"Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness." (NIV)
There’s been some discussion of late about the state of Carrie Fisher’s body and the effect of aging that can be seen. (For those of you who don’t know, she’s staring as Princess Leia in the latest movie of the Star Wars franchise.) Ms. Fisher has been through a lot, including overcoming a drug addiction, having a child, and restarting her career in a field other than acting. Personally, I think she was very gracious to return and reprise her role. Regardless, as Ms. Fisher and I are similar in age, I have thought a lot about the body shaming and her response. We put too much emphasis on looks in this country.
My paternal grandmother married young. My grandfather, from the beginning, could be mean when he was thwarted. Like most narcissists, he believed that life’s purpose was in getting all he could for himself. Even near the end, he would have preferred to have another smoke rather than spend time with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
My grandmother lived with this man from her marriage until her death. Near the end, she spoke with me and regretted the years she had given him. But she had stayed true to her marriage because honor and commitment were more important to her than happiness.
My grandmother was, even as a teen, only marginally beautiful. In the ensuing years, she worked initially as a restaurant server (in those days, called a waitress). She would work twelve hours or more six and seven days a week, beginning her shift in the hotel coffee shop and ending in the great dining room. She could carry ten hot dinner plates on her arms (a feat that always marveled me). She brought her meager earnings home every time, not spending a cent on herself, because my grandfather would take his weekly pay in Friday night and come home Saturday morning broke. She saved enough money to pay cash for a small house and continued to save throughout her life.
When my grandparents followed my parents to California, my grandmother took a job as an upholstery seamstress. I don’t know how many times the large needles pierced her hands and fingers, but she worked fearlessly and long hours. She had to; there was no other income coming into the family. My grandfather continued his habit of drinking up his pay on the weekends until he retired.
My grandmother was finally able to retire, but when, in the 1970's, the bottom dropped out of the economy, she had to take another job, this time as a manager of a trailer park in the desert. The job gave them a roof over their heads. Even though it was a small single wide with only a swamp cooler (and summer temperatures averaging about 110 ), she continued to work hard. She was in her early 70s.
Finally, she was able to retire. The few pieces of property she had been able to salvage from the economy drop were sold and she bought a small mobile home in Bakersfield for herself and my grandfather. While there, she began attending the church where my family attended and it was at one of those services that she accepted the Lord as her Savior. She spent all of her free time reading the Bible and praying. She finally realized that the love she had been seeking all these years was guaranteed in a relationship with the Lord Jesus.
My grandmother wasn’t, by the world’s standards, beautiful. But by God’s standards, she was magnificent! She had wrinkles, gray hair, and gnarled hands, the result of hard work for many years. Up until the end, her body was strong from all of the manual labor. Her mind was sharp from much use. (Even in those last years, she could add in her head a column of numbers faster than I could input them in a calculator).
My grandmother never worried about make-up or hair styles. She had neither the time nor the money to spare. She dressed clean, neat, and modest. When she went Home, she had only a few pieces of jewelry. Her clothing was barely fit to donate to the homeless. She had spent her life being honest and hard-working, rather than beautiful, and I so honor her for that.
The American culture—the American Church included—puts the wrong emphasis on outward appearance and focuses too much on trying to look and stay "young." As Christians, we are trying to look like the world in order to attract the world and we are suffering for it! God tells us that gray hair is a crown of splendor. Why? Not because one simply becomes old, but because "it is attained in the way of righteousness." People who are older than us have lived longer and may know how to better live righteously than we do. The apostle Peter wrote: "In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders" (1 Peter 5:5a NIV). Those who have neglected to listen to elders have lost so much. Older doesn’t mean non-relevant. Older means wiser, if only for having had more experience.
Body shaming in America needs to stop. Fat doesn’t mean stupid. Old doesn’t mean outdated. Ugly doesn’t mean irrelevant. "Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the 1incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God" (1 Peter 3:3-4 NIV). As Christians, we need to put aside outward appearances and seek out the treasures that lies within a person’s heart and soul. We may fail to find a hidden treasure if all we look at is how a person appears.
© 2016 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.
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