Gearing Up for Fashion Week

photo- fashion wire daily (but really I have no idea where it originally came from)

This week I am gearing up for Fashion Week 2010. Clearly I am a year behind as this photo, which will inspire my wardrobe, is from the Hermes Spring ‘09 line.

But I find this photo to be quite appropriate as the venue is the dusty and hot, West Texas, Ft. Davis Mountains- Bloys’ Camp Meeting. A gathering place for generations of God-fearing and God-worshipping fashionistas.

Usually decked in a t-shirt and yoga pants, I rarely fret about fashion. I find the comfortable clothes quite fitting for rolling around on the floor with toddlers and washing laundry like a champ.

My husband jokes that Camp Meeting is one of the best and worst things that he inherited when he married me. Blessed to gather with cousins and second cousins and three times-removed cousins under the aged oak trees of Skillman’s Grove, just as my great grandfather did with his cousins a hundred and twenty years ago, we join together to hear the Word of God and worship to hymns of old. He claims that it is a curse, in that it is one of the only times that my blatent insecurity surfaces as I fret over what clothes I will wear for the week. And not only my clothes, but his clothes, and our children’s clothes. And should it even matter? After all, Caleb doesn’t care, the kids climb trees and roll around in the dirt, and “The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7)

I don’t know why I feel such pressure of comparison, perhaps it is reuniting with the people I love the most, and the desire for them to “approve” of how I am pulling off this thing called mother of four small children. Perhaps it is the fact that they all look so marvelous in their garb as they show up to the dusty Means Evans Cookshed to get a generous helping of steak and cowboy beans.

I am glad that the equestrian style is hot, because I do have a couple pair of fabulous custom made boots, and if I pair them with one of Caleb’s dress shirts, a belt and a top hat or helmet, I should be quite up to par!

Really, this week as I pack up sheets, towels, snacks, and a few pair of blue jeans, I am determined to work more on my heart than my wardrobe. Because the Lord looks at the heart. And I want to be pleasing to the Lord, and have a heart to worship him. And I want to LOVE the people that I love and only see but once a year. I really want to love them and encourage them, and inspire them- not just to be a fashionista, but to be a people after God’s heart!