Becoming Like My Dog
Three months to the day of my hospitalization and high fevers from Covid pneumonia, my hair started falling out. My hairdresser had warned me this might happen. At first it was just a nuisance. I have always had a thick head of hair and I had plenty to lose. But then it became alarming. Handfuls came out in the shower, so much that I couldn’t just let it go down the drain More handfuls came out when I ran my hands through it. I left my mark on the sofa cushions behind me as it simply fell out while I was sitting still. For weeks I was shedding like Grizzly. My complaints to my husband fell on deaf ears as he’s been losing hair atop his head for a decade or so. That’s different, I contended; men are supposed to go bald! He joked about how often mine and Grizzly’s hair filled up the vacuum’s filter. I put up with the jokes because he was vacuuming!
Grizzly doesn’t seem to mind losing his hair. Sometimes we stand in the yard and I brush him and we watch it blow into the wind, hoping it becomes insulation for a mother bird building a nest. Grizzly’s hair loss seems to fit into the circle of life better than mine. I can’t find purpose in mine. I have newfound empathy for friends who’ve lost hair to cancer. When you’ve been severely ill and are finally making a recovery, it feels like insult to injury to have dead hair all over your clothes and your furniture. It is a reminder to me of what my body had been through, and despite looking healthy, how much healing and restoration is still yet to come. Scarred lungs heal incrementally and hair grows about half an inch a month. I have fairly long hair, which is now less than half the volume it once was. To grow it back to the way it looked when I left the hospital in February will take 16 months. I do not want to wait 16 months for a good hair day! Maybe it will never look like it did before and that might be fitting, since I am not who I was before either.
In April of 2018 , I’d written about the invitation to let my life change which came through this enormous furry dog. I had no idea what I was opening myself to when I said “yes” to Grizzly and to God reordering my life. In August of 2019, I wrote a post titled, “Make Me Like My Dog.” I was wrestling with writing a speech and Grizzly became the inspiration for a prayer I prayed. I wanted to be as devoted to God as Grizzly is to me. Part of that devotion means that for four years Grizzly took every walk with me. Even though we are close to the same size and he’s stronger and faster and has bigger teeth, he submitted to a leash and a collar every time I asked and walked summer and winter as my companion. I have wrestled with this kind of obedience myself. Despite having been in the ordination process over a year (Anglicans move slowly and deliberately through this), it was still somewhat of a shock when I passed from “aspirant” to “postulant” and my priest said, “It’s time to put you in a collar.” I ordered the black shirts and he cut a small piece of black electrical tape and put it down the center of the white collar to denote that I am near, but not quite, to completion of this process. The first few times I wore it, the word ‘yoke’ kept coming to mind. I was so conscious of the unyielding, inflexible plastic around my neck.
The word ‘obeisance’ showed up in a devotional book I was reading. Obeisance - a movement of the body made in token of respect or submission. Acknowledgement of another’s superiority or importance.
Anglicans bow at the altar and as the cross passes them. These are signs of obeisance for all of us; but I, as a postulant to the diaconate, am called to take the church to the world. I wear the identity of obeisance around my neck. And when I’m going to and from work, I wear it into the world. The first few times I entered a public space wearing it, I was extremely self-conscious. The first time I had to stop at the grocery store for dog food on the way home from work, I considered taking the collar off and leaving it in the car. Am I ashamed of you, Lord? Or do I just want to hide in anonymity among the shoppers? Am I afraid of what someone will say to me? A woman in a clerical collar is not a common sight at the Winn Dixie in Wetumpka, Alabama. The cashier asked me if I was a chef! (When I told her I worked at a church, she opened up about a wrong path she’d gone down but how she’d recently found a church and her life was changing.)
One man actually asked me if it felt like a yoke. Though I’ve never been an ox, it seemed a fitting description and reminded me of how Grizzly, by collar and leash is tethered to me. My priest told me that for quite awhile the collar would wear me, and it does. It forces me to remember who I am, who I belong to, and what my purpose is. At the end of a long work day, while waiting for my car’s servicing to be completed, I was approached by a stranger who wanted to talk about the troubles in her life. It was the collar that invited her.
Grizzly’s red collar has an ID tag inscribed with his name, my name, address and phone number. His collar tells you who he is, who he belongs to, and who to call or where to return him if he is lost. My white collar serves the same purpose. It’s an embodiment of Paul’s words in Romans 13:14, “Put on Christ.” It reminds me who I am, who I belong to, and where my home is if you see me lost.
When I asked God to make me like Grizzly, I didn’t see shedding or clerical collars in my future. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have prayed that prayer. Just being honest. But here I am, shedding my hair and wearing a collar and walking toward the answer to “Make Me Like My Dog.”