Todays Proverbs has one of those “good news bad news” elements. Proverbs 20:29 brings me good news and bad news. The good news is that gray hair means splendor. I like splendor! Splendor is something great and wonderful excessively so! I have lots of gray hair so that means I have lots of splendor. I like that! But there is bad news. I can’t just take the parts of the verse I like (splendor) and ignore the rest of the verse. So here comes the bad news. Gray hair is a splendor TO THE OLD. I am old! I may have splendor like gray hair but if so, I am old. I meet very few people who are eager to say they are old. I remember a dear women in my family’s church when I was still single. Her name was Virginia and she was a prayer warrior. She prayed for my sister for 15 years! When someone suggested that she consider moving from her house to a nursing home and that she could minister to the people there through her prayer, she protested…loudly! She said, “Why would I want to go live with all those oldpeople?! Now understand that Virginia was about 78 years old at the time. But she did not think of herself as old.
When I was student teaching in senior high school, my students thought I was old. They were 17 and 18 and I was 26 (I dropped out of college a couple of years while my husband finished graduate school and then I returned to finish my undergraduate degree.). To them, I was old! Oh to be that old again!
I hear my children (who are now all in their 20’s) often talking about old or older people. When I inevitably inquire about HOW old the person is they are speaking of, they him and haw, because they are caught. They realize that they are talking about someone about my age and that by implication, they are calling me old!
Alas, my body concurs. Aching feet, uncooperative memory, pains in places I never knew I had before, thinning hair in some places, new hair in other places I never had before, trifocals, and lots of gray (and very wirey) hair. If I want the splendor I must embrace the old that goes with it. Good news is that folks are living a lot longer so there are more and more people all the time that really are old compared to me.
So today, I got my gray, wirey hair trimmed and had some of it “removed.” I am so gray I cannot do highlights. I am old and have to do lowlights. It took so long I needed help out of the chair when she was through with me. After all that time (and money) then I did the bible reading for the next day and realize there is good news and bad news. Good news–there is splendor with old age. Bad news–I let my hairdresser remove some of it today. =)