Liz Rasley

You know those favorite shirts you have? Those wonderfully soft, comfy shirts that you wear over and over again? Your favorite tees, you have any of those?

I do.  I have several like that, and my favorite one is grey, with an illustration of small frog playing a guitar on it.  My small daughter sees this and asks “what’s that?” and I tell her; and she (this is why I love children) accepts this as-is, as if it would be totally natural to see a frog strumming a guitar.  Yep, frogs playing guitars occurs in nature. Up next, unicorns with wings!

Back to the point-I love this shirt. Would probably wear it all the time if I could just for the sheer comfort, if not for the awesome guitar frog picture alone.

But this shirt-hasn’t had a breezy life.  It’s easily close to a decade old, and not only that, it went through my husband’s wear and tear for a couple of years, then one fine day became mine when I shrank it by putting it on too high heat in the dryer for way too long.  And when it became mine, then the wear and tear only just began, for I am not easy on clothes.  I probably launder them too often (and we’ve already learned that I do not know how to use a dryer very well) and I usually catch my jewelry or my ring on delicate threads. Shirts generally do not look at me and think: yes! She should be my owner!

But the shirt is so soft and pliable now, so much so that I can sleep in it if I so chose. Didn’t start out that way, but with all of the washing and drying, the wearing and inevitably, tearing or pulling, and the constant use, it’s become a treasured shirt.  And it should be considering all it’s been through.

This is not unlike life, you know.  The constant wearing and tearing, the consistent, relentless wash-dry process called life should be enough to break us down and make us soft and supple, too.  Sometimes this happens, most times it does not, and we get bitter and rigid.  But who wants to wear a rigid shirt?

Not sure what happened to you in the washer-dryer process of life, or if like me, you feel like you are being constantly tumbled, but I do know one thing for sure:

It ain’t a bad thing to be considered soft.