Shorn of several things
Yesterday morning, I shaved my beard off.
I had been growing it since last July, when I started my annual vacation time here at KGT. The Kat was fairly stoic about it at first, telling me that once I got past the scratchy point, I'd get kissed again... and lo and behold, it happened! But since the end of January, around the time of my brother's wedding, she's been making noises that it was getting a little wild (she was right) and very gray (especially around the chin) and that it was itchy again when we kissed. I realized that it was getting itchy under the hair, that I was starting to chew on the mustache at the corners of my mouth when I was eating, and that I really didn't want it any more. Maybe the kicker was when we were at the Home Show on the weekend and one business was a facial hair place; there was a "beard pomade" on sale for twenty bucks. Now, it may be a small bit of chutzpah to complain about being asked for twenty dollars for beard goo when I *know* what I spent on everything else we got... but that's not really the point. I didn't grow it to be coiffed and curled. I grew it because I was, essentially, lazy.
I've started to realize how "lazy" I've been in several places in life. Not that I've not been busy a lot of the time, but rather that I don't take the time to put in that little bit of extra effort to make something good into something great. I don't get up early enough to really do anything in the morning, and I lose a lot of time catching up on Facebook or Youtube when I could be doing other things, like getting a healthy breakfast or walking on the treadmill. I don't read enough at night, losing myself in more tablet timewasting, and even when I justify that I'm reading a book that I've saved to the tablet, it's a book that I read 30 years ago (and it wasn't all that great then, apparently!). I've got other books that I want to finish.
I need to shear myself of some other things, it seems, in order to get to a better list of life activities!
Sometimes, though, the shearing is unwelcome and takes away things I like. Take karate. I've been in the karate school up the street for the past three years. I've surpassed my old purple belt and have gone through green, blue and am now at red. Three levels of brown and I'd be staring down my black belt! But...
Since passing purple, I'm out of the classes that fit my timeline, the classes that fit in with other evening events. I get one class that meets my belt-level needs during a week because I'm busy at other times, so I go to classes with lower belts (and no adults!) at other points in the week. I've learned the forms I need to get to my first level of brown, but then what? The dojo, rightly so, designs its classes so that younger / lower-level belts come in first and advanced belts come in later in the evening, when the really young ones are going to bed. However, churches often operate after 7:00 in the evening - bible studies, meetings, choir rehearsals, social events, etc. That's my job, my calling, my life! I've hit a wall where I can't advance... and, in any case, I was struggling with practicing at home even when I wasn't able to get to the dojo! I've never been a person who said, "Oh, I have a free hour, I'm going to do a workout!" A free hour used to mean a book... and will so again soon! But I need more workouts other than the dojo to keep going and potentially lose some of this weight that seems to be finding me lately!
Someone once described the art of sculpture as seeing the subject within the stone and then removing all the bits of stone that weren't that subject; they then compared it to how God prunes away at us, trying to remove all the things that aren't what He wants to see in us! However, the image doesn't include all the times when we build up things He has already taken off. Those things hurt. Those things are a struggle to lose.
Maybe I'll just let The Skit Guys take it from here...