I Have Nothing to Wear

How can I relax?

How can I continue to shop, find cute stuff, buy it, and still have nothing to wear? What kind of sickness is this? I feel like I never left the teen years; instead, I’m the same clothes killer—flinging pants and tops all over my bed as I scour the room for anything that makes me say, “Perfect! I’ve never looked better!”

My clothes anxiety hits hardest when I’m packing for a trip. There’s something about planning for every potential scenario—weather changes, dinner plans, unforeseen photo ops—that makes me feel like I’m drowning in a sea of clothes, and there’s nothing to grab ahold of to keep me afloat.

I have cute clothes. More than I need, actually. My problem isn’t a lack of options; it’s the overwhelming fear of, “What if I pick wrong?” What if I’m on the boat (or at the dinner, or on the beach), and I’m too hot or too cold or, God forbid, just meh? What if I don’t look like the best version of myself? And underneath all those "what ifs" is the memory: I used to look pretty amazing. I used to be thin, and pretty, and younger. And now... well, now no one’s looking, are they? And that leaves me thinking, “Don’t they like my clothes?”

It’s humbling to write this for all to see as I realize how much of my identity has been wrapped up in what I wear, how I look, how others see me. I’ve spent so much of my life feeling like my "style" was part of my worth. And now, as my body changes and the world moves on, I’m left wondering how to reframe all of this in a way that actually honors who I am—and more importantly, whose I am.

I’m starting to think that my obsession with "feeling right” in my clothes is really about something much deeper—control. I really want to be in control of how you think of me. I want to control the narrative of how I show up in the world. But I’ve been recognizing that control of you isn’t my job: Contentment is.

Philippians 4:11-12 is coming to mind: "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation." Imagine that! Contentment that doesn’t come from how I look but starts with giving up my deep desire to control the narrative of your perception of me in order to be sure I can secure your validation.

I’m suddenly aware that the very fact that I’m writing this means that I now have to do something about it, and that’s just gross. I’m considering packing less than I want to take on my cruise, in order to actively surrender what I am seeing now is me just trying to please people, when all I really have to do is to please my God. And when it comes to the outfits I will wear over seven days, that’s pretty easy.

The Bible speaks of an inner self with the unfading beauty of a gentle spirit. It says this is more beautiful than all the gold and fine clothes you could wrap yourself up in. A gentle spirit—what does that have to do with clothes panic? With how I want others to see me? Well, in my current project on the fruit of the Spirit, I wrote about gentleness and I said that “gentleness actually gives you an easiness, a carefreeness that isn’t excited or dejected, simply because it is not occupied with self at all.” Applied to my current situation, that would read:

Gentleness actually gives you an easiness, a carefreeness about your outfits that isn’t excited or dejected, simply because it is not occupied with what you wear at all.

For a lot of you that might be your normal setting, but for me this is a brand new one.

A gentle spirit is something we all should yearn for. Gentleness, being part and parcel of the very nature of Jesus Himself, and a fruit of the Spirit, should give us a hunger for it. And that hunger can become a source of strength as it changes the focus from me to Him. Gentleness puts no demands on self that don’t come directly from God. It’s a state of selflessness, of self-forgetfulness— of meekness, as the Bible calls it.

So, I say reluctantly, but with mild enthusiasm, that my job today isn’t finding the perfect outfits for all of my cruise occasions but finding the gentleness/meekness not to be worried over having all the right clothes for the next seven days of my life as I travel to relax and restore. Sounds silly, as I say it now. Just pack already, lady! But this is a battle with my ego, which stands in direction opposition to gentleness, and any hope of me being at peace in my own skin.

So stay tuned to hear about this experiment in rejecting my ego in favor of clothing myself with gentleness rather than fancy dress. I’m going to see what it’s like to live putting on gentleness every morning and considering it more important than any piece of clothing or jewelry I could wear. I’m going to reject the shame my imagined perfect self puts on me in its expectation of me failing it, and instead love those around me with gentleness rather than a cute outfit.

Pray for me!

Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve, nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself. —T. S. Eliot