| Ponytail Happy Dance
This entry should be subtitled, “Sometimes My Life is a Romantic Comedy.” [This is a happy memory post from 2009] Last night, I went to wash up for bed as Steve started his nightly PT. He does this ab machine thing and then does toning exercises that I like to call “Man Pilates.” Sure looks a lot like pilates to me. Anyway, as I approached the bathroom mirror, a thought struck me. “Hmmm. Do I finally have enough hair for a ponytail?!?”
You see, last summer, I got all my hair chopped off. I had two reasons: 1) I wanted to find out what my real hair color was under my blonde highlights and 2) Steve and I were about to go on an adventurous vacation where hair might get in the way. So I chose an adorable haircut. One that would work well with my hair type and my face/neck. It was Audrey Hepburn’s pixie cut. I took it in, my hair dresser studied the picture closely, and proceeded to give me an entirely different cut with even less hair than the cut I wanted. I thought the new cut was sort of cute for a couple of days, but then we out to dinner for our anniversary, and there at the restaurant were 3 or 4 women with my same haircut. Not a single one of them could have been under 70. Yes, I was pissed. So back to last night. After that initial observation, I opened my hair drawer and pulled out a trusty scrunchy. I pulled my hair back and, “Voila!” All the hair fit into the scrunchy and it all stayed! Sure, the ponytail is a mere stub. Somewhere between these two shots:
But the point is that I can now pull my hair back if I want! A ponytail opens up a whole world of possibilities, like sleeping in an extra 15 minutes and just putting my hair in a ponytail instead of the whole wash/blow-dry routine. Woo hoo! I was elated. I started to do a happy dance and pranced into the bedroom where Steve was crunching away at the ab machine. I danced and I danced and I told him how happy I was. That’s when I realized that Steve is a guy and, therefore, not “getting it.” He was enjoying my dance. But he had no clue that it was all in honor of the ponytail that was still intact on my head! I pointed. He didn’t get it. So I told him. “Look! Look at me! I have a ponytail! I have ENOUGH HAIR for a ponytail!” His happiness for me was somewhat diminished. I guess he doesn’t realize the level of suffering sine July without enough hair for a ponytail. But he was still pleased for me. So I got ready for bed and then got into bed to read my Scriptures while he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and all that. I was just wrapping up my prayer time when Steve came dancing into the bedroom. He gyrated in silly ways and I realized he was imitating me. He waved his hands in front of his face, did some dancy-head-nod moves, and then got in really close to me. “Look!” he said, “Look at me! I have a ponytail! I have enough hair for a ponytail!” And there, on his forehead, was a teeny tuft of military-cut short hair gathered with a twist-tie. He had a 1 cm ponytail. Of course, I laughed myself silly. I was laughing so hard that Steve had to leave the room from embarrassment. God, I love silly men. Especially this one.
Posted 6/25/2009 at 4:19 PM
|
Hearing God (Repost from February 2009)
I am reviewing the archives of my former blog on Xanga for a variety of reasons. I just came across this post, and it’s like looking into a journal at a moment when God met me. I’m glad I came across it! Enjoy.
I Just Heard God!
In reading Michael Scanlan’s What Does God Want, I came to the chapter on making decisions for your whole life. It was on vocations. (Note: I wasn’t reading the book regarding my desire to be published. I was reading it for an entirely different topic.)
He says the object of every vocation is God.
“The vocation call is more like the biblical naming, as in Adam’s naming the animals in the garden,” he wrote. It sort of defines you. “When God calls you to a vocation, he defines you for life.”
He goes on to say it’s a call to freedom and does not remove your free will nor will it restrict you.
So I got to thinking.
Being a wife was written on my soul, my DNA and my very being from the beginning. All my knuckleheaded dating decisions were a search for Steve, a foundational longing to fulfill this call to married life. Like St. Francis mistakenly was rebuilding physical churches rather than reforming the Church, I was seeking in wrong places. But it was a consistent response to my calling, my vocation.
