Chomping at the past

Today, I am wearing the most awesome shirt from my entire wardrobe. I use the word awesome very intentionally. There are shirts that I like better than this one in terms of fit, style, and comfort, but truly, no other shirt could exude awesomeness as this one does. 

Why? Well, because there are dinosaurs on it.

Yes, folks. It's covered in little doodles of dinosaurs, clouds, unidentified femur bones, and those little stars we draw without picking our pens up off of the paper. It's also yellow, which I like.

Sometimes I wear it just because of the reactions I get. People—friends and strangers—tend to appreciate a little bit of dinosaur in their day. One time, my coworker said, "I like your shirt." Then, she whipped back around from her computer and exclaimed, "There are dinosaurs on it! I love your shirt!" I was surprised to hear someone say that they liked it for any other reason beyond the dinosaurs. Really, what else is there to love about it? 

Sadly, it's been a while since the dinosaur shirt has seen the light outside of my closet.

Maybe it's just a girl thing, but for many of us, there are moments of life that we cannot stop associating with particular clothing. This can be a beautiful thing. For example, I love knowing that on an April day that felt like the first day of my life—in the sense that Bright Eyes sings about it—I was wearing my Irish ferry sweater, my Pocahontas shoes, and the only floral print shirt I own.

When I think about the dinosaur shirt, it's still connected to this one day when the world turned upside down on me and left me looking at my feet, when words I didn't really understand entered into my vocab, when every muscle in my body went stiff and refused to bend.

When I sit anxiously in class, I'm pretty sure the dinosaur doodles are feeling just as restless as I am. I feel as if every time I look down, one of them sounds the warning call of "Freeze!" And they would all stand still again, pretending to have gotten away with their changes.

This makes me love them and the shirt again. Besides, everything seems to be changing. I believe that God rewrites things for us. It is so necessary to seek constant revelation and to be acting on what He tells us to do now. For me, this includes God giving me new perspectives on and new feelings about what has already happened.

The days in my dinosaur shirt appear bright to me, like the yellow stars scribbled on my shirt. They mean new things: love, forgiveness, trust, faith, and a perfect brightness of hope.

And I'm pretty sure I caught Mr. T-Rex nibbling on a cloud while the triceratops and the stegosaurus played ring-around-the-rosy and all fell down.