Treasures in Heaven

Prom dress shopping with my dress phobic daughter. Need I say more?

This is hard enough with typical girly type girls. You cannot imagine the....joy....prom dress shopping with a girl who thinks dressing up is washing her jeans. However, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and I must admit, when I walked in the dress shop where the friend had told us to meet her, I felt my heart sink. Bling, over-the-top sparkle, bangles, chiffons, and full flounce assaulted my tender eyes. People wear this stuff...? Without laughing?

There was not an understated, sweet-16 sort of dress in sight. Asherel did not look happy. And added to the joy of dress shopping, an activity she enjoys only marginally more than cutting off her head with a dull blade, there was a LINE twenty minutes long into the dressing room. We both took a deep breath and sighed. We would make the best of it.

As I shuffled through the racks showing her one dress after another, Asherel spoke not a word, other than: no no no NO, NO, NO, NO, NONONONONO....Sometimes the well-practiced eye-roll was sufficient.

We finally made our way to the twenty minute line of giggling, batty eyed teens waiting to try on their dresses. We had 4 dresses in our arms. The only way we had 4 was Asherel would occasionally shrug her shoulders instead of her various vocal expressions of NO. I grabbed the dresses that received shrug shoulder acquiescence.

In the end she found a fairly simple and quite lovely dress. It was my favorite. I was a little surprised when she chose the one I would have chosen. I tried not to gag at the dresses others were trying on as we made our way out to the cashier. It seemed unkind to tell them ...well, it would be unkind to even tell you....

"Are you sure this is the one you want?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "If it means I don't have to do this again."
You would think I was the one who had insisted she attend the prom. I assure you, I was not. I would have preferred to take her and her date kayaking. I would even have bought them a blueberry slushie afterwards...on me!

Maybe I am old. I just find it obscene to spend money on a fancy dress you will wear ONCE, especially when  the wearer would prefer to be in jeans and a tshirt, barefoot, and DEFINITELY not wearing lipstick. Why do we do what we do to ourselves? We spend so much time, money, and effort, on things that will ultimately be tossed in the closet and forgotten. Even worse, at times, they are things we don't even really want to do!

Meanwhile, I got several updates from my friend, the sidewalk counselor at the abortion mill. An abortion minded mother was viewing the free ultrasound with the image of her baby! Pray! Pray she would choose life! I prayed, thinking of how they needed sixteen more ICU mobile ultrasound vans, but they cost $20k each. Nearly 90% of those who view their baby on the ultrasound choose life.
As I read the text, girls around me viewed themselves in the dressing room's full length mirror, swirling in gaudy expensive dresses with crinoline skirts that fanned out like umbrellas around their legs.

Later, I saw the new message on my phone: the mother chose to keep her baby! What an eternal blessing!

******

Matthew 6:19-20

¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.