I Wore a Scarf to Costco

I used to be known as the woman who always wore a necklace or a scarf.  I actually tried both at once, but was slightly mocked for that.  I also love colour.  Don’t get me wrong, black is my go-to basic, but I do own a screaming hot pink blazer. It occurred to me last week that I haven’t worn accessories much since everything happened a few months ago.  And as I stood in my closet yesterday, I realized that I’ve been wearing an awful lot of black and grey.  For most people, this might seem like no big deal, but I realized that I haven’t felt like myself.  Deep down, I no longer cared about accessories or colour.  So yesterday, as I contemplated what to wear, I pulled down my screaming hot pink sweater (yes, I have more than one piece of clothing that is hot pink) and one of my favourite multi-coloured floral scarves.  All for the important day of going to…Costco.  Yup.  In the middle of winter where no one was going to see anything but my coat anyways.  Thankfully, I also took the girls to their piano lessons where it is usually warm enough for me to take off my coat.

For me, that scarf was saying, the time for mourning has passed.  There are times of mourning, and that’s ok.  And good.  I have spent the last three months clinging to the grace of God.  Every day I have gripped onto His grace to me, begged for His grace to flow through me, relied on His grace for the every day.  But now its time to remember that the joy of the Lord is my strength.  Oh, I’m very sure that I’ve not passed the stage of needing extra grace!  I’m still relying on that.

But its time to throw some joy in there.

Over Christmas, I had to decide.  Was I going to let circumstances and people steal my joy?  Because its so easy to let that happen, eh?

But God is so good.  For months I felt a supernatural grace, and now that I’m asking for it, I feel a supernatural joy starting to flood my soul once again.  With my struggles with depression and the fact that I’ve always said, I’ll never be a happy-happy person, my joy may look different than yours.  But its creeping back in.

Are you going through a period of mourning?  Are you “wearing black”?  Maybe its time to start praying for little bits of joy.  Maybe its time to pray for a flood of it.

You know what the hardest part was for me?  To say, its ok to be joyful.  I think God wants me to love my new church and be happy here.  I think God wants me to love my new city and my new home.  God wants me to have a joyful marriage.  I may not have chosen the circumstances of the past few months, and I certainly can’t control other people, but I can rest in the fact that God is ultimately in control.  And He doesn’t ask me to live a life in constant mourning.  So for today, I’m going to choose joy.  And the only way to do that is through His strength and His power.

Now, I do have a new grey sweater I was planning to wear to church on Sunday…I’ll try to find a flashy necklace…