Every little girl loves a wedding. We love to dress our dolls and walk them down the aisle to their Prince Charmings. When I was 6, the neighbor lady had made three Barbie wedding dresses and she asked me which one I liked best, saying she had a niece about my age and wanted to know which one to give her. When Christmas came, the dress I had picked, along with a bridesmaid's dress, was her gift to me. I was so thrilled. It was a lovely dress with a satin bodice, a princess waistline and a shimmery opalescent skirt.
When the time came for my own wedding, a day I thought would never come, quite frankly, as WHO would have ME? It was spring and we had planned a December wedding, and I was a large size, not exactly easy to find affordable ready-made wedding dresses. They were to be found, but were expensive. I had pretty much resolved that I would have to make my own. In June, when we asked our pastor if he would marry us, he said, "Sure! When were you thinking?" We told him December. He looked at us and said, "How about next month?" Uh, right. One month to plan a wedding, sure!!
Well, actually, it wasn't that hard, we had the pastor and the church. We just needed the cake and the clothes. The clothes....The DRESS!!! No time to make one, no money to buy one, what to do?
One of the most blessed gifts ever given to me came in a little white envelope with these words neatly printed in my best friend's tiny handwriting, "For your wedding dress" And inside was $60 cash that she had earned babysitting. Now, that was over 20 years ago, and babysitting was not exactly a high-paying job!! This gift, to me, in its extravagance, is right up there with the perfume that was poured on Jesus' feet. (Every month when I give my tithe, I ask God to multiply it, like he did the loaves and the fishes, and there is no doubt in my mind that a similar prayer was spoken over that little white envelope and its contents.)
I remember thinking at the time, "How far will this go?" But Gary said to me, "I just did an inventory and they had lots of plus-size dresses on sale, after the proms." So, in a very untraditional move, my groom took me shopping for my wedding dress. We narrowed it down to two and he picked one. It had a taffeta-like underskirt with a sheer top skirt that had little opalescent broken hearts all over it. And the price? You know it, $60.
I have always loved the story of the money, and how my groom picked out my dress. But what I didn't realize until recently, although I'm sure God knew it all along, as I think God provided that dress, is that it had a hint of the first wedding dress I ever loved, when I was a little girl. The opalescence.
If you ask me, it's God who is in the details!!
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