When Your One Beauty Goes Gray ~ #LifeUnmasked

7:00 am By

When I found the first one, I cried.

Me, the woman who has gone through awful breakups without tears.  Who has officiated countless funerals and weddings without so much as water in the eyes.  Me, who prides herself on her ability to contain her composure.  Sobbed.

anxiousIt was my 23rd birthday.  And there it was, in the midst of my long, curly, deep brown hair, a long gray kinky hair.  I pulled it out and held it in my hand.  My hair was the first thing that ever made me feel beautiful.

I grew up a tomboy.  I didn’t know girls were supposed to be beautiful.  Or, at least I didn’t think it important that I clearly wasn’t beautiful.  I had always sported a lovely bowl cut, since I refused to let my mother brush my hair.  I was too busy reading and playing and imagining.  Too busy praying and studying and being close to God.

Finally in middle school I decided I wanted long hair like other girls.  It was high school before my awful bangs grew out and any of my hair touched my shoulders.  It was college before a hairdresser showed me that my hair had decided to forgo the body wave I’d always known and curl.  Overnight I found out I had long, lovely, curly hair.

From that day on, I have pampered it.  I straighten it.  I keep it curly.  I love it.  Anything about me that was or is beautiful is my hair.  It is thick and a lovely deep brown with red highlights.  It is healthy and wonderful and long.  It was what gave me worth and beauty. And now, suddenly, I knew it was going to be gray.  Everything that was beautiful about me, suddenly disappeared.  I crumbled into a heap of tears.

After I regained enough composure to speak, I called my mother.  I sniffed as I told her about this awful reality.  I was too young to color my hair. Her belly laugh shook my soul.  “Oh Emily,” she laughed, “I have been waiting for this day.  I found my first gray hair at 16, and was fairly white by 18.  It’s nothing to cry over.” I quickly got off the phone and cried harder.  I wasn’t ready to be old.  I wasn’t ready for gray hair.

As I’m approaching my 32nd birthday this spring, I look back and still cringe.  You would think by now I’d be used to it.  No, my hair isn’t gray.  I have pulled out only a handful of grays in the years since, but it still scares me. I teach others that they are beautiful because God loves them.  That they are beautiful with gray hair or no hair or dyed pink hair.   And they are worth something because God loves them, not because they are beautiful.  That God’s love makes you beautiful not hair or eyes or weight or teeth.  You would think after saying it so many times I’d believe it.

I’d like to think that the years have taught me that I am beautiful because I am strong.  Because I am smart. Because I am loved.  And some days I believe it.  But then there are the days when I find that pesky, out of place gray hair, and I wonder.  Will anyone love me with gray hair?  Will anyone think I’m beautiful if it was gone?

That’s when I stop letting my fears and anxiety take control.  I take a deep breath in, pull the pesky hair out and throw it in the toilet with the other negative thoughts.  For I am beautiful—not because the hair on my head, but because of the God who knows how many hairs there are.

Emily Case

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Today’s Life:Unmasked post comes from Rev. Emily Case, the Associate Pastor at Kennesaw United Methodist just outside Atlanta, Georgia. She leads the unconventional Revive Worship Service and tweets as @PastorEMJ. Believing that the God’s light can shine in the darkest places, she is sure that if we love God and love people, that everything else is just details. She spends her free time talking to and giggling with strangers and friends at Starbucks. She’s simply a single girl trying to love and pray her way through life.

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Life: unmasked buttonOn Wednesdays I host a little link-up in which we take off our everything’s-FINE false front and write naked. We share how our humanness, our flaws, and our weaknesses are teaching us about life and maturity and wisdom.

If you’ve written anything unmasked lately, link it here (direct link please) and please do include a link back to this post so your readers can find the link-up too. Then please visit at least two others and leave a comment to encourage them.

 

Filed UnderFaith and Doubt, Life: unmasked 4 Comments

“The Evangelical Protestant mind has never relished complexity.”

7:50 pm By

I’ve been thinking about thinking lately. How do I think differently from a woman living 100 years ago? 1000 years ago? Before the time of Christ? What categories am I lacking? How does that limit my ability to really grasp what is being said in old and ancient writing? What are my blind spots and weaknesses? How can one find that out if they are, in fact, blind to them?

To help think these things through, I’ve been reading as much as I can. (Confession: I have at least six books going right now. But I’m delighted to say that I’ve finished quite a number in the last couple of months, so I don’t just start them and then put them down.) I just started “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” by Mark A. Noll and only 15 pages is, he’s kicking my butt. Here’s just a taste:

“To put it most simply, the evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian. It allows little space for broader or deeper intellectual effort because it is dominated by the urgencies of the moment. In addition, habits of mind that in previous generations may have stood evangelicals in good stead have in the twentieth century run amock. As the Canadian scholar N.K. Clifford once aptly summarized the matter: ‘The Evangelical Protestant mind has never relished complexity. Indeed its crusading genius, whether in religion or politics, has always tended toward an over-simplification of issues and the substitution of inspiration and zeal for critical analysis and serious reflection. The limitations of such a mind-set were less apparent in the relative simplicity of a rural frontier society.’

