The $8 bridesmaid dresses

I was sitting at the desk in my office on a cold January day. The phone rang, and I answered in my professional work voice.“Now, don’t be angry,” said a woman’s voice on the other end.

“Wait…what?” I said, confused.

“I was at Value City…” started the voice—and I realized it was my mother.

“Why would I be angry?” I said.

“Well, I was shopping, and I just happened to see this rack full of dresses. They were Chadwick’s of Boston, and they were $10 a piece.”

Suddenly, light dawned.

“Did you…did you just buy bridesmaid dresses?”

“I had a 20% off coupon,” she said, as if that cleared everything up.

“But we aren’t even engaged! Wait…you mean they were $8 each? What do they look like?”

At that price, I couldn’t really be angry—especially after I saw the dresses. The $8 dresses were a beautiful plum color with empire waists. The bridesmaids—who hadn’t even been selected—would likely have to pay to have them altered to fit the assortment of sizes my mother had picked, but you couldn’t beat that starting price.

Thankfully—and not just because we had a closet full of $8 dresses—John did ask me to marry him weeks later over a beautiful Valentine’s Day dinner at the Candlelight Inn, back when it was a restaurant in Catonsville. I was honored and overjoyed to say yes to a future with this amazing man that God had brought into my life.

For the record, I didn’t buy my wedding gown until later that spring when my mother and I spotted it on the clearance rack at Nico’s, a bridal shop at the time in Baltimore’s Fell’s Point neighborhood. It was—brace yourself—$275.

The price sounded terribly extravagant to a bride whose bridesmaids were wearing $8 dresses, but we had been looking for a while for a dress with short sleeves. And the dress was perfect.

My mother and I still laugh about how she bought the $8 bridesmaid dresses before we were even engaged—and without me or any of the hypothetical future bridesmaids there. Sometimes I think about how she simply took matters into her own hands and solved a problem I didn’t even know I had.

Sometimes God does that for us, too, sending us people and opportunities and resources we don’t realize we need to prepare us for something coming down the road. He puts us in places to learn new lessons and have experiences that help us grow so we are better able to navigate the future.

I’ll think to myself, “God, I don’t really know why you’re putting this friendship or this lesson or this opportunity in front of me right now,” and then later it all makes sense.

That’s how well our Father in heaven knows us and how deeply He loves us. He can see the whole picture outside of time, and He knows what we will need long before we do.

Just as He knew I would be needing those bridesmaid dresses and nudged my mother to decide to take a leap of faith and bring them home.

And He made sure she had a coupon, of course.

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