The day I shaved off his eyebrows…

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we might obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16

We talked about this verse last night at our church small group. When asked “when have you received grace at just the right time?” we all agreed every minute of the day… Marriage, parenting, working in an office, being a student or just being a human seems to require much grace and mercy.

The past weekend had many moments of needing grace and mercy: when Brian decided to take all 3 kids up on the roof to help clean leaves off and empty gutters. I felt like quoting “T’was the night before Christmas…” The part about hearing footsteps on the roof. I heard elephants.

When I had offered to host some good friends for the weekend and forgot my Saturday was full, and they extended grace to us, even allowing for my morning run.

When we learn Chinese. Uff da.

Learning how to read our family members by their Chinese characters.

My girlfriend from Singapore says Calista has great intonation. I have no idea but I’ll trust her and accept her gracious words:)

Then there were the 2 hrs I flew around Duluth, finding new shoes for the Y because my old ones STINK. Then grocery shopping and errands. Only to arrive home, pass Brian his hair gel and find I bought paste instead of pomade. Seriously?! I screwed up. He tried some on XS and made his head look like a greasy, flat pancake. He even tried to wash it out and it still looked gross.

Then we raced to eat before small group. It went ok actually. Only 1 cup of spilled milk and no tears.

Then it happened:
I was playing Kitchen Fairy (just took me 10 tries to spell kitchen accurately: think I need therapy? I spend too much time in that room of the house…)

With my new HOT pink kicks…

And Brian walked into the kitchen giggling like no man has giggled before. I told him I didn’t know what to do with him he was so uncontrollable… He said, “It’s a good thing I wear glasses!” I thought he meant because he has just run into someone or the kids had done something to him… Nope. He took off his glasses and I still didn’t get it.

He says “oh good you didn’t notice. But I just shaved my eyebrows.”

I started to laugh too and then said, “you are too ridiculous I don’t even know what to do for you!”

Remember we are about to leave for church, I’m trying to get Calista to pack her lunchbox, Elam to clean his room and I’m trying to pack up the snakes and whoa: that’s SNACKS people. (iPads and blogs should never be allowed. I do have a keyboard around here somewhere…)

{insert snake-handling Christian joke here}

Ok so anyhow I was really trying to get going and Brian somehow found enough free time to do WHAT?!?!

I think he was embarrassed and then angry because he pulled an Eve in the garden on me: “well you told me I needed to trim them!”

“Trim Brian. Not shave OFF!”

– ok so to be fair, recently we had had a conversation about his eyebrows. He also had a few stray nose hairs. Ears are still ok, btw. Well I had said, “Next time I cut your hair, we should trim your eyebrows. There are a few wackadoodle ones.” And we had discussed keeping the nose hairs trimmed. He has a dandy “personal grooming” trimmer all set for such manly personal grooming issues.

In that, Brian really thought he was being helpful and responsible and fastidious, grooming these stray hairs.

Unfortunately, he went overboard. Shaved those suckers right off.

Seriously who’s life am I living.

I’m not sure what all happened in the course of getting kids and selves into the van but what we realized is we were both wiped. Brian for taking kids while I shopped. Me for shopping. He thought he was serving me for letting me do that. I thought I was serving them by going instead of dragging the family with. What turned out was neither of us got what we wanted. And now Brian was down 2 brows.

We shared it all with our group and had a good laugh. Then as we studied Jesus being our sympathetic High Priest and how we need mercy, it became a thing in my head: even when we shave our eyebrows off, we need to go to God. Even when we feel embarrassed, angry, tired, weak, we can approach the throne. He sympathizes with our weaknesses.

How many of us have shaved our eyebrows off? Or made someone else?

I am sorry Brian you thought I wanted you to shave off your eyebrows. Maribeth still called you my “cute husband” at the Y this morning. She didn’t notice either:)