I Own A Hat For This Now

There is a hat, and there is a reason for the hat, and the reason is not weather.

You did not think of it as a thing with a job attached. You saw it and it seemed useful and you bought it and you wear it a great deal, and if anybody said anything you would say it was for the sun.

But you know what it is for.

And once you notice the hat, you start noticing the others. The three scarves. The particular way you now do things at the front. The item you would not leave the house without and could not explain to anybody. The thing you bought last spring that you have never once worn because it does not solve anything.

I want to look at that, because it is not a small subject. What a person wears is one of the last things they get to decide about a day, and yours has quietly stopped being a decision.

And I want to say the first thing kindly. There is nothing wrong with a hat.

A hat is a good thing to own. Somebody who buys a hat because it is a fine hat has done something entirely ordinary, and half of what is in anybody's closet was bought for a practical reason.

The question is not what is in the closet. The question is what the closet is for.

What a closet is for

There are two things a closet can be, and most people's are a mixture.

One is a set of choices. Things somebody liked, bought, and wears because wearing them is pleasant. There is no problem being solved anywhere in that, and getting dressed in it is a small daily act of care.

The other is a set of answers. Every item is a response to something, and the something is not weather or occasion. It is a part of a body that has been decided against.

And here is the difficulty. The second kind grows and the first kind does not. Answers accumulate, because every new worry needs a new answer, and there is no point at which a set of answers is finished.

You are building a collection that has never once been able to reach completion, and nothing bought has ever once finished a question about a body. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman what her own closet has been doing, and Isaiah 61 names a garment that was given rather than bought.

And the second cost, which is the one that lands.

Every time you put on the answer, you restate the question.

That is the mechanism and it is unavoidable. Reaching for the thing that solves it is a small daily acknowledgment that there is something to solve, and after two years of that the acknowledgment is doing far more damage than the original thing ever did.

You are restating a question every single morning by reaching for the answer, and the item itself has never once been what was doing the harm. Scripture in Isaiah 61 puts a garment of praise in place of a spirit of heaviness, and the Spirit of God is the one who changes what a woman is dressing.

The garment of praise

There is a verse in Isaiah about what gets exchanged for what, and the third item on the list is the one for us.

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. (Isaiah 61:3, King James Version)

Three exchanges, and every one of them is given rather than obtained.

Beauty for ashes. Oil of joy for mourning. And the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

Look at the third one, because it is the one wearing clothes.

A garment. Something you put on. And it is exchanged for a spirit of heaviness, which is exactly what has been going on in that closet, because heaviness is the reason for the hat and every item that came after it.

You are offered a garment in exchange for a heaviness, and there has never once been a version of that verse where the garment had to be bought. It is written in Isaiah 61 that He gives the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who dresses a woman in something she did not go and find.

And notice how the whole verse works, because it is all one direction.

Nothing on that list is achieved. Beauty is given. Oil is given. The garment is given. The person in that verse brings ashes and mourning and heaviness, and receives three things in exchange, and does not manufacture any of them.

Which is the opposite of a closet full of answers, where everything is bought, by you, in response to something.

You are on the receiving end of an exchange rather than the buying end of a solution, and heaviness has never once been something anybody could buy their way out of. The Spirit of God is what hands a woman a garment she did not have to find, and the written word says the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

One thing you just like

So here is the assignment, and it is almost nothing.

Wear one thing this week that you own for no reason except that you like it.

Not the thing that solves anything. Not the reliable one. Something in there that was bought because it was good, and has been passed over for two years because it does not do the job.

There is probably exactly one. Most women can name it in about four seconds.

You are naming one thing rather than an inventory, and four seconds has never once been long enough to build a case against anybody. Isaiah 61 says to give them beauty for ashes, and the Holy Spirit is what lets a woman name a thing without being sentenced by it.

Wear it for an ordinary day. Not an occasion, because an occasion is another kind of job. Just a Tuesday.

And do not pair it with the answer. That is the whole exercise. If the hat comes with it, the item has been demoted to an accessory of the answer, and nothing has changed.

What you are actually doing is one day where your closet was a set of choices rather than a set of responses, and that has probably not happened in a while.

You are able to have one ordinary day dressed by choice, and there has never once been a rule that everything had to answer something. The written word in Isaiah 61 gives a garment rather than selling one, and the Holy Spirit is what makes one Tuesday into care rather than into a small act of defiance.