Clothing

I just finished the dreaded seasonal clothes swap for the whole family.  It always takes me about two weeks and seems to just consume our entire house-I mean there are 4 of us, how could it be that hard?  But it always puts me in a purge mode.  Somehow seeing our whole closets out on our beds makes me realize just how much STUFF we have.  And how we give away a bunch of stuff each season and STILL have so much.  It's a little (well, a lot) gross, actually.
Today I went to the outlet mall with my little shopper (we had the day off school and work) to fill in the holes in (mostly) Jason's wardrobe.  Because my husband doesn't struggle with his weight as I do, he doesn't get new clothes that often because stuff tends to fit him year after year (sigh). But this year as I was doing to changeover/purge, I noticed that some of his stuff was just plain worn out or kind of dated.  He still has clothes that we bought for him before Garrett was born (again, sigh).  I decided this was the year we were tossing all his pleated, cuffed pants.  To put pleated pants on my slim husband is just a crime against fashion.

And tonight as I was cutting tags off new clothes and folding freshly washed stuff for the week, I had this shining moment of clarity.  I am so thankful for laundry.  It represents so much more than cleaning clothes.  For me, it represents our bounty.  If I decide not to do laundry one weekend, we are not out of luck.  We each have more clothes than we need to fill two weeks.  And we don't just have clothing that covers us; we have fashionable, well-made, well-fitting clothing.  Mostly made by people who will never come close to having the amount of clothing we have.

A while back at work, one of the members of our missions department spoke at staff meeting about how to practically think more globally. One thing he mentioned that stuck with me was to pray for the people that made our clothes.  Most clothing has the country of origin printed on the tag in a pretty prominent way.  Ever since then, I have done just that.  It's interesting to see where all our stuff comes from.  And it's a small way to stay grateful for the abundance we have.

I just love it when God shows me something profound in the midst of the mundane.  My life is pretty full of the mundane, so it's nice to have these moments that keep it all in perspective.  I will never fully appreciate just how blessed I am.  But I hope to never stop trying.