Tent Dresses

When I was a teenager, tent dresses were in fashion.

Angelique from Pinterest

I hated them. My mother, wanting her daughter to be in fashion, made me one for a party I had been invited to. It was of shiny pink satin with silver embossing and had three silver buttons. I felt overdressed. The other girls also wore tent dresses, but they were made of cotton. I never wore that dress again.

Perhaps there was some psychology in tent dresses. They certainly served to hide a frumpy figure. Thinking back, it was, of course, the age of free love and what better way to mask a budding teenage pregnancy than with clothes that made a tent around your body?

Now I am older. Much older. My figure has bloomed to ample curves and plenty of padding. Recently I went shopping for another summer dress. I must have tried on close to twenty. When I finally came home with the only one that looked reasonable on me, I noticed it was a tent dress.

I have changed my mind about tent dresses. I’m allowed to. My assertiveness training coach said so. It’s one of my rights.

I think we all have opinions seen through coloured glasses influenced by the world around us, our experiences, what our church teaches and what our friends think. We see the world through eyes slanted by social media posts and what google thinks we would be interested in as news.

Paul says, “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:11-12 NIV)

My Prayer

Lord, give me the grace to realise that I do not know all Truth and the humility to admit when I have changed my mind.

This post is part of JusJoJan