I think being a mother is likely similarly written on my soul. We won’t find out for sure until I get to be one, but I see a similar pattern on the path to motherhood. I’ve actually been doubting this a little lately, asking God if he even wants me to be a mom at all. Today he reminded me that when He came to me at 21 and told me not to go to law school, a career search followed. My most critical decisions for or against a career boiled down to whether I could be the best mom possible while having that career. I was solid in that being a major criteria in the same way I was solid in knowing I had to teach overseas through DoDDS and not through any other school system. So God let me feel comfortable in our journey towards parenthood.
Still turned to God in my thoughts, I told him with all my heart that I wished I could just write novels and not spend so much time finding a publisher. I told him I wished someone else could find publishers for my books, and let me be free to pour out all that needs to come out in novels.
So he said, “Then find an agent.”
I heard him clear as day (not audibly). As clearly as when he told me to go join DoDDS, the military’s overseas school system. I just knew that I knew that I needed to set out to do that. It took two years, but I did get to go overseas with them and that’s where I had the best job of my life, got to lead women’s retreats, and where I met Steve.
And now I have a direction in search for publication.
I believe that agents probably make up less than half of the contacts listed in my phone-book-sized Writers Market 2009 book. So God just cut my search process in half, or less! Woo hoo!
Our God is the God of Anthropology
I think the most significant part of our 3-day weekend in Mexico city was learning that God is so far-reaching, so wise and intelligent, so loving, that he is in charge of it all…even seemingly unrelated Anthropological details.
You see, Mary came to visit Mexico in the 1500’s (much like Moses and Elijah came to the Holy Land during New Testament times at the Transfiguration). God sent Mary with a message to build a Christian church in a particular location. That church replaced a place of child sacrifices and saved thousands and thousands of lives.
Mary talked to a native guy, not one of the Spanish Conquistadors who conquered the various native groups in Mexico. This guy, who had an Aztec name, but I can only remember his Spanish name, Juan Diego, took Mary’s message to the Spanish bishop of Mexico City.
Now imagine an African slave in the Southern United States going to the local white minister and telling him that Mary asked him to tell the minister to build a church. Imagine the reception that slave would get. It was similar for Juan Diego. The native people got no respect. They were not treated with worth.
Native people in Spanish-conquered Mexico were encouraged to convert to Christianity. The Spanish Conquest, after all, was commissioned with the purpose of evangelizing the Americas. (Though they did so, it looks like they did it more for material gain.) The conquerors did not allow the native people to hold office, to study for the priesthood, or hold any such position of leadership. They were second class citizens.
The bishop, as you’d expect, did not believe Juan Diego. He said he’d need a sign if he was to believe.
So Mary visited Juan Diego on the mountain again. It was December and she gave him Castilian roses (the bishop’s home region of Spain). Juan Diego carried the roses in his tilma, a poncho-like cloak made from cactus fibers. When he let the roses fall from his tilma in front of the bishop, there was an image of Mary on the cloak, just as she’d appeared to Juan Diego.
Scientists say it’s a miracle, that there are no brush strokes, but that the pigments appear to have landed on the tilma much as color is placed in modern photographs.
But that’s not the biggest miracle to me.
Mary had a message from God in that image, and it’s very complex in how it shows the integration of Aztec and Biblical symbols. The list of images and symbols found on the Mary picture on the tilma is very long. Here’s a photograph my husband took of the tilma last week:
It’s hard to tell from our photo, but there are stars all over the picture. What’s neat is that the stars match the constellations that would have been seen from Mexico City that December in the 1500’s. The stars date the tilma’s image and Mary’s appearance, accurately pinpointing the time her message came. The message was that God knows his people and loves them, exactly where (and when) they are, and for who they are.
The message was also one to the native people. You see, there are many Aztec symbols to be found in this picture. See those damask-looking designs in Mary’s dress? They contain symbols from Aztec religions. One example is this flower design, a symbol of the Aztec sun god. (Below is the interior of a building in Teotihuaca, with the original designs and original paint from when Aztecs occupied the city.)
