FOUR LITTLE LINES
By Melinda Fish
I wish I were talking about lines of print. None of my books, magazine articles and blogs has drawn the immediate attention like the four little lines to which I’m referring now. I would have been happy to have had such a fuss over something I said. I’ve always wanted my small life to have some impact on others. Instead, what drew international attention happened over something more cataclysmic—four lines, a total of about 3.5 inches of permanent eyeliner.
In May of this year, Bill and I flew to South America, to our favorite country there, Brazil, to teach at the school of ministry in Ministerio Coelheita in Sapiranga, R.S., Brazil. It is important for you to know that not only is Brazil a blazing hotbed of glorious churrascarias and deep spirituality, but Brazil is the plastic surgery capital of the world. It’s the nation where I left my fat and part of my sagging belly in 2005, thanks to Dr. Ramilani@hotmail.com. It was destination of my “more of You and less of me” trip.
Before 2005 I had always teased congregations with, “OK girls, are we going to have the tummy tuck or the facelift.” Ironically or prophetically, I mean, it happened. God provided a way for me to have them both! My friend, Vania, the pastor, patiently explained, “Melinda, you are so thin here and here,” referring to my pencil-like forearms, but here no” (referring to my tummy swollen from the births of 2 babies who weighed 8 and 10 pounds respectively). I may as well tell you now that in two outpatient surgeries, the results of which are praised each year by my gynecologist who himself has over 36,000 patients, Dr. Milani dispensed with my belly fat and along with it, the wrinkles around my eyes and my sagging “jowls” which had prompted queries about what was wrong when nothing was. He reduced other things, too. All the surgeries were at a fraction of the cost of what even one of those surgeries would cost in the US.
But don’t be telling me it wasn’t God’s will. During my month-long recovery, I found a friend, a gal who served me during this period, Ana. One day as she helped me creep to the shower I casually said, “Ana, why don’t you come up to Pittsburgh and see me?”
She did. A few months later, she walked into the embassy in Sao Paulo and walked out with a visa to the US. She had such favor that the authorities who stamped her passport did not even examine her paperwork. Ana organized our Katrina outreach and started hanging out and absorbing what life in our congregation was like. Last year she graduated magna cum laude from a university a few miles from our home and then married Josh, a rocket scientist from our congregation. They now live in Waco, TX. I often reflect on what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to Brazil for plastic surgery. Could it be that God was not as put off by my plastic surgeries as others were?
So this year, recalling that truly “uplifting” experience, I asked Vania to make an appointment for me to have permanent eyeliner applied. The technical term is “microdermabrasion,” which being interpreted means “tattoo.” Before we left for the appointment, I logged on to my Facebook profile and asked for prayer from anyone who happened to be watching the news feed. I’d heard that having your eyeliner tattooed on was painful, and I wanted strength to have it done without needless suffering.
Was it painful? It depends on what “painful” means in the Greek. While the aftermath posed only minor discomfort; (remember that you are talking to the tummy tuck queen here) the discomfort of the procedure reminded me of the time I took childbirth classes. My instructor made a living by luring hapless mothers-to-be into the childbirth experience unmedicated, talking all about contractions and not pain. In my opinion, on the scale of 1 to 10, one being a mosquito bite and 10 being an amputation without anesthetic, the eyeliner application was a 9.5, childbirth, a clear 8. It was a strange form of pain, too, full of apprehension created by my mother who was careful to warn me not to run around with a pencil in hand, “You could poke your eye out!” Now 55+ years later this was the closest I had come to that cruel event.
I survived---barely. I am used to suffering, though, as a servant of the Lord.
I returned from my first microdermabrasion experience to have a look at my Facebook profile. My request for prayer had become an international controversy! People from the UK, Africa, New Zealand, South America, Canada, the Netherlands and the US from New York to California were all expressing either praise for my courage or rebuke for my obvious foray into the world of sin. For the next two weeks, people from a parade of nations were weighing in on my experience, but mostly weighing in on others who were weighing in. I couldn’t resist jumping in myself.