“Recently two very good, but also very disquieting, books have illustrated the weaknesses of evangelical intellectual life. Both are from historians who teach at the University of Wisconsin. Ronald Numbers’s book The Creationists (Knopf, 1992) explains how a popular belief known as “creationism” –a theory that the earth is ten thousand or less years old — has spread like wildfire in our century from its humble beginnings in the writings of Ellen Whit, the founder of Seventh-day Adventism, to its current status as a gospel truth embraced by tens of millions of Bible-believing evangelicals and fundamentalists around the world. Paul Boyer’s When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Harvard University Press, 1992) documents the remarkable popularity among American Bible-believing Christians — again mostly evangelicals and fundamentalists — of radical apocalyptic speculation. Boyer concludes that Christian fascination with the end of the world has existed for a very long time, but also that recent evangelical fixation on such matters — where contemporary events are labeled with great self-confidence as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies heralding the End of Time — has been particularly intense.”

From “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” by Mark A. Noll

I see myself in those words. I’ve only recently grown an appreciation for complexity, nuances, shades of grade (or color), and I still prefer things to be straightforward. I dive in first, think later. Also, I was shocked to discover the roots of creationism.

What about you? What do you think about thinking and our particular weaknesses and blind spots today?

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Filed UnderCritical Thinking, Faith and Doubt 11 Comments

His Job, Her Job ~ Marriage Letters

8:48 am By

 

Dear Scott,

In many ways, we found our rhythm fairly easily. Deferring to one another’s strong opinions on this or that, recognizing our clear gifts in one area or another, came naturally to us. We didn’t have turf wars. You aren’t a numbers guy and don’t claim to be, so it doesn’t make sense for you to mess with the daily budget-and-bills grind. I’m only interested in cars that run, so it doesn’t make sense for me to be in charge of maintaining or cleaning or repairing them (though I’m happy to drop things off at the mechanic if you tell me where and when).

Where the sparks fly are areas where pride gets in the way. More specifically, my pride. I only remember one time early on when you expressed unhappiness at being asked to help around the house. But it only took one reminder from me that we were in a very unique situation and must be willing to do things differently. You rolled up your sleeves and tackled the dishes. You always seem to appreciate when I help you.

Then there’s me, a walking ball of contradictions. On the one hand, I don’t believe there are many men-only or women-only jobs. I think a guy ought to be able and willing to wash dishes, cook suppers, and bottle-feed a baby, and a gal ought to be able and willing to change tires, mow the lawn, and unclog drains. (Let’s not talk about how pissed I got learning how to change a tire. Those lug nuts were on tight.)

On the other hand, I feel guilty when you help me out at home, like I’ve failed or dropped the ball somehow. You work outside the home full-time, and while I work, I’m at home most of the time, and I’m at it part-time.  Since I’m here more, I’ve decided that I should do more of the household tasks (even though that isn’t my strength). If you do something, I take it as a sign that I’m a failure.

It’s pride, plain and simple. I hate to ask for help and I hate to accept help. You’ve witnessed the strain on me during those chapters in our lives where I was forced to accept help, when Elli was newborn and I was sleeping in 2-hour chunks for months at a time, to name just one. My pride is rooted in my control-freak nature. I want things done my way. No-one else can do it my way, which is the right way, by the way. It irks me to find hand washables in machines, dishes in the wrong cabinet, and leftovers thrown out instead of saved. (I know, I’m a little crazy.)

I know that it doesn’t really matter how something is done (except when something is ruined, but it is still just a thing). What matters is that you’re the kind of guy who actually notices when I need help, and you’re the kind of guy who does something about it. I know women whowould kill to have a guy like you. It’s ludicrous for me to get mad at you for helping me wrong.

Like I said, I am a walking ball of contradictions. I’m working on it, I promise. Like I’ve always said, I’m the lucky one. You’re stuck with me.

Love always,

Joy

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On Mondays, Scott (don’t miss his letter this week) and I join Seth and Amber as they fight the good fight for their marriage where we can all see. They call this weekly series “Marriage Letters” and pray that it encourages each of us in our own hard work of marriage. This week our topic is “His job, her job.”. You can join us any time with your own letter to your spouse, whether you both write or blog or not. Amber hosts a link-up on her blog, so we hope you’ll share your letter there!

Filed UnderMarriage, Marriage Letters 10 Comments
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