daily java

Daily Java:

She dresses in fine linen and purple gowns.
Her husband is well known at the city gates,
    where he sits with the other civic leaders. (Proverbs 31:22-23)

Long ago I promised sister Ella I would tell her if something didn’t look good on her.

There is nothing worse than a woman going to the store, picking out some article of clothing that she just knows will look good, putting it on, wearing it out for her husband to admire and she doesn’t know she looks like a truck with a badly fitting tarp.

So I promised her I would not say it looked good unless it did. And Ella likes that.

Now to some people this is being mean. I have had people really gripe at me for my insensitivity in telling her that something looked bad when I knew full well she wanted it. Even if she looked bad, she wanted it. And that matters to some people.

But really, what is worse? Telling her it looked good when it made her look terrible? Or telling her it made her look bad because you want her to look good and you love her? It is a lot meaner to tell her she looks good when she doesn’t. You have lied.

After all, I want my wife to look good. I look bad enough for the both of us. And just about everything she has looks good on her. I picked it out. She tried it on and I told her it looked good so she bought it. Otherwise, it would be a waste of money.

If she bought something that looked bad, sooner or later, she would figure it out and then not wear it and it would be a waste of money. And she would feel guilty. We do not spend much on clothing, but what we spend I want to make count.

She knows that she has one objective view in the world that is concerned with her looking good. I love her too much to let her look silly in bad fitting clothing.

I want her to look good. And she does. To help her do this I edit her clothing. And I have to. She hates change. If I didn’t help her change her style, she would dress like she did in 1973. I have forced her into every new change of fashion that she looked good in. I never bought her spandex or tight things or disco clothes or stuff like that. But most women really don’t have any business wearing that sort of thing anyway.

She sees something she likes. She asks me what I think. I give her a preliminary opinion. And I am brutally honest. Some things I know automatically will not look good. When I am, she knows that when she goes to church or wherever, she will have clothes that look good on her, the style of which fit her.

Then she goes into the dressing room and comes out. I tell her exactly what is right and wrong with it. After all, salespeople will lie because they want the sale.

I was with a guy the other day outside a dressing room and his wife came out and looked like a giant badly dressed sausage. Her clothes were terrible. She loved them and told him he did too. So he agreed and asked me. I said fine, sure. They didn’t ask what I thought, just if I agreed. So I did. And she was going to look horrible.

Not Ella. Everything she has fits her to a T, whatever that means. And I like it, because I like to be with a well-dressed woman. And I like being with her.

If you love someone, you will be honest. It means you care for them.