Something New In The Mirror Every Year

You found a photograph and you did the thing.

You did not plan to. You were looking for something else in a drawer, and there it was, and you picked it up. And within about two seconds you had stopped looking at the photograph and started running a comparison, and the comparison was not kind, and you put it back face down.

I have watched people do this for a long time. It happens in about the same amount of time it takes to read a road sign, and almost nobody notices they are doing it.

Here is what I want to say about it, and I am going to be blunt, because I am the wrong man to be gentle about this and I would only be pretending.

I am fifty eight years old.

I have a face with a great deal of weather in it. There are lines around my eyes that arrived in my thirties from squinting into sun on roads, and there is more silver in this beard than there is anything else, and I am not going to stand here and tell you that any of that is a tragedy, because it is not, and you would know immediately that I was performing.

But I am also not going to hand you the other thing, the bright cheerful one about how age is beautiful, because that is a different kind of lie and it is the one you have already refused.

What I want to do is much smaller. I want to look at the arithmetic you are doing, because I think the arithmetic is wrong.

You are treating your face as an account that is being drawn down. Every year, a withdrawal. Something goes, and nothing comes, and the balance is lower than last year and will be lower again.

That is a subtraction, and it is being run on you every single morning, and the reason it hurts is that a subtraction has no other side.

A crown of glory

There is a line in Proverbs about an old head, and people quote it badly, and read properly it is doing something quite specific.

The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. (Proverbs 16:31, King James Version)

The hoary head is a crown of glory.

Hoary means white with age. And the word chosen for it is crown, which is worth stopping on, because a crown is not a consolation prize and it is not something handed over to soften a loss. A crown is what you put on somebody at the end of a thing they came through.

But look at the second half, because that is where the sentence gets honest.

You are wearing the evidence of a road that was actually traveled, and the years on your face have never once been damage taken from you. Proverbs 16:31 attaches the crown to the way and not to the hair by itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reads a life back to a woman who has been reading a face.

If it be found in the way of righteousness. The crown is not attached to the white hair by itself. It is attached to the road the white hair got there on. What is being honored in that verse is a life, and the visible age is the evidence that the life was lived.

Which is precisely the thing your arithmetic cannot see.

Your subtraction reads only one column.

You are running a sum that can only ever report a loss, and no arithmetic with one column has ever once been an account. Proverbs 16:31 says the hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who opens the second column for a woman. It counts what has gone from the face and never once counts what arrived in the person, and so it reports a loss every year, and it has been reporting a loss for a decade, and it will keep on doing that until you die, because a subtraction can only ever go one way.

You are carrying the evidence of a road on your face, and those years have never once been a withdrawal from an account. Proverbs 16:31 attaches the crown to the way a life was walked rather than to a look, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person read the other column.

What arrived while you were watching what left

Let me be concrete, because vague comfort is worthless here.

Go and find the woman in the photograph. The one you put face down.

She had better skin than you. I will grant that immediately and I am not going to argue it, because arguing it is what everybody does and it never works.

You are further along than the woman in that photograph, and better skin has never once meant a better life underneath it. Proverbs 16:31 puts the honor on the road and not on the surface of the person walking it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands a woman the list that nobody has ever once asked her to make.

Now tell me what she could not do.

She could not tell when somebody was lying to her. She learned that later, at some cost, and she has it now. She did not know which of her friends would still be there in fifteen years, and she wasted a great deal of worry on people who were not going to matter. She could not sit with a person in real trouble without needing to fix it, and now she can give care and leave the fixing alone. She had no idea what she would do if the worst thing happened. That question got answered, because it did happen, and this house is still standing.

That is not a consolation. That is a genuine inventory of things gained, and every one of them cost something, and the cost is written on that face.

You are holding an inventory that has never once been read out loud, and every item on it was paid for over ten years. The written word puts the crown on a life walked rather than on a look kept, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reads a column nobody has read.

You have been reading the receipt as the loss.

You are reading a receipt as a loss, and what is written on that face has never once been the damage. The written word puts the crown on the head that came down a road rather than on the one that stayed young, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a person the column they have not been reading.

Ten years, and one thing gained

So here is the assignment.

Find a photograph of yourself from ten years ago, and name one thing gained since then.

Get the actual photograph. Do not do this from memory, because memory improves a face and the exercise will not bite.

You are safe to look straight at that picture, and a photograph has never once held anything that could be taken from you now. Proverbs 16:31 honors the years rather than the face that started them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who stays in the room while a woman looks at who she used to be.

Look at her. Let the comparison run, because it is going to run whether you permit it or not, and pretending otherwise wastes the first thirty seconds.

Then, out loud, name one thing that is yours now and was not hers then.

You are naming something you own now that she never had, and no year has ever once passed over you without leaving something behind it. Proverbs 16 says the hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness, and the Spirit of God is what lets a woman say the new thing out loud.

Not a possession. Something in you. One capacity, one piece of knowledge, one thing you can now do with a person or a crisis or your own mind that she could not have done.

Say it out loud with the photograph in your hand, so that the two things are in the room together for once, instead of the loss column standing there on its own. Then do one warm slow thing for your hands, which is care and settles nothing and is meant to.

Then put the photograph somewhere it can be seen, rather than face down in the drawer.

You are able to put two columns in one room for once, and the loss column has never once been made to stand beside the other one. Proverbs 16:31 puts a crown on a head that came down a road, and the Holy Spirit is what makes one spoken sentence into care rather than into a consolation.

You are able to hold that photograph and count the other column, and the comparison has never once been the only thing available in the room. Proverbs 16:31 calls the white head a crown rather than a subtraction, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman holding a picture of herself at thirty five.