Do you remember it? The first outfit you chose for your
baby girl? Perhaps a decidedly pink sleeper and matching hat. Or an impossibly
tiny and frilly dress. Do you remember it? The care, the delight, the amazement
of choosing those darling clothes? Do you remember dressing your daughter for
the first time, how those little limbs would not stay put, just how she wiggled
and made that face and wondered what was going on?
Today, friends of ours will be choosing their daughter’s last outfit. I cannot imagine how they
will choose. What love will finger those threads, will tremble in carrying such
grown up clothes to the counter. What grief to lay them out and know the
stillness with which they will finally rest.
At the beginning and the end, we are all helpless to
dress ourselves.
And sometimes in the middle of it all, we can be left
feeling stripped, naked, wondering what is going on.
But there is One who comes when everything is inside out
and wraps His cloak around us. He wraps His arms around us, and we can crawl
into our Father’s lap and into His comfort.
And somewhere in the middle of it
all, this living, heaving, laugh and cry world, we remember the joy. We
remember we are all His children.
~lg
