Glory Stories

Part of what I love about being a mag editor is hearing amazing stories. A couple of weeks ago I got to briefly conduct a face-to-face interview with Atlanta's Dr. Charles Stanley about the importance of slowing down (as opposed to overloading our lives). He spoke candidly about how he had to learn that lesson the hard way and how now he preaches six weeks and takes off three. That way when he's in the pulpit, he's for real.

Then on Friday I got to go back into the studio and spend a couple of hours listening to the Jamisons--you know, my friends who've been in Kenya setting up five orphanages, among other things? They talked about their amazing experience getting pulled out of the country days before anyone had a clue that the elections there would cause such turmoil. While they spoke, we rolled the digital stuff formerly known as tape. You'll hear more about that in the days to come.

But afterward the three of us went to lunch and swapped more stories about the cool ways God has provided for our needs. (Since my husband's department got "outsourced" starting February 29, we've compiled a fascinating list of "little" provisions that add up. Let's see--the first one for the day yesterday was when my hubby learned he'd won a $100 gift certificate to the mall in a drawing held by a former vendor.)

Anyway, Heather and I continued telling each other more of such stories via email, and I remembered one from the past which I really should share with you:

The year was about 1988. Gary was in the middle of grad school and we lived on love. We certainly didn't live on much else, though we never missed a meal. Then I got promoted, and suddenly I needed a professional wardrobe. But we didn't have enough to buy even one suit jacket, let alone a complete wardrobe. At the time, Gary worked as a runner for a law firm. And one day an attorney humiliated him by handing him his dirty laundry in a bag and telling him to deliver it to the cleaners.

My man didn't like it, but he did it. And while he was at the cleaners, he noticed the employees were all shaped differently from us. And he wondered what they did with the unclaimed stuff that they couldn't parcel out to their own peeps. So he asked. And the owner said they had six huge garbage bags full of clean/laundered/starched clothes upstairs that Gary could have if he wanted them (apparently it was/is illegal to sell the unclaimed stuff so they had to give it away).

Gary brought home those bags and when we opened them, we found a cream wool Evan Picone jacket. Perfect fit. A black Saks 5th Avenue skirt. Perfect fit. About fifteen silk blouses and starched shirts. Perfect fits. Numerous pairs of classy pants in wool and linen and cotton blends--none of which needed altering. Total disclosure: The Bill Blass suit for him did have to be altered before it fit. In total we got so much classic stuff that was so well made that I still wear some of it all these years later!

In addition we worked with youth at the time. And in those bags we also found a full skit wardrobe complete with nurses' uniforms, security guard shirts, graduation regalia, and mechanics' jumpsuits.

The psalmist wrote, "For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills" (Psa. 50:10). Yesterday after Gary opened the envelope, he looked at me and smiled. And I knew what he was thinking before he said it: "He must have sold another cow."