Overcoming Instinct

"I did it!" exulted Asherel as she sat atop the horse, and just as I was about to say, "Scoot forward- you're too far back!", the horse started bucking wildly. It happened so fast that none of us had time to be scared. Asherel quickly slid off the horse, landing feet first, though a little closer to the kicking hooves than I would have preferred.. As soon as the horse felt her weight fall away, he stopped kicking and bucking.
"You were sitting too far back," I said.
"Oh."
I decided that was enough practice mounting a horse bareback and we led the horse back to Jill who was preparing for another lesson. Jill is a fantastic instructor and had only left Asherel with the horse knowing Asherel had ridden for many years, and also that I was there. I didn't fault her at all, but I had to tell her that the horse had bucked. She trains her horses so that you can drop a bomb and they won't flinch, but this was a fairly new horse for her.
"Asherel was sitting on his poor kidneys... I don't blame him," I said to Jill.
"No, I understand why he did it," said Jill, "But he can't be allowed to do it and still be in this program."
She showed us how to stand out of range of the back hooves and flick our hands along the horse's twitchy flanks.
"You keep doing that," she explained,"And the horse learns not to fear touch and pressure there. He was just reacting with instinct."
"You can overcome instinct?" I asked.
At that very moment, she glanced up to see her German Shepherd chasing a barn cat. He was snarling, and not looking like he was about to ask the cat over for a cup of tea.
"NO!" she shrieked to the dog.
He stopped in his tracks, looking sheepishly at her as the cat scuttled under my van.
"Yes," continued Jill, "You can overcome instinct but it takes a lot of time, persistence, and commitment."

We are finishing our reading about the American Revolution. I am time and again amazed at how universally beloved George Washington was. One of the most striking aspects of his character is that he was supposedly a man of a ferocious temper. However, he set about determinedly to control it, and became the model of dignified patience and decorum. Our baser nature can be overcome.

The SAT question of the day was a vocabulary question, but the content was about anger. The sentence said that research showed, contrary to what is often believed, that by expressing anger, one often increases its magnitude rather than reducing it. The lesson? Anger should be controlled.

I often pray what I call the "2x4" prayer. It goes something like this:
"Dear heavenly Father,
I am dense and thick headed, slow to understand, hard of spiritual hearing - and now that we mention it, physical hearing as well. Show me your will, but you may need to hit me over the head with a 2x4 with it, or it is quite likely I won't get it."
I think God was slamming me with a 2x4 yesterday. Anger and all its little precedents- criticism, frustration, irritation, demeaning comments, sarcasm- need to be eradicated. Anger may get the monkey off my back, but it may also get me thrown out of the program.

Proverbs 15

¹ A gentle answer turns away wrath,

   but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Proverbs 29:8

New International Version (NIV)

 ⁸ Mockers stir up a city,
   but the wise turn away anger.

Proverbs 30:33

³³ For as churning cream produces butter,
   and as twisting the nose produces blood,
   so stirring up anger produces strife.”

Psalm 86:15

¹⁵ But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
   slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Blotting Out Transgressions

"How short do you want it?"
It seemed like an easy question.
Asherel sat in the hairdresser's chair in a nice salon for her first non-bargain basement haircut. She has gloriously thick, long, curly hair. It is also hot, and heavy, and takes forever to dry and manage. She was ready to have it cut off. Since the bargain basement was full for another hour, we went next door to the salon that offers coffee and pound cake. Since Asherel gets her hair cut about once every 6 months or so, I thought we could spring for a good haircut.

We had two criteria for the hairdresser. It had to be long enough to pull back into a ponytail, and it had to be a wash and go style.
"You may need to straighten it every day," said the stylist.
This should have been my first clue that we might not be in the hands of just the right stylist since of the two criteria, she did not seem to want to follow criteria 2.
"That isn't going to happen," I said, "It really needs to be a wash and go style. No hair drying, no straightening." (Besides, when you have gorgeous curly hair, why flatten it?)

That was when she needed some clarification on criteria #1.
"How short?"
"It has to be long enough to put in a pony tail," I reminded her, "She runs dog agility trials and has to be able to pull it back."
At that, I felt confident leaving Asherel in the hands of the professional and diving into the pile of junky magazines. Since I would never stoop to buy junky magazines, I can't wait to go to the hair salons and doctor's offices that have a full array of them. I became quickly immersed in which starlet was crusading for which noble cause while dressed in which designer jeans and stilettos. A peaceful snip snip snip in the background. A cup of green tea and honey in my hands.

