Cuidado

I went thrift store shopping over the past two days. There are some great thrift stores where I live, and two of them were having bag sales – all you can fit in a bag for $6 at one place and $10 at another. The $10 dollar bag is a huge bag, and I now have more cashmere sweaters than I know what to do with, some great clothes for work, and a beautiful evening dress that I never would have bought for myself if it hadn’t fit so easily in that bag. At the place with the $6 bag, the bag was much smaller, but I still managed to fit in lots of beautiful shirts and a linen sweater, and then one of the men who works there took a look at the bag and said, “No good, you can fit more,” and took it away from me and folded everything so neatly and perfectly that I was able to fit a suede jacket in there.

I shop at these thrift stores all the time – even without the bag sales their prices are amazing. And the people who work there are so nice! I always tell them how much I enjoy shopping there and that I get so many compliments on my clothes. They’re so appreciative that I am appreciative. For some reason not everyone tells them how wonderful they are, but I always tell them because it’s one of the ways that God has provided for me in His miraculous way of providing not just any old thing, but something beautiful and special and that makes me feel good about the way I look.

The saying is that “Clothes make the man,” and while you can be dressed to the nines and you might still be a rotter underneath it, people do respond to you differently if you’re dressed well. And there’s a feeling that I get when I am wearing something that I know is pretty – it brings out the little girl in me that likes to dress up. I grew up wearing hand-me-downs from my brothers and my sister, and we didn’t have much extra for anything special so the clothing was utilitarian most of the time, but my mother used to take us to the old Filene’s Basement, the original one in the basement of Filene’s in Boston, and to other places too where we would sometimes find really great things for a dollar or two. I had thought those old days were gone forever until God showed me these thrift stores. It was His way of letting me know that He knows how much I longed for something special to wear, His way of letting me know that I was His daughter and He was going to take care of me in the way a King takes care of His little princess.

If I hadn’t been open to the idea of shopping at a thrift store I’d never have this blessing He’s been pouring on me. I have so many clothes now that I joke with my friends at the thrift stores that I’m going to have to move just to find space for my clothes. For a girl who grew up feeling like Cinderella, rarely having the clothing to wear to school that would make me feel like I fit in or that I looked attractive to anyone, the clothes I have now are above and beyond what I could ever have even dreamed of. Ephesians 3:20 says, “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we all we ask or imagine, according to His work within us” and He’s certainly done that with my clothing. Philippians 4:19 says, "And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus." He has supplied not only my needs, but my wants too. And above and beyond what I could ever have asked for.

When I get compliments on my clothes, which I always do these days, I always tell people the price. One dollar, two dollars, maybe four if I’ve really splurged. I’ve had two women tell me I shouldn’t tell anyone, and I say why? Why would I hide that God is blessing me? If I pretend that I can afford these beautiful clothes, in what way does that show what God can do? By telling people the truth, and being honest about what He has done, I can let other people know He can do it for them too. Even so, there are still some people who wouldn’t shop at a thrift store. One woman I know complimented me on something I was wearing, and when I told her where I got it and invited her to go with me, she went on to say that she was waiting for something she liked to go on sale and that she’d buy it if it got to around $150. Why spend $150 when you could buy it for so much less? That’s the way I feel, though, and I know not everyone is like me. I love my thrift stores, and I love the people who work there. They’re volunteers at the smaller ones, people who want to help the community, people who love to see other people be blessed.

There’s a human connection that’s part of the transaction too. Maybe that’s what the woman who wanted to spend $150 was trying to avoid. And shopping at thrift stores means you have to accept that other people may have worn those clothes, though in some cases they are donated from retailers with the original tags still on, but there has to be some acceptance that someone else could pay that top price that you can’t. But I say, who cares? Back in the day when I used to do things my own way, I used to sometimes buy really expensive clothes. I couldn’t afford them, but I’d put them on my credit card or pay for them with money that should have been paying for something else like the health insurance that I didn’t have. I have so much beautiful clothing now that I didn’t pay a fraction of the cost for, and I get that chance to joke and laugh and talk to people who work at the stores too. But there’s that human interaction again, and maybe that’s the thing that keeps some people from going there. I have to be honest with the people who work at those stores – I can’t hide from them what a blessing they are to me and I don’t want to. I love telling them about the compliments I get and the places I wear their beautiful clothes. That connection is part of what I love about shopping there.

Sometimes when we’re looking for God’s blessings, they come in very strange ways. We might be praying for something, and if we expect it to come in one way and it comes in another, we might not recognize it as the answer to our prayer. We might miss out on the blessing that God has for us if we don’t see it because it’s not packaged in the way we thought it should be. All of my life I’ve longed for beautiful clothes, sometimes spending too much money just to have one nice thing. Now I have more than I could ever ask for or imagine, but it came in a very different way than I ever expected.

There's a song that I hear when I'm at one of the thrift stores. "Colgano En Tus Manos," by Carlos Baute. It's a great song he sings with Marta Sanchez. It's a song about the desire for love that seems unattainable, something that is out of reach because it's not yours. But when you hear the song, and watch the video, Carlos Baute and Marta Sanchez are having so much fun! In the chorus they keep singing "Cuidado, mi corazon esta colgano en tus manos," which translates roughly to "Be careful, my heart is in your hands," but they don't look like they're worried about having their hearts broken. They're joyful, and enjoying the feeling of being in love. We can have that feeling of wanting something that we don't know if we can have, something that is on our hearts that we can't forget. And so we pray about it, and ask God to help us with it, but if we are not careful we may not recognize when those prayers have been answered. We might lose out on the joy of feeling the feeling of love because we are afraid that our hearts might be broken.

God holds our hearts in His hands if we let Him. And He's always careful to take care of what we trust Him with. For years I was running after things I thought I couldn't have, when sometimes they were things I didn't need or that weren't good for me. Expensive clothing will wear out - I'm good with keeping clothes and other things I've bought over the years, but they still, eventually, wear out. People I thought were one way have turned out to be another, things I thought I needed turned out to be dust collectors I couldn't get rid of. God tells us not to focus on the things of this world, but to focus on Him and that He will provide for all of our needs. 1 John 2:16 says, "All the things the world can offer you - the allure of pleasure, the passion to have things, and the pompous sense of superiority do not come from the Father. These are the rotten fruits of this world." That is from The Voice translation, one I've started to get devotions from online, and I like the way they use language.

God knows that we need things, and He knows how to provide the best things for us, to meet our needs in the best way possible. It is the desire for those things that this passage is warning us of, the negative feelings that can come when we want something that we can't have, when we are willing to do anything to get what we want, even if it means hurting someone else or ourselves. If we look at it in combination with other scriptures, we can see that the message is not saying that we can't ever have what we want. Time and time again, God promises us that He will supply all of our needs, and I've experienced that over and over again, not just the needs but the wants too. And when we are able to be patient, when we are able to let God do the supplying, when we are able to recognize that He is the best provider of all, and that He wants us to have the things that are the best for us, that is when He can really pour out a blessing that we cannot contain. When we trust in His timing, and trust that He is willing and able to do more than we can ever ask for or think of, when we trust Him at His word to provide for all of our needs, and when we don't tie Him down to one way of providing, just watch Him open the windows of Heaven and let it rain.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan