Just an inch off the top….

… or maybe more

Disclaimer: This blog is a tad lengthy, however I believe that the pictures at the end make reading it worth it, and no you can’t cheat and just scroll down. I may not know if you cheat, but Jesus will  (yea, I just went there).

I like my hair… no actually, I LOVE my hair. I wasn’t aware that had these kinds of feelings about my hair until recently… when God asked me to sacrifice it to him.

For a while now I’ve realized that when it comes to seeing myself as God does, it’s as if I’m looking through a fun house mirror. You know, all distorted with a long forehead, short squat body, and arms that reach to my feet. I’ve spent the past few months asking that God show me how He sees me. Asking him to show me who I am in him – my identity in Christ.

I guess for a while I thought that it would be an overnight thing, like I’d wake up one morning and my vision would be clear. That morning has yet to come, and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to happen in that way. God is working on fixing this fun house view of myself, but He’s doing it one step at a time. I don’t always realize what’s happening right away, but down the road I can look back and see that my vision has cleared up a bit; looking in the mirror my arms are now the proper length .

Recently He’s been working on how I see beauty and whether or not I believe that I‘m beautiful. This is really a sore point for me; it has been for most of my life.

 I’ve never thought I was beautiful; I’ve had body issues for so long. I’ve always measured whether or not I was beautiful by society’s standards, and not once have I measured up. I’ve always see beauty as an outward thing, and for so very long I’ve told myself it’s not something that I possess. Sure, there have been moments when someone compliments me or when I look in the mirror and think “Not too shabby,” but they are fleeting, and why wouldn’t they be? I’ve spent my entire life determining whether or not I am beautiful by what others think, and more specifically, what men think. I’ve never taken it to God. I’ve never once wanted to believe that I was beautiful because He made me beautiful.

It’s been hard for me to believe that any beauty I possess is not a result of anything I can control…. I’m beautiful because I’m His creation; I’m beautiful because I’m made in His image; I’m beautiful because He is beautiful, and He lives within me.

This has just been so, so hard to understand and believe. For some reason I’ve been holding on to the lies I’ve been fed my entire life with a death grip (white knuckles and all), rather than diving into the truth of how God made me.  I’ve somehow held on to the idea that there are certain things about me that can make me beautiful, and without them I’m nothing special. One of these was my hair. It started with a conversation about lice. I mentioned that if I contracted lice this month (we’re living in a children’s home, it’s a very real possibility) I would not shave off my hair even if it meant that my teammates would have to spend hours combing through my thick, curly hair. I was surprised at how quickly I determined that there was no way I would shave my head. Why did I have such a strong reaction? I was surprised and asked myself why, and I realized that it was a beauty thing. I mentioned this flippantly to my team leader and her comment stopped me in my tracks…. “Then you need to cut it.”

Oh, if only I could dismiss that comment! I so badly wanted to but I couldn’t… God wouldn’t let me. I lay there on my mat thinking about it, what did my hair mean to me? And I realized the following:

My hair is thick, curly, shiny and a source of pride. Yeah, I complain about how it’s frizzy and how hot it is out here, but it really is a source of pride for me. I wanted to come home from the race with long, curly hair: the longest it’s been in a while. Even when I had my hair butchered in Bangkok, I comforted myself by saying that it was still cute and it would be a lot longer by the end of the race.

I never realized before that I had this kind of pride in my hair, but what’s more is that I never realized how I thought I could control my beauty in some way. I thought there were things that if I did might make me “beautiful” – i.e. “DO” my hair, put on makeup to hide blemishes, always wear nail polish to hide imperfections, and wear certain things that I thought really flattered me.

I’m not railing against any of those things, they’re not wrong, but they are not what I need right now. For me, they are wrong at this time, because they are what led me to believe that I am in some way in control of my beauty, that without these things my beauty is nonexistent. Which isn’t true – I’m beautiful because I’m God’s creation and He has made me beautiful, it’s nothing I have any control over.

“The essence of a woman is Beauty. She is meant to be the incarnation – our experience in human form – of a captivating God… So listen to this: beauty is and essence that dwells in every woman. It was given to her by God. It was given to you.” – Captivating

 After praying and talking to God (more like arguing) about this, I knew what I had to do…

I walked downstairs and asked Sam to cut my hair, she asked when, I said now. Even after my haircut, my hair was too long. So, as a team we walked down to the local barbershop for our team time to get my head shaved. I was blessed by my incredibly supportive and encouraging team. As the man took the clippers and my hair started disappearing I shed a tear, but assured myself that I was doing the right thing.