What the message conveys is that Mary’s Son is the God of the Sun. In fact, if you look closely, you’ll see that symbol on Mary’s womb.
The image also has Mary with a black ribbon below her chest but above her womb. That’s what pregnant women in the Aztec culture wore to let the community know they were expecting. Mary is dressed as Juan Diego’s people dressed, identifying with the native people. That alone sends a wonderful message to both conquerors and conquered!
Upon very close study, you can also see symbols of both the New and Old Testaments. And the symbols of the three ships in Christopher Columbus’ crossing: the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria (guess who those were named after!? The christ child and Mary).
I love how this miraculous image of Mary tells the native people that they count. It tells them that God honors their search for him. They created false gods, but they were searching for the one True God…he is affirming their search and completing it by introducing his son, through the Mother of his son.
The Aztec sun god had a mother who the Aztecs worshipped. She heralded his coming. So it is utterly appropriate that Mary showed the Aztecs the way to her son. Just as she tells us in the New Testament, “Do as he tells you.”
And here’s my favorite aspect of the whole miraculous thing…
The bishop repented of his disdain of Juan Diego and all the Native people.
Yes. He repented, and started to treat them as people of worth. And he was the spiritual head of the city, and thereby modeled how the conquerors should treat the conquered.
Our God is the God of reconciliation, and both sets of people gained common ground through this.
Knowing the pain of my mom’s native country and how people have had to heal from Nazi occupation, I understand just how valuable it is that God sent Mary as a messenger to heal ALL the inhabitants of the land of Mexico.
To the Natives, Mary says, “Thank you for searching. Let me show you who you were searching for.”
And to the conquerors, she says, “These are your brothers and sisters. I love them too. God loves them. They are your equals.”
My husband and I were talking on the flight home from Mexico City. We know that Christianity has been criticized for taking pagan holiday dates and replacing them with Christian celebrations. But we think this makes so much sense, Anthropologically. Who cares the date or what the weather is like during celebrations? What counts is that God wants us to celebrate. And what counts is celebrating Jesus’ birth and resurrection. Christianity was smart…rather than leaving a hole in people’s original calendar, they filled that hole with the goodness of Jesus. God meets people where they are, he completes them and fills their needs.
Much the same say, Mary showed how Jesus completed the Aztec search for powerful deities.
God is the God of Anthropology! He loves people for who they are, where they are. Amen.
(This is a re-post from February 2009)
Hatiquette
As I embark on this new blogging adventure as an author, I am poking around the archives of the blog I let die with the close of the blogging site, Xanga. At the old site, I made some amazing, life-long friends. One of those friends had a blog called My Hat Is Older Than You Are. We all called him Old Hat. This man is an amazing source of wisdom and prayer. My site started out as Big Toes in Heaven and later changed to Big Toe People after my first novel.
Here, I am re-posting something I wrote in 2009. Old Hat chimed in with the excellent advice of a cowboy-gentleman:
(May this post be an act of prayer for the health and safety of Mrs. Hat. Amen.)
On Wednesday night, my husband and I went to the Officer’s Club for dinner. It was the going-away event for our Wing Commander, a man who led our base with integrity, intelligence, innovation, compassion, and humor. Because of his sense of humor, those giving various presentations felt free to be funny. I laughed all evening long.
The event was casual, which meant that slacks and open collars were acceptable for the men (military etiquette’s wording). There was a tall man who strode in with a cowboy hat on. He kept it on all night. We were inside. Eating dinner. Honoring a man who outranked everyone there except the retired generals.
That man and his hat stuck in my craw.
