My head itched. A lot.
I remember walking out of our ministry school in Guatemala about 5 Tuesdays ago, wondering why I had been scratching my head all afternoon. Aware that several members of our squad had suffered from lice in the previous weeks, I thought it best to have Emma, our team lice-checker, (among other things) check my head for lice. As I flipped my head over on the busy sidewalk of Chimaltenango, Emma announced that yes, I was plagued with the dreaded bug. At the moment I was happy, because it meant I got to wash my clothes in the washer and dryer at the base instead of by hand. Unfortunately for me, the happiness was soon to become a slight tragedy.
I enlisted the help of Abbey, Hannah, and Kelsey (three of my teammates) over the next couple weeks, but wasn’t super diligent about having them comb through my hair. If I was up at night, I would think to myself, “oh, I can keep hanging out with everyone in the common room, I’ll just have them check my head tomorrow.” Unfortunately, I only had them do the treatment about three times a week, so the lice remained. I thought my lice was gone right before I left to hike the Volcano Acatenango, as I had no nits when Hannah checked my head, but I was to soon discover how wrong I was. About a week after I returned, I had Emma check my head. To my great distress, I had even more lice than before.
Immediately, I decided I would do everything in my power to demolish the nits instead of halfheartedly performing treatment. I knew I had to do a lice treatment every single night until they were destroyed.
The issue was that I couldn’t remove the nits myself. I had to ask people on my team to remove them for me, simply because I cannot see the back of my head.
This was an issue for me, because I prefer to do things myself. I would have much rather been able to take out the lice by my own power, instead of asking Hannah, Abbey, and Kelsey to repeatedly pull out the combs and headlamps. I had to humble myself to ask them every night to take time out of their day and serve me. This taught me a lot about pride and the humility required for me to ask them to help me.
As soon as we got to Thailand, my team began to joke about me shaving my head because they were so tired of taking out nits. Believe me, I have considered it several times. But, jokes aside, we all wondered when the lice would finally be gone. I was using lice shampoo, we were performing daily treatments, but the amount of nits was decreasing at a slow pace. One of my squad leaders, Alexis, suggested I use listerine to kill the lice. At our trip to the grocery store I picked up a bottle for 70 baht (about 2 dollars) and poured it on my head that night. I wrapped my head in one of my shirts (that now smells like listerine, thanks to less-than-stellar clothes-washing in buckets) and went to sleep.
The next day, I combed through my hair and asked Kelsey and Hannah to check me for lice. The results?
5 nits and no bugs! This was huge for all of us, and we were a little upset we hadn’t thought to use listerine before, but we celebrated because it meant my lice was basically gone.
As for right now, I am still doing daily head checks but there have been barely any nits, which is great news. I think the Lord was waiting for me to realize that so often in my life, I attempt doing things myself (like removing nits from the back of my head) that simply aren’t possible for me in my weak human ability. I need to surrender this to the Lord and put aside my pride, allowing Him to remove the nits and bad things in my life. He is more than willing to help me, but I must first bow in humility to His power.
This being said, if I ever get lice again, I’m gonna have to shave my head.
(Also, a huge shoutout to Hannah, Kelsey, and Abbey for being my fearless lice removers. You guys are rockstars and I owe you my life).
all glory to God
MG
