The Warrior Princess Ceremony

Friday night I had an impromptu party to shave off my hair, since it was starting to fall out and was making a mess. Here's the invitation I sent out (note my face on She-Ra's body):

Join me as I become a full-fledged warrior princess!
This sacred ceremony will involve the application of war paint, which is used to indicate the fierce determination of the warrior; donning the battle-worthy superhero garb; and the shaving of the warrior princess' hair, a symbol of the stripping away of any hindrances to the warrior princess' offensive.

Click here to check out the pictures.
I didn't have room to add everything I shared about giving thanks on Facebook, but I can share it here.  It's all excerpts from Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts:

“A good God plans everything.  Everything.  So a good God can only…make plans for good?  He only gives good gifts?  A thing of evil cannot be created by a good God?  

All God makes is good.  Can it be that that which seems to oppose the will of God actually is used of Him to accomplish the will of God?  That which seems evil only seems so because of perspective, the way the eyes see the shadows.  Above the clouds, light never stops shining.”  

Here dies another day/During which I have had eyes, ears, hands/And the great world round me;/And with tomorrow begins another./Why am I allowed two?  

Eucharisteo is how Jesus, at the Last Supper, showed us to transfigure all things – take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness.  I have glimpsed it: This, the hard eucharisteo.  The hard discipline to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty.  The hard discipline to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good.  The hard discipline to number the griefs as grace because as the surgeon would cut open my son’s finger to heal him, so God chooses to cut into my ungrateful heart to make me whole.  

All is grace only because all can transfigure.

You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are.  You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies – though that never occurs to you.  Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God’s] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.  

I look for the ugly beautiful, count it as grace, transfigure the mess into joy with thanks and eucharisteo leaves the paper, finds way to the eyes, the lips.