Day Five: What You Wear Is Not Vanity

The first thing God did for two ruined people was dress them.

Genesis 3 is a chapter of consequences, and the consequences are physical. Pain in childbearing. Ground that fights back. Bodies that will return to dust. And then, before He sends them out, “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” He did not give them a lecture on modesty. He did not tell them their bodies did not matter now that the real problem was spiritual. He killed an animal and He covered them, and it is the first blood shed in the Bible.

I start here because I need you to understand that what follows is not a beauty column.

When your body changes, your closet betrays you before anything else does. The seams that were fine sitting up are a problem sitting down all day, because the seam that used to run harmlessly along your hip now runs across bone you cannot feel and cannot afford to break skin down. The shoes that fit at eight in the morning are a vise by three and cause pressure sores, because feet that do not move all day swell. The sweater with the tight cuffs sets off spasms. The shirt you loved with buttons needs two working hands to get into, and your hands cannot do buttons.

Nobody warns you that this is an identity loss. They warn you about the medical things. Nobody tells you that you will stand in front of a closet full of a person you used to be and have to give most of it away.

So here is what I actually do, and I offer it as one woman’s practice rather than as medical advice, because your skin and your spasticity and your circulation are yours and your care team knows them.

• I buy a size up, and I buy for the seated body rather than the standing one. Flat seams, or seams moved off the places I sit on. Nothing with a waistband that lands on the hip bones. Stretch in the fabric, but not compression, because compression that keeps a mark on the skin for more than a few minutes is a pressure sore beginning its work. I check the marks. Every day, without negotiating about it.

• Shoes go up a size, sometimes more, with closures I can adjust in the afternoon when my feet are not the same feet they were in the morning. I look for a sole with real grip, because a foot that slides off a footplate twenty times a day is not a small annoyance. It is a fall, or a shear injury on a heel, waiting for a bad day to happen on.

• For hair and face, I stopped fighting the arms. Holding a dryer overhead for ten minutes is a fatigue expense that causes severe spasms and function loss. So, the cut and style is one that cuts down blowdryer time. Anything that requires sustained elevation of my arms got replaced with something that does not, and the mirror does not know the difference.

None of this is vanity, and I want to say plainly why.

“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” Your body was purchased. It is occupied. Whatever it can no longer do, it did not stop being the dwelling place of God or the property of Christ.

There are two ways to get this wrong.

One is to treat the body as everything and grieve it as though nothing else is left.

The other, and this is the one that catches serious Christians, is to treat the body with contempt because it has become inconvenient, and to call that contempt spirituality. It is not. Neglecting a body you have decided is not worth the trouble is not the fellowship of His sufferings. It is a slow surrender dressed in theological language.

I have seen this often in people with disabilities.

• They don’t shower (because showering is hard).

• They don’t wash their hair (because is not easy if arm strength is an issue).

• They don’t wear anything with style (sweat pants and t-shirts and baggy clothes are much easier to get on and sit in all day).

• They let personal hygiene slide because “disability makes life hard” has become a banner that others are just supposed to understand and excuse.

Do the extra hard. You will feel better about yourself, you will be treated with more respect, and you will find a different value for your appearance and for your disability. Don’t hate it. Honor it. It is now a part of of your Temple and God dwells here.

Care for and dress the temple. It is not vanity. God did it first, at cost, and He did it on the worst day in human history.