her blue sweater gift is on it’s fourth day too.

Did you know that washing clothing unnecessarily is creating a cloth fiber plague in our water and air? It’s true. I read it on the internet. Even fish caught in the ocean have cloth fibers in their flesh, and we eat that. Yuk. So I’m not washing my clothes either. Well, not as often. If I can’t see the dirt, they’re not dirty. Try it. Saves on detergent too.

That whole section in Matthew 6 says a lot about clothes and worry and I’m taking it to heart. I’m just sayin’ – there’s no sense in running after things that God has already given me plenty of.

Is unfashion a word? Did I make that up?

I have a closet full of clothes. Some of them I wear almost every week. Some of them I haven’t worn for a long time but I have memories of them as favorites, or I have memories of how much I paid for them that keep me from giving them away. Since I am engaged in the long term project of downsizing, today I decided to wear a dress and make a decision. Does it go or does it stay?

This has been a good day to wear a dress because I intended to stay inside and write. A dress is good for writing. There isn’t a lot else to be done in a dress, comfortably. I often wonder how our pioneer ancestors walked across the country in dresses, not to speak of all the things they usually wore under their dresses to complicate things. I know some of them probably put on a pair of pants if they could find some to fit, but I’m also thinking that pants might not have been all that great back then either.

So, in my dress, which I bought at a garage sale a couple years ago, I sat and wrote all morning. The writing was productive and the dress kept me from getting distracted and going outside. But I gradually got the “knowing” feeling. The dress was not “me”. I took it off and put it in the box to go to Goodwill. It was a useful exercise in paring down.