Here’s where my brain went:
First, I recalled being at an Officer’s Club in Okinawa with an old boyfriend back in 2002. M was a Black Marine Corps officer who grew up in a Memphis ghetto. Raised without any etiquette to speak of, he ascribes everything he knows about manners to his military training. He wore baseball hats all the time. I mean ALL the time, though I doubt he slept in them. Then again, maybe he did. He had a baseball hat on for a dinner date to the O-club, and I asked him about it. He said that we lived in modern times and that no one pays attention to old-fashioned hat rules anymore. Then an older officer came to our table and kindly asked him to remove his hat. I’ll never forget that.
Second, I remembered that every single high school I’ve ever taught in had a dress code that included this rule: NO HATS ARE TO BE WORN IN THE SCHOOL BUILDING. Though I felt that students only needed to loosely follow the dress code rather than being a stickler for the letter of the law (let’s be practical…if a girl doesn’t look like a hoochie, her outfit is probably okay), I also felt that the dress code was a great way to teach students how to dress for success and present themselves in a better light. Many kids don’t receive such training at home, so a school’s dress code can help in that aspect of their formation as adults.
So, at Wednesday’s O-Club event, I whispered to my husband that the hat bothered me. He responded that he thought that cowboy etiquette was probably different than ours. “Besides,” he said, “This is Texas. We should expect to see cowboy hats everywhere all the time.”
I didn’t agree with my husband. I thought, perhaps, that cowboys would be more conservative and honorable in their conduct and manners. I mean, when you say “cowboy”, I picture two things: a cowboy on his horse, and him tipping his hat to a lady.
It made me wish my friend Old Hat was there at the table with us. First, so that I could consult the wise cowboy about cowboys. Then, just because it would be so awesome to share this fun evening with someone who loves a good laugh. Someday, we’ll have to go out to dinner and make our own laughs, the four of us: two Hats and two Toes-in-Heavens.
I’m not saying this is something to get your knickers in a twist over, but I do think it is common courtesy to conduct yourself according to a code of good manners. It honors those around you.
I decided to ask Old Hat about it yesterday, and he gave me the most awesome response. I really like the term he coined: Hatiquette.
Here are some excerpts:
Hatiquette
“I am sorry to tell you that you will never be able to recognize me at a dinner table by looking for my hat. It will more than likely be on the floor beneath my chair. Yes, I will sit a $200 felt hat on the floor rather eat with it on. I don’t even eat french fries in my pickup while driving down the road with my hat on. I set it on the dash if I am eating. Period. If I am eating a sandwich outside, my hat will still come off. You get the idea.
I am pretty old fashioned. The store I go to to have my felt hats cleaned and reshaped has a lot of different hat benders. I always get the oldest one. It keeps me from lecturing the young ones. You see, my hats always get worn and dirty in the same places and the young hat benders try to tell me how to prevent that from happening. The oldest hat bender knows better than to try to teach me not to tip my hat to ladies.
As for wearing a hat indoors, I think of it as the military does (or used to) regarding headgear. You don’t wear it indoors unless under arms. To an old cowboy, under arms in this case means carrying something that does not leave a hand free for hat removal or having a lady on your arm. Otherwise, my hat will be off when I come in.
When I first met K8tthelate, she came out from the back room of the library to meet me. She asked where my hat was and I held it up to show her. I never thought of wearing it in so that she might recognize me better. I just don;t wear my hat inside. If my hands are full, I’ll be the one in the cowboy hat apologizing for still having his hat on and will be explaining that I really was raised right. =)
I have learned that hatiquette is not taught much anymore anywhere. People seem to want there to be no rules. I don;t think of this as rules though. I just think of it as courtesy. I respect you too much to wear my hat when sharing a table with you or when coming into your home or office. Even your office on a construction site. It is not the place I revere. It is you, friend.”
Old Hat
Like I said above, I don’t think it’s worth getting your knickers in a twist over people’s manners or lack thereof. But I do want to teach my own future children how to honor others through good manners.
Do you have any etiquette peeves like my hat one?
How do you feel about the importance of good manners (or lack thereof)?
Note: Hatiquette is different for men than it is for women, except in baseball caps.
Originally Posted 4/27/2009 at 2:19 PM
KristineKohut.net 