Clothed

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