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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Faith & Fashion: Shoes

As my friend Serena says, shoes “can make or break an outfit… give it life or give it death.” Like the right jewelry, they are an integral part of an outfit; they add that extra something that finishes it off much like the maraschino cherry finishes off an ice cream sundae. Whether you like cherries or not, the sundae just looks incomplete without it. And so it is with shoes. A pretty spring dress doesn’t look right with crocs (well, those shouldn’t be worn with anything, but I digress…) and strappy gold sandals shouldn’t be worn with corduroy pants and a cashmere sweater.

Admittedly, the world of shoes is still very new to me. Though I’ve always had an aversion to wearing sneakers unless it was for playing sports, I didn’t have much of a shoe wardrobe. I stuck to the basic blacks and browns that would go with the most amount of outfits. In the last couple of years, I’ve added some blue shoes and some white shoes and some beaded gold shoes, but haven’t branched out very far.

Then, about a year or so ago, I was on a quest to find a red shoe. Well, not just one, but a pair, of course. And then I found them at Kohl’s. They were a dark red with a cute buckle on the toe. They had a heel. They were exactly what I wanted. And they had them in my size. Score! And then I tried them on. The left one fit fine. The right one, however, kept slipping off my heel when I took even just one or two steps. Sadly, I put them back in the box on the shelf. I came back to Kohl’s and tried them on two more times, hoping that somehow, my foot or the shoe would have changed and they would now fit. They didn’t.

Isn’t it funny how we want to make something that isn’t right for us fit? We focus on what we want and keep going back to it. It could be a job that we think we are supposed to do because we’re good at it, or having the “right” major in college, or dating the wrong type of guy. We blunder on in our own stubbornness to get to what we have decided is right for us, whether it is a safe, predictable, comfortable path, or something flat-out completely wrong for us. In this, we forget that we should consult with God.

He is our creator. He knows our innermost selves, our gifts, our talents, our abilities, our passions. Who better, then, to consult with when we need to decide what path to take? With His help, we’ll find the right way. We’ll find the shoes that fit.