these are your colors
“You should try this on,” my friend says. “These are your colors.”
These are your colors. Of course, she means the dress she has pulled out for me, the one that swirls with Autumn colors—olive, tangerine, crimson, gold, but I am thinking how, in scripture, a robe of colors means a robe of grace, how these friends of mine pour out vibrant grace on me without even knowing how much I need it.
That dim glass through which we all see can get downright smoky sometimes, and my self-consumption can take a denigrating turn, and somehow, if it’s a scowl I’m offering my own reflection in the mirror it feels a little less self-centered, even though it isn’t. Lately, I have not been kind to me.
“Oh, hey did you see—,” another of our friends says, smiling as she walks past, then, spying the dress in my hand, “Oh good, I was thinking you should try that on.”
We are browsing in a shop in a sweet little town where one of our friends lives, and I suddenly realize how hard it is to deny that God made you wonderfully well when those who know you tell you it’s so.
These friends, we’ve walked through twenty years of life together, the raising of our children, the births now of grandchildren, crises, conflicts, celebrations, and changes of nearly every kind, and it’s not as if they haven’t seen me at my worst, that much I know, because you can’t do life together without sweat and tears dripping from your jaw and all the wonderful crinkling your eyes, and well, we all know weariness can cover our bodies like a shroud. They’ve seen me there, have been there with me, bare-faced and in every kind of season and in every kind of clothes, and I know they haven’t missed how Autumn softens me, because it’s Autumn for all of them now, too. My friends know me, and even so, because we love each other like sisters, they’re pressing the many colors right into my hands as though they were meant for me. They swipe their hands right through that ugly smudge I’ve been looking through.
Later, when I will tell the friend who found the dress how they’ve all given me grace, she’ll say simply, “We just see YOU. All of you.”
I’ve been learning to pray a few lines from a favorite psalm, one it has taken me years to feel in my bones. Search me and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts! See if there is any wicked way within me and lead me in the everlasting way. For years, I wondered why in the world David would flat out ask to be scrutinized like that, how David, knowing his own spiritual poverty like I know mine, could invite God to expose David’s sin and look upon it so thoroughly. Might as well be stripped naked. And just like Adam and Eve, I tend to want to hide from a direct confrontation with my sinfulness.
The way I’ve been feeling lately, I’ve not been looking for a direct confrontation with my physical realities either.
I’ve only recently received what the Spirit’s been handing me, that David’s bold petition comes after eighteen verses describing how well God already knows David. You have searched me and known me, David begins, that ‘known’ in the original Hebrew referring to an experiential intimacy akin to the knowledge of spouses, something David describes in practical detail in the lines that follow. God is everywhere David is and, David spells it out, there is nowhere he can hide, even if he should try. God formed him and saw him unformed. God knew every day of David’s life before one of them came to be and knows every word David will say before his tongue goes to say it. That’s the context within which David can invite God to look close and refine him. David feels sure God already knows him and loves him fully. David feels safe.
Timothy Keller maybe explained it best, “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.”
I head to the dressing room with that dress in my hand, wearing my genuine smile, because I feel safe. My friends, these friends who know me, tell me I’m beautiful in countless ways, tell me I’m loved in just as many. They say what is good for building up, as fits the occasion, offering grace. We have love for each other and not some catty comparative competition, and it’s true that love covers over a multitude of sins. I feel as though, just by loving me, these friends have covered over mine.
But the dress. These are my colors. I slip it over my head, ignoring the marks of motherhood on my body, forgetting that these too are the colors of grace and blessing and a full, loved, life. I know when I walk back out there, they’ll tell me easy if the dress is flattering or not, looking with their beautiful, shining eyes, and seeing only me. All of me.
How is confession something we even do anymore? Only fully known and fully loved. And how in the world do we finally receive the truth God’s pressing into our hands now, that real love and real beauty and real value have nothing to do with how we look or how well we do or how we hide our scars? Only seeing this, that we’re fully known and fully loved, by God, by friends who have become our family. We can give that to each other. We can help each other wear this truth well.
When I walk out wearing the dress, my friends exhale audibly and smile approvingly, like every woman should at every other woman. The first thing I know again: They think I’m beautiful, and it has nothing much to do with the dress. After a moment, after I take in again the fact that I am known and loved, the friend who found the dress steps closer.
“I love the colors,” she says, considering, “but I don’t like the way this seam lays right here.” She pinches the dress lightly at my side. “It’s unnecessary extra fabric.”
I hear, “this dress isn’t right for you,” which is a whole lot different than hearing, “you’re just not right for this dress,” and I smile, turning back to the dressing room, realizing that it’s not scary to be fully seen when you already know you’re fully known and fully loved.
Search me and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts! I pray it easy, right there, slipping out of that lovely dress. See me and lead me, Lord.
