I sat in my cap and gown surrounded by my classmates. In only a couple of years, I had become nearly unrecognizable. Glasses replaced by contacts and the end result of 3 years of braces. Tanning minutes were expensive and good posture was cheap but they made a difference all the same. Short red hair to long blonde locks. It wasn’t long before they noticed me. “Lauren McLemore as ‘Most Changed’ – 2016 Graduating Class”. I finally had their attention. Personality was irrelevant because finally, they saw me.
I sat a little ways off watching my girl friends learn to salsa with the locals we had met earlier in the night. A girl a little older than me came and sat next to me. She reached out to grab my hair and looked at the piece in her hand. Her body language changed and she sunk down in her seat. She let go and then grabbed a piece of her own dark hair, looking to me and telling me about how much she hated it. How she wished that she had mine. My pride was exploding. But in that same moment, my heart broke for her. How offensive to the Artist when the painting can find nothing but flaws in itself. Something needed to change.
I sat in the bathroom as one of the girls on my team pulled pieces of my hair through the dye. Little by little, pieces of blonde becoming long strands of brown until there were none left. Who would I be? People liked blonde hair. Little girls played with blonde-haired barbie dolls. Boyfriends liked blonde hair. Who would I be now?
1 Peter 3 – ¨There are men who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty. What matters is not your outer appearance – the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes – but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God this way…¨
I would be no longer known for my hair. What should I make of this clean slate?
1 Timothy 2 – ¨I want women also to be in humility before God, not primping before a mirror or chasing the latest fashions but doing something beautiful for God and becoming beautiful doing it.¨
How lovely to serve a God that we don’t have to impress with outer appearance. How lovely to revel in unconditional love. How lovely to learn to love ourselves in the same way.
