The Back of Your Heads

When we were little, I remember driving to church in the family station wagon…three of us in the back seat behind mom and dad.  I have a distinct memory of my mom asking, most Sundays, if her hair looked ok , because she couldn’t see the back.  We always, no matter what, told her that her hair looked pretty.  Every time.  Today, I just smile at that memory, because now I am so very at that age where I wonder things like that. This brings me to today’s post.

Last night I was at a meeting where I was sitting in the row just behind two of my dear friends.  I had the opportunity to carefully look at them, which slowly shifted to realizing how much I love them.

These two women are different from me, and different from one another.  I love them for different and similar reasons.  I love one in a new way, because we are getting to know each other on purpose, intentionally spending time together.  I think we know intuitively that there is a friendship there.  Something valuable and precious…maybe quite rare.  I just really like her.  She’s brave and wounded, and in -process.  I admire her courage, her grace, her grit.  The other?  I’m sort of under-her-wing, so to speak.   It’s a friendship that has so much safety that I can tell her anything, and she has yet to flinch.  The love and compassion that is part of her actual fiber is clearly from experience.  Some days, I just want to hug her and be around her.  She is wise and elegant, yet entirely inclusive.  I love to watch her expand her circle.  The more?  The merrier.  Really amazing.  She means it.

This is but a moment in a life of the back of heads.  You know who you are Gigi, Beth, Kathi, Amy, Tina, Donna, Toni, Brenda, Kathleen, Carolyn, Alycia…. Anne, Janet, Shirley…and so many more.  I love you, and I watch you and I listen to you. You tell me the truth.  You are mirrors for me.  You are wise and funny and crazy .  You are God-honoring and disrespectful and occasionally quite out of control.  You give me hope and courage and sunlight.

By the way, your hair looks great today.