Morning Encounter

I just had the most unusual experience. I walked down to the breakfast room in the hotel and as I walked down the hall I could hear a man in the breakfast room telling a story to someone. I wasn’t too interested in his story but I did notice a four-letter word being used to tell the story.

As I entered the room, I was just a couple of feet from where he was standing, telling his story to a female hotel worker. Even though I was minding my own business and was not paying any attention to him, he stopped talking in mid-story. “Never mind,” he said to the other woman. “I’ll tell you the rest later. To be continued.” Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her big smile as they exchanged knowing glances.

I was still half asleep, and I could not imagine that I should say anything to them anyway, so I went over and got some hot water for tea. At one point, my path crossed the man’s and he very politely said, “Excuse me, ma’am.”

As I walked back up to my room with my hot water, I couldn’t help but realize that the man’s behavior toward me was in direct proportion to how I was dressed. And he’d taken it all in at a glance. Long denim skirt, black turtleneck, hair piled on my head, and a face void of makeup. Whatever he concluded me to be caused him to instantly and respectfully stop speaking things that he knew were wrong. Perhaps He could sense the Lord when I came in the room. It certainly could not have had much to do with me; I was sleepy and barely capable of a lucid conversation!

In conversation with others, I have never made a big issue about how I dress. I consider it just one component of the life I live for the Lord. I believe that modesty and – as the Bible calls it – “shamefacedness” are beautiful. I consider the way I dress completely normal. I love the way I dress. I find it liberating to be feminine and graceful. I like my face and don’t want to coat it with makeup.

So, it strikes me when I have an encounter such as this. Because I consider the things I do perfectly normal, I’m always a bit surprised to be reminded by an encounter such as this that to others, they don't think I'm normal because their definition of “normal” is what the masses are doing, not what the Bible plainly teaches!

I’ve never dressed the way I do to make a statement. I dress the way I do because I love the Lord and feel that dressing modestly is pleasing to Him. But I’m glad people notice. And I’m glad they make the connection between modest garments and a clean mind. Because I don’t dress modestly for the sake of dressing modestly alone. It is the natural outflow of a life that is striving for purity…in my mind, heart, and spirit.

I don’t mind standing out in a crowd, as long as people such as this man realize that my standing out has many more implications other than just the way I look on the outside. He sensed enough about me to realize that a bawdy story was not in order and vulgar language needed to be paused. He sensed the holiness of the Lord and one person’s desire to be holy toward her holy God by loving Him with her heart, soul, mind, and strength.