I could feel it spreading. The panic. It started to grip me. Starting in my stomach and slowly creeping up my chest, squeezing my heart and laughing like a movie villain as it continued to spread up to my brain. I started to hyperventilate.
Just calm down! I told myself roughly. It’ll be okay.
But really, I wasn’t okay.
I was handed what felt like a dead fish, but softer, silkier, and it smelled lovely. As I turned it over repeatedly in my hands, it would settle with dull “flop” and lay there lifeless. It peered up at me as if to say,
“How could you? I thought we were friends?”
I replied, “Exactly. That’s why I had to let you go.”
Ever since I was in high school, I’ve struggled with self image.
“This is too big. That’s too small. Your nose isn’t right. You have ‘cankles’ (calf/ankles).” Etc. But something that’s always been there for me, like a warm ray of sunshine on a freezing winter day, was my hair. No matter what, I’ve always loved it. It’s length it’s color, the things I could do with it, the way it would whip around in the breeze, making me feel like Pocahontas, even it’s unruliness and craziness. All of it. I’ve always had it. It’s always been there for me. And I loved it.
I don’t know if anyone has ever been as emotionally attached to their hair as me. It was my security blanket, something I could hide behind, something I could count on. Something that usually whenever I cut it, I say for about a week and a half, “it’s so short!”, even if it was just an inch or two. Sometimes even tears are shed. Like the one time I let my mother cut it, and she accidentally cut it crooked, so another inch or so came off of the already 5-ish inches that were lying helplessly on the floor.
And now, it’s gone.
That’s right folks. Gone. To just below my collarbone. I was the girl with the hair down to the lower back. The girl who was winning the longest-hair-on-the-squad competition (which apparently I was the only one who was actually competing in, cause ya know everything is a competition). And now, I just let myself fall to somewhere near the bottom of the racing pack.
As I sat outside on the porch, in the dingy lighting that reminded me of a hospital hallway in Serbia, getting eaten alive by insects, I let go of that security blanket.
But holy cow… It was hard.
God is calling me to something greater. God is calling me out of my comfort zone, out of my security blanket and into His loving embrace. To prepare me for things that are inevitably harder than cutting off 6 inches of my hair. To prepare me for battles that lie ahead where I need to find my security in Christ and not things that are merely a trifle. He’s telling me that I should be finding my identity in Him and not my hair, or anything else for that matter. Wether its physical appearance, friends, boys or something else entirely, I should be looking to Him.
How ridiculous does it sound, finding my identity in my hair… But it’s true, that was me. I clung to that hair like it was my flotation device on a stormy sea after a shipwreck. When all the while, I should have been clinging to the cross. To the perfect son of God, Jesus, who was sent down to die for me and for my sins, who took my imperfections upon His shoulders and gave me His perfection so I could enter into eternity with Him. Jesus, who raised up from the dead three days after He was brutally crucified on the cross for me and my sins. For you. That’s how much He loves us.
I am an imperfect person living in an imperfect world full of other imperfect people who are trying, like me, to fill their lives with imperfect things. But because of Christ, I am made perfect. Because of Christ, when God looks and sees me, He doesn’t see my imperfections, but He sees Christ’s perfection, which is bestowed upon me because I have accepted Jesus Christ into my heart as my Savior.
Jesus or hair? Hmmm. God is saying you don’t need your hair, or what you think of as a perfect body, you need Me. Find your worth in Me.
So now, here I am, with short hair. Its a new reminder for me of my ability to look to Christ when things are hard and not hide behind my hair. A reminder of my worth in Christ no matter what I look like.
God doesn’t care if you have short hair or long hair, blue eyes or brown eyes, big feet or little feet, black skin or white skin. He loves you just the same and is waiting for you to come to Him. To call on His name and accept Him. So, what will you do?