I love Facebook. Where else can you discover the answers to probing questions like, “What are my ‘friends’ in other countries having for lunch?” It’s a place to be normal and silly on an international scale. I remember being a pen pal to a little girl in Japan when I was eight. I took several weeks between letters. Now, in seconds, people in Asia were able to remark about my eyeliner.
You won’t want to believe it, but I had to have the whole eyeliner process done a second time because the first didn’t take. One “friend” saw that as a judgment of God. Others urged me to press on bravely in the face of adversity. Friends from Canada soundly rebuked the folks who accused me of not caring about the poor but having the gall to squander funds on myself. A couple of folks from the UK struggled with the knowledge that someone who was a servant of God could so quickly bow and with such abandon to the god of vanity. One person “unfriended” me having realized that they had obviously fallen in league with a person whose influence for Christ had been utterly compromised by this foolish act. Two days into it a “friend” from the UK realized that it was not his business to act as a judge in the matter. He wound up apologizing to me for judging me. I made friends with him. Folks who are able to admit getting carried away can emerge from the claws of legalism.
That’s what it was, the ancient controversy about matters of conscience and what is “legal” for a Christian to indulge in and what isn’t. That’s one of the dangers of Facebook: failing to realize that you may offend someone’s conscience by posting the fact that you are participating in something that someone else feels is wrong. It is now possible to offend people across the globe. Isn’t it great?
Inquiring minds want to know why I had to have my eyeliner tattooed on. The answer is that I have worn eyeliner since I was a teenager. When I look in the mirror, I feel “naked” without it. Two years ago I had a brain hemorrhage. I woke up one morning to find my right arm dangling and my right leg numb. God blessed me with a total recovery. However, I can’t apply my eyeliner as well as I used to. I thought what a blessing it would be not to have to go through this challenge every morning. I asked the Lord who gave me total peace about having the procedure as He did when I inquired of Him whether or not to have plastic surgery or go on a mission trip to Africa. ¬
Even with God’s approval, I had to have the whole thing redone. I do not know the cosmic reason I had to have it redone. I do not believe that reading judgment into disappointment is the way to discern the will of God. I don’t believe that events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, accidents and random acts of violence by human beings are the judgment of God, either, at least not since Jesus died on the cross. If I were God, having to have eyeliner applied and reapplied is pretty low on the vengeance scale when you are talking about mass murders and holocausts.
If God “concluded all under sin that He might show mercy to all,” maybe He’s more interested in turning my life experiences into opportunities for redemption. Do you think He (I’m talking about the God who created the images we behold through the Hubble Space Telescope) could use His creativity to turn them into something that suits His purpose –even permanent eyeliner? By His own admission, Jesus didn’t come into the world to judge the world, but He came to save it. So is He going to change His mind about me because I want to have eyeliner tattooed on?
I realize that in the Law of Moses, God told the Jews not to have tattoos. Way back then, tattoos were permanent signs of ownership, of slavery. For some people today, they still are. Samuel reminded Saul one day, “Man looks on the outward appearance; the Lord looks on the heart.” That admonition is fraught with meaning. God is able to look at a person and see more than the outward appearance. We can’t do that. Instead we usually stumble over the outward appearance because we can’t see the heart.
In light of the eternal scheme, a tattoo is only semi-permanent. One day, if Jesus tarries, I’ll be a pile of dust. In that dust pile will linger molecules of my semi-permanent eyeliner. Those molecules will merge with the dirt waiting for the resurrection. I am not commenting on the theological possibility of our tattoos showing up on our resurrected bodies, I’m thinking that the Lord doesn’t really care about whether or not my eyeliner was applied permanently. I think He cares much more that I wear the “tattoo” He gave me. It is the true mark of ownership, and it’s on my heart. I used to have an old “boyfriend” named Lucifer. He tattooed my dead soul with words that told the world that he owned me: hatred, jealousy, pride, self-righteousness, judgment. These are only a partial list. The words wouldn’t rub off no matter how hard I tried. They were permanent. But I got a new boyfriend named Jesus. He erased all those tattoos free of charge—you can’t even see the scars now. My forever tattoo is shaped like a big heart. Inside it is written, “Jesus + Melinda.”
(By the way, I have to have the lower lids redone!)
