Much Closer Attention...: Prana

Last night was a great night. It kicked off with the humbling priviledge of serving some very devoted, hard-working friends of ours (both students) by preparing and taking them dinner. We got to talk, pray, and learn from them, and they were faithful to encourage us. (thanks - you know who you are =) While with these two, they mentioned they'd recieved their REI dividend, which is REI store credit - kind of kickback for faithful shoppers. We hadn't recieved ours in the mail yet.

This on our minds, we left and made our way toward Barnes and Nobel to get Stephan an new journal to take church notes in. We passed REI on the way and Stephan said we should pop in and check on our dividend. The sales person checked said our dividend was in the system and we could spend it whenever we wanted.

"Wanna just look around?" Stephan asked.

"Sure," I said.

The truth was, I had no hope for finding anything. I'd been on a modest spring/summer clothes hunt for weeks and was still empty-handed. So many shopping trips I'd gone on had yeilded nothing. I didn't have any expectations for this jaunt through the store.

So we sauntered through the women's section first. To my surprise, I actually had a handfull of hangers within a few minutes and went to the dressing room to try the items on. Everything fit well except one thing - and Stephan loved it all.

Let me just say, this is news. As catalogued in an earlier post, when I shop at the mall, neither Stephan or I ever really love the clothes they have there. We usually end up buying "settle-fors", because we settle for the best we can find. It fits pretty well. The color is kinda nice. The fabric is almost comfy. The cut could be made modest. Stephan or I think it looks ok on the other. But this time we had a pile of items, they all looked great, they were all perfect colors, and were all very modest. Beyond that, They were clothes that I felt expressed me and told a little bit about who I am - which I never find. I felt like crying.

We moved on to the men's section next. Stephan needed pants, so that's what he shopped for. He ended up in the dressing room with a pile of items as well. Here we experienced the same thing - all great colors, all great fit, all very comfy - and we both loved them.

So now we've got a bag full of clothes and we're positive the talley is going to exceed our dividend. We added it up and sure enough, the total did - but only by about $30. Stephan decided that that was a reasonable amount to spend out of pocket. So we went to the cashregister to check out.

I made a phone call while Stephan paid the bill. When I returned he was grinning. When I asked why, he reported that the amount we had to pay out-of-pocket was only $1.06 instead of $30. Apparently some of the items we'd selected were even less than the price tag read, so that had brought the total down to just about the sum of our dividend.

We got in the car and prayed, thanking God for his kindness. I personally had been so discouraged after my trip to the mall Saturday. It seemed like every time I went out to shop I left with nothing. But here we'd gotten so many items, and basically for free. God had something better for me - he is so kind.

I was so excited in the car I couldn't help looking through the clothes we'd bought. As I did I noticed something.

"Hey Habi," I said to Stephan. "We bought 8 items, and all but one are Prana." He said I had to be kidding, but I wasn't. Prana is a relatively new company, only a couple years old, and only just now starting to really get established. We hadn't paid it much mind. Even though we had a few Prana pieces already and loved them, we hadn't been shopping for Prana clothes. Yet everything we'd chosen on the basis of style and design had turned out to be Prana. It made sense - they're a rockclimbing company, and these two climbers had been drawn like magnets.

We decided we'd shop Prana first from now on.

Here's the prana stuff I got: