#683. Taking things from the head to the heart.
“Don’t stretch those out.”
Once again I have to begin a post with a statement from my wife. In this statement she was saying I have a big head. Not ego wise, just physically. I have a large melon.
I didn’t realize this, or that I have a hammer toe, until I got married and my wife pointed both things out. (I always just thought my big toe liked to spoon with the toe next to it.) Sure, hats never seemed to fit that well and when Mike Myers said, “Look at that boy’s head, it’s like an orange on a toothpick,” in the movie “So I married an axe murderer” I took it a little personally. But I never knew my head was larger than average until my wife stopped letting me borrow her sunglasses on road trips.
Turns out the width of my cranium stretched out the arms of her sunglasses, rendering them useless for her. So that night when I asked to try on her new pair of reading glasses, she wisely said, “Don’t stretch those out.” Fair enough.
As a Christian, I’m used to conversations that center around our head. In fact, every good Christian knows that one of our favorite things to say is actually about the head. I’m of course talking about the ubiquitous statement,
“The hardest 12 inches to travel are from the head to the heart.”
You might say it differently. You might have instead heard, “I believed it in my head but not in my heart.” Or perhaps, “I had the Sunday School answers, I had the head knowledge, but not the heart knowledge.”
But it’s a new year. This is 2010 we’re talking about. That phrase is so 2000 and late and if you’ve seen my Christmas card I believe you know I am so 3000 and 8. Here are three possible ways we can freshen up the old “head to heart” statement.
1. Take God from your “head to your hands.”
If that sentence isn’t destined for a social justice t-shirt I don’t know what is. At once it both tweaks the old sentence and creates a powerful, “Get off your butt” motivator.
2. Take God from your “head to your house.”
Is this in reference to hosting a pot luck supper at your house complete with crock pots? Is this in reference to hosting a blogger at your house that may be visiting from Atlanta? Who’s to say, but one thing is for certain, let a little love in your house.
3. Take God from your “head to your (h)wallet.”
I really wanted all of them to work on the whole alliteration tip so this h has to be silent. Like when basketball legend Akeem Olajuwon became Hakeem Olajuwon. But this one clearly is the perfect phrase for a fundraising event. It’s the kind of sentence that people who tell you, “Let me know if there’s anyway I can help you” but secretly just want to pray and not actually give you money, are going to hate. I love it.
Those are my three. (And I really struggled with the temptation to have one say, “Take it from your head to your hips” and then make a Shakira joke about how the “hips don’t lie.” But I didn’t because I’m mature.) You can have those three for free. Go on and take them. Put em on shirts or stickers or bracelets. Take some fresh tomatoes and cucumbers while you’re at it. The misses and I insist. You’re going to need it on the road you’re traveling. (Don’t know why I wrote that, it just felt right. Suddenly I was the farmer who helps Frodo in the first book from the Lord of the Rings.)
Have you ever heard some form of the “head and heart” idea?
