Cutting Hair and Cutting Slack

Gayline cut my hair last evening. As she did, I multi-tasked by training Heidi (our dog) to stay in one place.

Heidi's confiscated one of our hassocks as her "resting" place, typically for about 33 seconds at a shot. We'd prefer her to stay there longer (something closer to 33 hours per shot) so she's not getting into mischief and driving us nuts.

After getting Heidi into place my training consisted of uttering a loud gutteral "Eh!!" every time she began to get up. "Eh!!" is master-speak for a serious sounding "no". When uttered quick and really, really loud, it works.

So while Gayline is snipping my hair I'm hawk-eyeing Heidi to "Eh!!" her every time she shows a hint of relocating. After a couple of early miscues, Heidi got it, and stayed there for about 20 minutes while I kept a vigilant eye. This meant that two things were going on at once: Gayline was focusing on cutting my hair; I was focusing on "Ehing" Heidi. Both required attention, and therefore 20 minutes of nearly complete silence.

We probably should have seen it coming. When Heidi eventually made a quick move and I erupted with a quick really, really loud "Eh!!!", Gayline, much to the surprise of us both, displayed greater veritical abilities than I ever did on a basketball court. My silence shattering "Eh!!" nearly separated my wife from her skin.

Only then did we realize the perilous spot into which I had been placed: she with both sharp scissors (with easy skin piercing capacity) and with electric able-to-shave-off-a-whole-section-of-hair-in-a-second clippers in hand, and me with voice poised to let out a loud piercing attention seizing and silence shattering command to my dog. It never occured to us that we might be headed for either blood or blunder. Thankfully I was spared a major head or hair disaster.

But it all made me think. Gayline could easily have done some damage that folks would have seen behind a pulpit for a month of Sundays. What if she had? How would I have responded? I think that I would have laughed it off, but I'm not sure I want to try it out to see.

What I do know is this: Gayline was not in the least bit angry with me for scaring her out of her skin. Why not? Because she had the grace to know that in the moment I was not acting sinfully or selfishly, but was doing something for the family, for her, for our son, for the betterment of our home.

She overlooked the unpleasantness of having her nerves go "boiiiing" because she saw the bigger picture of my intentions and efforts. I'm grateful for her grace.

There's a lesson there for life: Friends, we often bump up against each other unintentionally while we're doing or intending good things. We just don't see it coming. We're trying to serve. We're thinking of the good of others or of the church. We're pitching in. We're even committed to PEGI (see the 3/1/09 entry), but we're unaware of how this might create a tension or problem with someone else equally committed to service and love. It happens because we're on two very good but very different about-to-collide wavelengths at the same time.

There are times when we're all working toward the same ends, but get in each other's way in the process. These are times for forbearance, for cutting each other a lot of slack, for being grateful instead of angry, full of mercy rather than full of wrath.

So when good efforts meet up with tense moments, let's let love prevail.