Story: Don’t buy clothes anymore

Jesus put a thought in Ileana’s mind, not to buy clothes anymore. He wanted to give her the clothes she needed.

With tears in her eyes, Ileana confessed to me that Jesus had just told her not to buy her own clothes anymore.

Soon after we were married and came back from Costa Rica to the Los Angeles area, I eventually got a job at a Christian university working as a missionary to Mexico.

We had nothing when we moved. Ileana cried almost every day. She missed her family and Costa Rica.

People in California seemed cold to her. She only spoke Spanish and just a few phrases in English. She needed something to do, and she needed clothes.

I told her to volunteer at the office where I worked, so at least I could encourage her through the day.

In the afternoons she would go look for clothes at the clothing stores across the street from the university.

She didn’t have a debit card yet, so I would have her pick out what she wanted and I’d come over at the end of the day to make the purchase.

She would pick the best of what she had found and eliminate items down to what we could afford. For all the searching she would sometimes only pick one thing.

We didn’t have mobile phones back then, and I would have to go look for her when I finished my day. I walked across the street to find her.

Hours had gone by and I couldn’t find her. She had spent hours just looking at clothes.

Just when I had begun to wonder if something bad had happened to her, I found her crouched down digging through stacks of clothing with a tired joy on her face.

I tried to suppress my worry and just smile. Day after day this was a routine until the Lord surprised her.

With tears in her eyes she confessed to me that Jesus had told her not to look for clothes any more, and that He would give her the clothes she needed.

I smiled and laughed and wondered how she would be able to do it. It was God’s sense of humor, but what happened next changed everything.

Ileana told me that she needed shoes to go with her dress for an event we were attending, but the Lord had just told her not to buy them.

That very week I was approached by a co-worker who wanted to know my wife’s shoe size. We hadn’t mentioned anything to anyone about Ileana needing a pair of dress shoes.

I told my co-worker her size and she sighed. She explained that her mother had died and left behind brand new shoes of every color and different styles.

She waited for months and months after the funeral to deal with her mother’s clothes. No one she knew wore her mother’s size except for Ileana.

The next day she came to work and gave me a large bag of at least 25 pairs of brand new dress shoes of every color.

It had begun.

From that week on, Ileana didn’t buy clothes anymore. She kept the shoes she needed and gave the rest to people we knew at church and to strangers we’d meet.

After the shoes, the clothing came.

Months before the bag of shoes arrived, Ileana and her mother had flown up to visit my family before we got married.

They led the Costa Rican lady who sat next to them on the plane to Jesus. That lady lived near us in California, and her daughter was the same size as Ileana.

A few days after receiving all those shoes, Ileana was talking with the Costa Rican lady, who just happened to mention all the brand new clothes she had in her daughter’s room.

She said, “My daughter works and makes a lot of money and buys a lot of clothes that she never wears. She changes her mind a lot.”

“They are so expensive that I asked my daughter what she wanted to do with them. She said throw them away, but I couldn’t. Would you like them?”

“And as I collect more in the future, would you be ok if I send them to you?”

There were so many stories during those years of people giving clothing to Ileana.

For 5 years without ever asking anyone, Ileana would receive brand new and even expensive clothing. She’d pick what she liked and would give the rest to others.

During those years Ileana would still have fun at stores looking at clothing, but she wouldn’t buy the clothes.

Finally, on a day that she was looking, she decided to buy a piece of clothing for herself. She called me on her cell phone.

I asked her, “If you buy that blouse it might end the way Jesus has been giving you clothing. Are you sure?” She prayed and felt it was ok for her to buy it.

On that very day the constant flow of clothing from Jesus ended. He still provides what she needs, but in a more normal way.

Why did I tell this true story?

Ileana was used to asking Jesus first what to do in every decision. Jesus asked her to let Him give her the clothes she needed.

In something we all usually do for ourselves, she let Jesus pick her clothes for her, and He gave her better clothes than she would have picked out for herself.