Headstrong and Loving It?

You know when I was a kid I had two very strong attributes: my skull and the hair on top of it.

The hair earned me such inglorious nicknames, among the kind-hearted school children I was privileged to work with on a daily basis, as Brillo, SOS and steel wool. My hair is still pretty thick today, which at almost 50 years old is actually a good thing, although it still won’t get wet when swimming.

My thick skull, on the other hand, is a whole lot thinner (although as Jesus’ experienced firsthand, you can’t go by what your family thinks of you or you’re sunk before you start). And what I found out about myself in this lifelong, thinning process is that there was an inverse relationship between the thickness of my skull and the thinness of my skin. In other words, the more I let others opinions of me enter my “thin skin”, the more “thick skulled” I reacted in my day to day living with those same people.

Today, as one of the founding members of the “Let’s Cover Up our own Weaknesses and Insecurities by Being Angry and Blaming Others for our Unhappiness” club, it’s become exceedingly easy to spot other members. Unfortunately not all members have the awareness that they’re actually in our little club, which isn’t all that little either. Actually I think it’s more like an underground society than a club: nobody wants to admit that they, not others, hold the real key to their own happiness and freedom. Because after all, to borrow loosely from Stan Lee’s Spiderman: “with great freedom comes great responsibility”

I even know some society members personally who go out of their way to cover up their thin skinned membership by pretending that nothing ever bothers them in the least. They don’t need anybody. Man, can I relate to that. I sometimes wonder if God didn’t call me into the body of Christ just so he can point to me and say: “See that fool over there, yeah the one with the steel wool hair, you’re not as big a fool as he was and he’s changing.”

It’s difficult sometimes to see others, especially those you know and love, go down the same dead end roads of pain and loneliness that you hung out on for so long rather than admit that they don’t know it all and they might even be wrong sometimes! As if making mistakes and being wrong is the worst thing in the world. Remember the Pharisees? Jesus said if they had acknowledged their blindness it would be one thing, but they’re blind and trying to make everybody else think that they’ve got 20/20 vision, so Jesus said their darkness is doubly dark. That was me: the blind trying to lead the blind.

I can always tell someone who’s struggling with these issues in their own personal lives because they have no grace or forgiveness for myself or others. When I encounter someone holding a grudge or stuck in unforgiveness, they might have a whole Broadway show choreographed around why they’re justified in treating me or others they way they are but no matter how much the world applauds their little charade, they still have to remove the mask at the end of the day and face the man in the mirror, like the rest of us.

I recently watched this comic-tragedy play out in the marriage of two friends. One just refused to change. The individual felt justified in his/her actions and by God, no one, not even Jesus Christ himself, was going to talk him or her out of their anger. They earned it and they had a right to hate this other brother/sister in Christ. There is something about the marriage struggle that just seems to empower a man or woman to feel justified in our actions: every man is right in his own eyes.

It’s funny how stupid I always felt after the fact when I saw myself for what I was and how I had been acting. Yeah, you can fool most of the people, most of the time but what’s the use of trying?

There’s room at the cross for the thinnest skinned and thickest skulled among us, of which I myself am living proof, because he loves me and you NOT for what we could be, NOT for what we should be, NOT for what our husband wants us to be or what our wife wishes we were but he loves you and me just as we are: heads, hearts, hands and skin.

May we all be blessed with the drenching rain of simplicity, forgiveness, compassion and love towards our fellow men and women: especially they who are of the household of faith.

If it ain’t worth having, it ain’t worth holding on to. Why not lighten your own load today instead of waiting for others to lighten it out for you? All you’ve got to lose is your fat head and a little bit of pain.

The jester remains Headstrong in the faith and Thin Skinned towards evil-doers.

@ 2008 Joseph Ricciardi Jr