When I looked up to see the hairdresser blow drying Asherel's hair, I felt a glimmer of dismay. She looked like a poodle....and not a poodle with ponytail length locks either. Clearly criteria #1 had been ignored. I am no expert, but it looked like while I was lost in the trials and tribulations of Brittany Spears, the hairdresser had closed her eyes and gone wild with the scissors on Asherel's head.

I saw her confer with Asherel and then pull out a hair iron. She began what turned into an hour of hair straightening. She was a very very nice young lady, but from a consumer point of view, she needed a little work. Of the two criteria we had given, she had now ignored both.

It is very hard for me to be brutally honest with hairdressers, and actually, after the hour and a half of styling, Asherel's hair did look nice. The stylist assured us it would also look fine curly. However, when Asherel washed it the next day and emerged with hair sticking out unevenly in all directions, I shuddered. I raced for hair goop and smoothed some over the recalcitrant curls, but it wasn't the curls that were the problem....it was how ineptly they had been cut.  I knew I had to call and request emergency repairs.

This was a well run salon, and the manager instantly set Asherel up with their top designer to repair the cut. We could never afford the top designer normally, so it almost made me glad that the original stylist had been so inept. The designer warned Asherel that while she could certainly repair the cut so that it would be a lovely wash and go style, she could not add back pony-tail length hair. And she would need to take off a little more length to repair the choppy mess left by the other.

In the end, Asherel emerged with a stupendous wash and go hair style, and her lovely face is framed by soft and luxurious, well-cut curls. It is much shorter than she wanted, but really looks stunning. I wish we could afford the designer. The designer told us to return in 6 weeks and she would do another complimentary shaping. And the manager told me in all her years in customer relations, she had never had someone with such a disastrous haircut request a do-over so nicely.  One of my eternal struggles and character flaws is to be kind to inept service providers. This was at least a little validation that my struggles are not always in vain.


But sadly graciousness and gentleness require constant surveillance in my life. I can never stop reminding myself that others almost never live up to my expectations and I need to learn to accept, encourage, and be kind especially then. As soon as I let my guard down, there I go again, irritable, angry, and regretting. I am slowly learning that in the face of this constant struggle, the least I need to do is perfect my apology. The manager of the hair salon did all the right things. She didn't challenge my perspective. She didn't try to convince me the haircut was really not as bad as I claimed it was. She didn't try to defend the stylist. And she asked what she could do to make it right and restore my confidence in her salon. And then this... this is perhaps the most amazing, she thanked me for pointing out where the salon had failed.
"If you don't let us know what we have done wrong, we have no opportunity to fix it," she said.

King David had the power to cut off Nathan's head when he came to David and told him that his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband was major commandment-breaking. David could have offered all kinds of rationalization for his sin, or just dispose of Nathan no questions asked. But instead, here is what he said:  “I have sinned against the LORD.”(2 Samuel 12:13) 

That's it. He offered no justification, no explanation, no attempt to wriggle out of accountability. A complete admission, and a complete understanding of ultimately who he had sinned against.

I pray today that I would learn to keep my character wholly in line with God's desires for me, but when I fail, which I know is probably likely, I pray that I could learn to apologize like David....and the manager of the hair salon.

Psalm 51: 1-17
¹ Have mercy on me, O God,
   according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
   blot out my transgressions.
² Wash away all my iniquity
   and cleanse me from my sin.  ³ For I know my transgressions,
   and my sin is always before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
   and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
   and justified when you judge.
⁵ Surely I was sinful at birth,
   sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
⁶ Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
   you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
 ⁷ Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
   wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;
   let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
⁹ Hide your face from my sins
   and blot out all my iniquity.
 ¹⁰ Create in me a pure heart, O God,
   and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
¹¹ Do not cast me from your presence
   or take your Holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation
   and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
 ¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
   so that sinners will turn back to you.
¹⁴ Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
   you who are God my Savior,
   and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
¹⁵ Open my lips, Lord,
   and my mouth will declare your praise.
¹⁶ You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
   you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
¹⁷ My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart
   you, God, will not despise.

