Be a Difference Maker

I'm starting to change . . . THE change. The verse, "Outwardly you are wasting away" is taking shape right before my eyes. I'm also wasting away inwardly, in my mind. Yes, inwardly in my heart and soul I do see myself being renewed day by day, and I celebrate that. But the outwardly-wasting-away thing is real, and hard.

I've always battled with sleep-deprivation and, from watching women I love grow older, I knew that menopause would bring new challenges to my sleep. I was not excited for it. And here I am. It's just as fun as I imagined it would be. I lay awake at night on the verge of sleep but, as exhausted as I am, it just teases me and doesn't actually come. When it does it's so shattered and dream-filled. There's no rest involved. So I start the day sleep-deprived.

My loving and generous Mama shared not only her gift of insomnia with me but also her sinus woes. They are also getting worse, day by day. So I'm starting the day sleepy but add in the pressure on my sinuses and my eyes become squinty slits and I zombie my way through the day. My hair is changing too. It took me years to understand and love my curly hair. We were finally getting along so well. But then menopause hit and the texture of my hair changed and now it feels dry and frizzy. The more "how to do curly hair" videos I watch the more confused I get. Once again, my hair has decided to do whatever it wants and has left me frazzled, frizzy and frustrated.

How do I go from one day being able to read things on my phone just fine to needing to wear a chain with reading glasses around my neck in the course of a week? Last week (and every week for 49 years), I could eat a huge (not an exaggeration) bowl of ice cream every night. This week I gained two pounds from it. It's snowballing.

So now I'm sleep-deprived, dizzy, squinty, frizzy and feeling really bad about myself in general. That's the state I was in Thursday night when our little square in Elizabethtown blew up with people for our third annual Christmas tree lighting outside our office building at The Marriage Hub. Before they turned the lights on we were host to a meet and greet with the Grinch himself, kids were decorating cookies, and lots of people were coming in to gawk at the old Moose building. It was a very busy night.

I was manning the "ticket booth" where we were selling tickets to our upcoming Christmas movies. I was so tired, in every way. I was frustrated with my lack of ability to focus and stay on task. I felt bad about my physical appearance. The enemy was having his way with me. It was the last minute of the night when a family came to the window of the "ticket booth." At this point my mind was mush. A young mother handed me her credit card to process the payment for the tickets. I went to the desk to put her info into the computer and the card was declined. Darn it. I knew it was because I read the numbers wrong and there were no reading glasses in sight.

As I went back to the window I looked with embarrassment at this young mom with her little kids and said, "I'm sorry, can you read the numbers to me? I don't have my reading glasses and I can't see them." She was gracious (and probably reveling in her youth) as she whispered the credit card numbers to me and I typed them into the computer again. In all of this I felt someone staring at me. Once I finished entering the info I glanced up to see the little 5 or 6 year old daughter staring at me. I gave her a smile and she tilted her head and simply and thoughtfully said, "I like your hair." Wow.

That little statement. I stopped the ticket transaction and gave her my full attention. I told her thank you and tried to express how much that meant to me. I encouraged her to walk down the street tonight and tell every woman she sees that very same thing . . . that she would be a difference maker.

Last night, a week later, was our first movie night. I had only gotten a few hours of sleep and my deprivation was growing. I was more frazzled and zombie like than the week before. And I literally had done nothing to my hair that day except use water to try to tame the frizz and put it in a pony tail. When I was saying goodbye to the people leaving that same little girl casually walked by me on her way out, looked back and said, "I like your hair." She's making a difference.