Today is the day. I am going to prom and the excitement is crazy busy in my stomach right now. I’ve had moments where I want to puke, or I can’t stop smiling, or I want to dance around like a fool. The excitement is real.
A few weeks ago, I had no idea what I was going to wear. I knew I wanted a long, elegant dress, but I hadn’t thought about what color or style. There were so many pictures online that I had to tell myself to stop feeling so giddy over a way-too-expensive dress.
A few days later, a friend and I went shopping and she said, “Oh! This looks like my style let me try it on.” I thought nothing of it and continued trying on other dresses. From one stall over, I heard her say that the ones she picked didn’t work out. Then she said, “Try this one on.”
I tried on the dress and it fit. I mean it fit nearly perfectly. It was a white two-piece with a lace bodice and a long silk skirt. I was awestruck. I kept telling myself not to look at the tag, but I knew it was going to happen eventually.
“150 dollars.”
Alright, I guess it didn’t look that good. But my friend wouldn’t let me say no. She convinced me and so I decided to try and negotiate the price down.
At the register, with two coupons and a discount, I paid $65 for the dress. It couldn’t have worked out better. I had the dress. I had the hair and makeup scheduled to be done with my aunt. And I had the nails.
But all the while I was struggling with internal issues.
I knew my heart was in the wrong place and that beauty was only as real as the heart that wore it. So I struggled for sometime about the condition of my heart. I was laser focused on worldly things to the point that eternal things were put on hold, like back-order hold.
“What God? What am I supposed to clothe my heart in?”
Colossians 3:12 says, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”
There I had it. The true attire for a beautiful woman of Christ. Seriously, why did those things go unchecked? Why did nails and hair come first?
My reasoning is that those articles of clothing (compassion, kindness, love, and more) are unseen. What is unseen goes unchecked far more easily than the things that are seen. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can choose to look deeper and choose humility to be our necklace of pearls or gentleness to be our braided headband.
On the other hand, have you ever watched What Not to Wear on TLC? All those outfits that ruin a person’s image are flooding my mind right now. Plaid with floral or checkered with solid bright colors. Some people come in with serious fashion messes.
The same can be said for Prom. There are girls who don’t choose the most flattering of dresses. But the condition of each person’s heart is a far greater issue. Take for example what Colossians described earlier in verse 8, “But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.”
We should not only clothe ourselves with kindness, gentleness, compassion, humility, and patience, but we should first rid ourselves of all unrighteousness. Lying lips aren’t pretty. Rage only reddens makeup’s cheeks. Slander creates ugly fights that end in crazy, matted hair and white fists.
So, what do we wear to Prom? And what don’t we wear? Well, it turns out God gives us deeper answers than we realize and expects us to trust in His way of making beauty shine: from the inside out.
[need to add photos here]
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