Surprised by Beauty

The snow took me totally by surprise. I am glad I had finished a little snow picture with my art class last week or I wouldn't have had one for my blog. There are few inspirations to draw snow in the house of the brutal sun.
I guess I didn't know about the snow because I was busy trying to understand the "if A then B except when A is not but B is or B is not when the converse of when A is not...." in Asherel's Geometry lesson. We were so busy tying our brain in knots that I didn't see the first flakes fall and hadn't known they were expected until Asherel called out,"It's snowing." I thought it was just an excuse to lift her finger from our Evelyn Wood Speed Reading session, but I glanced up, totally losing what B does when A has to take a bathroom break. It was true. The first little dusts of snow were drifting quietly by the window. I didn't take them seriously, having not read the weather report. Everyone else had already bought their milk and toilet paper, but I had not because I didn't know the snow was coming.
And while we camped in front of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony on television, the snow kept falling. All through the night, it sparkled in the air against the yellow lamplight, falling, falling.....
I piled my ski clothes neatly for the morning, and put my skis in the corner. I prayed the liquid nails I'd used to repair them would hold. This morning, I awoke to a good 4 or 5 inches of snow. Right after breakfast I will ski, and then right after skiing I will do some snow paintings. With all this global warming going on in Charlotte, I seem to need a backlog of winter snow scenes.

And speaking of painting, today is the official opening of the first annual Hollow Creek Farm Kids Art Contest!!!! Details can be found at Hollowcreekfarm.org . This is a bona fide national art contest which means if you are age 18 and under, you could enter and win not only prizes, but satisfaction too, as you can help Hollow Creek Farm with your entry donation which will be used entirely for the care and help of HCF animals. The world renowned judges are experts in their field. Linda Ostrow owns the wonderful jewel of an art gallery tucked away on The Plaza in Charlotte- Queens Gallery (www.thequeensgallery.com ) . Angela Purcell is a devoted volunteer at HCF so knows the animals you will be drawing well, and has artist parents that instilled a deep love and understanding of art in her. And finally (this is the section where there is a huge drum roll and the fans are holding their breath while the older women pass out in anticipation)- the last judge is me. For all of you budding artists that hope to major in art, or just impress potential colleges with achievements on a national level, this is a very good contest to enter. The contest ends May 1 so you have plenty of time to find an HCF adoptable animal you want to immortalize in art.

But about the snow that snuck in here like a thief returning money..... I had been having a bad day. School was not going well for us. I will spare the gorey details but suffice it to say that I was ready to retire from all the perks of being a highly paid and respected home school teacher and join the Foreign Legion. Just as I was ready to pack my bags, the snow started falling. Who can watch snow fall and not feel the talons of despair melt away? My rising blood pressure with an angry spirit had called out like Gideon, "If the Lord is with us, why then
has all this happened to us?" (Judges 6:13.) But then I saw the snow. Flake by flake it fell, collecting slowly to a blanket of soft white covering all the harsh edges of the world. That is how my emotions had built, anger by anger, frustration by frustration..... and the blanket over our home was not one of gentle peace. Oh Lord, give me a heart that falls gently like the snow on my family!

And don't forget to vote for Honeybun. It seems her vote is being sabotaged as her rating keeps going down though she leads in number of votes. Since I have given clear instructions that when you vote you should only click on the 5th gold star to give her the highest rating, I think some devious souls are going in and clicking on the first star, which lowers her rating. So please vote per the instructions below:
just click on this little link below and skip to step 8.
http://tinyurl.com/voteforhoneybun
1. Click on this link:
http://www.petco.com/content/storiesListheartChampion.aspx?bvcategoryid=1-9
2. In upperish right side, select "sort by OLDEST STORIES FIRST"
3. Scroll down to bottom and select page "5".
4. Scroll down to bottom and select page "6".
5. Honeybun is the second story (picture: doge sleeping on pillow,
covered with a blanket. title: A Last Chance Dog.
6. Click on "Read my story and vote"
7. Click on the 5th (rightmost) gold medal (it will say "5 stars" when
you hover over it.)
8. On the Righthand side of the page enter your/an email address and
click the continue button.
9. You will be returned to Honeybun's story page.
10. Close your BROWSER program (not just the window).
11. Repeat steps 1-10.