Beginning of Lent Much Lighter

I love my black hair mainly because it's low maintenance, but recently my hair started sprouting grays- which complicates the low care I usually give it.  Some women love getting pampered, getting their hair done, getting pedis and manis; but I hate going into the salon. The whole process stresses me out: having someone touch me in usually areas not commonly touched like my head and toes, I loathe the awkward small talk, but most of all I hate being in a chair in a public place unable to do much for so long usually bored out of my mind.  You see my hair - which today someone asked me if it was a wig- was placed on my head to get me to heaven.  Yes, it's that much of pest that silently wreaks havoc.  Now you think, Penny likes to add sauce to her tacos when she speaks, and yes, sometimes I can be a bit of a writing drama-queen- believe me that there's not an ounce of exaggeration to the above statement.

I was blessed as a baby to be born with a head full of hair, ringlets my mom likes to remember.  As I have matured, I continue to be blessed with a head of thick hair, so thick that if it grows past a certain length it gives me headaches.  That's how I know when I need to go to the salon- I start getting pressure headaches that if not attended turn into migraines- and those are no fun.  An aside, recently I read the story of King David's beautiful son, Absalom, who had so much hair that when he cut it off, it weighed five pounds!  I am no wicked warrior, I can't carry all that plumage!  

Blessed are the stylist, they know how to thin my hair when I go in to get my haircut; not only do they cut it, they also have this really clever way to strip me of some density (smile).  I have recently started getting headaches, so I knew I had to make time to go get it cut.  Yesterday, after Mass with a dark cross on my forehead I headed to the salon to do penance.  Normally, I like to keep my hair black because it's natural and easy to maintain- but oh, the woes of getting older -the beginning of gray hairs.  A girl more humble than me would wear those white streaks with pride, yet I have decided to battle those grays or at least make them a little easier on the eyes so I thought that I would go with a lighter shade of hair color.  After five hours, that's right five hours of one stylist working with me I came out lighter in every sense of the word.

Some women love getting pampered, I enjoy a different type of pampering like a warm chair in sunlight with a good book.  Yesterday, I figured I would dedicate the half wasted day as a prayer offering and I took the hair pulling, coloring, burning dryer, cold washing, more hair pulling as a champ.  I even prayed three rosaries while I sat uncomfortably long in a chair.  Take that gray hairs!  I know they will return, those sneaky foes, but now my hair is a little lighter hopefully they will blend in better.  That's how I began my Lent, fasting while suffering for hours in a salon chair.  I know that I added a little comedy into my experience, but I am learning that all suffering can be an offering to God.  And this season is about that - denying ourselves so that God can come in to areas of our beings where he had not been welcomed- like the hair salon.  Pretty neat theology, I say! Happy beginning of Lent, a time of penance, abstinence and almsgiving.