An Abundant Life - A Christmas Story

Something else really nice happened the other day that is a real Christmas story. There’s a very sweet older lady who lives in my neighborhood. I run into her all the time, and every time I see her she tells me how beautiful I am. It doesn't matter what I'm wearing or how I'm feeling, no matter what she tells me how precious and special I am. I’ve been going through some clothing to give away and I like to give things directly to people who need them instead of putting them in a drop off box. I asked her if she knew anyone who gave away clothing and told her that I had some things I was going through that I wanted to give to someone who could really use them. She said she went to the church to look through the clothing they give away, and I asked her if I could just give the things I have to her and that if she couldn't use them she could give them to the church. She said she'd be happy to see what I had and to share it with a neighbor if she couldn't use it, that she needed a warm coat and could use some other things and that she has two daughters. I put together a big bag and made sure to put in a few warm jackets and a coat, and I dropped the bag off for her on her doorstep. There were some pants, a suit, some boots, some dressy and some nice winter ones, some jackets a skirt or two and a dress. I was a bit worried that nothing would work for her because she’s really tiny, much shorter than I am, but when I heard from her after she tried everything on she said she loved it all, and when I saw her she was ecstatic! She said she loved everything and her daughters loved the clothes she didn’t take. They are all so happy. She said the dress made her feel like she was a little girl again. It was really beautiful. She told me I outdid myself in choosing things for them, and I told her that’s God.

And it really is God. If you saw her, we’re completely different sizes. There’s really no way in the natural world my clothes could fit her, but God has a wonderful way of taking whatever we do and making it work better than we could have imagined. Somehow, some way, whatever was in that bag became more than I put into it.

When I was first born again, I had gone through the most difficult time in my life than I had ever experienced, and I had some rough times before that. I grew up in family that didn't have many resources, and I started working when I was nine just to be able to buy things for myself that I wanted instead of having to wear hand-me-downs, sometimes from my brothers. I was picked on in school and never felt like I fit in because the clothing I wore was never what the other kids were wearing and was sometimes too big or didn't fit right or was just not the latest style or the way other kids my age were dressing. I always felt so embarrassed, and rarely liked what I was wearing unless I bought it for myself. Even after I moved away from home and started my life in New York I still didn't have much money because I was an actress and worked as a temp and sometimes didn't have regular jobs. It was always a struggle, and though I had some things I liked to wear I didn't have much in the way of any belongings, never mind clothes. And then I went through a time in my life after I was born again when I had lost so much, nearly everything except for the things I had managed to hang onto my whole life, and then I found myself living in this new neighborhood, in a place where I had never lived before, and little by little God started to help me explore and find thrift stores and vintage stores, to find sales at the mall, and to find yard sales and people who gave things away and who gave me gifts of things from time to time. There was a beautiful woman who arrived at a class I was teaching each week with gifts for me from the clothing giveaway at her church. I didn't tell her I needed anything, but for some reason she just decided that she wanted to give me clothing, and she picked out some very beautiful things that all fit me. There were other places I'd go, thrift stores and vintage stores where I'd shop and where people would hand me things and say they wanted me to have them, or they'd put something extra in my bag as I was leaving. It was extraordinary, and everything was always so nice that the people I worked with were always complimenting me and when I'd say that I'd found something at a thrift store or a yard sale they never believed me. I went from being that poor destitute girl who always felt like she didn't fit in to being admired for having such a beautiful wardrobe.

And now there is so much that I was able to give some away to this neighbor. They were all things I like, but I really felt as if I needed to clear through some things and bless someone else in the way I'd been blessed. And to see and hear how happy she was with the things I gave her really touched something so deep in me that I didn't even know still needed to be healed. In seeing her joy and hearing how much she was feeling blessed with the gift of this clothing, I was reminded of the way I'd felt years ago and how I'd had so little of anything special to call my own, and how when I'd lost so much I'd gone through a time of such need and such scarcity that it seems a miracle that I survived it and that I have come to the place where I am now. And it is a miracle, it is a blessing of God, and there is no other way I can explain it than that. To have gone from that place where I was so many years ago, to have struggled for so long, to have lost so much and had so much taken from me and to find myself now in a place where I have enough to share and bless someone else is a miracle of the love and care of God in my life. And as I always say, it's not because I've done anything to deserve it, because when God came into my life I wasn't doing anything special, it's because for some reason God decided to knock on my door and keep knocking, to drop off his blessings when I wasn't even ready or willing to receive them, and to keep on showing me love until I was finally able to recognize that it was God that I needed all along.

A Recent Exquisite Vintage Find

Ready For New Adventures

Blessings,

Jannie Susan