If you have any bit of youth in your veins, and you're a girl, with long hair, "Don't cut it!" are words you've heard before. "It is so pretty and you'll hate yourself after you've cut it off," that is the advice they give. My senior year of high school was nothing short of a short hair epidemic. I can remember at least 5 different girls who freed their minds and cut their very long hair on the way out the door. I had a teacher taunt them by saying, "college guys like long hair," and although her comment was factual to some degree, it has unnecessarily marked my ideas about my hair. News flash, it's not just my hair. It's the fiery indecisive spirit that lives inside of me - what a terrible mix, (I'm basically a loaded cannon that can't hold a flame). It's college and the abrupt ending it made in my life. It's the slow transition I made to my hometown in denial that I'd ever stay. It's the neglect I gave to ordering B.R.Knuckles Insurance monogramed polos. Miraculously enough, it's the delay that is resting in the house I purchased in January and have yet to move into. It's a life of bitterness associated with tough people who are just trying to know Jesus better. It's a season of stress and frustration in a family I would rather have on a pedestal, instead of by my side. It's sentences that are vague enough to give you just a taste of the realness I want to communicate. It's a haircut.
So I go to my Aunt Marsha. Well, she's not really my aunt, but it's Kentucky, and my grandmother has so many cousins. Aunt Marsha is the life of any party, funeral or barmixtzfah, she'll make the event. Walking into her salon is like walking into the salon Robert Harling ventured into before he wrote Steel Magnolias. There's a bell on the door and Aunt Marsha is probably yelling a warm greeting from the back room while she shampoo's a regular's hair. Have a seat and she'll fill you in on all the tellings of the town, but she'll be most concerned about you. Truth be told, I'd get my haircut by her even if she did a miserable job- the stories she tells on my nene are worth every missed follicle. It's easy to trust a lady who you know will bluntly tell you if something looks ugly. So when I went in for a trim and decided on 6 inches she was happy to snip my long locks off. She shampooed and rinsed my filthy mane and struggling to comb through my long layers she spun me around to show me the knots. "If you're gonna cut it all off, I won't brush through the rest of the mess," she said, and for good reason too. But college guys like long hair- opps. She snipped all 6 inches and when I turned around and looked in the mirror I saw a soon to be freshman in high school with the nerves of a 22 year old. Since 2009, I've only gone to her for trims. I guess I finally wanted to cut more off than just the dead ends.
Have you ever had a season like that? The kind of season marked by a whole lot of mess? If we aren't careful we end up engrossed in the season believing the mess has some right to us, so we snip away and let go of the smallest things in order to appear healthier. In reality we aren't healthier, we're just gripped by the mess and convinced it has the upper hand. Well- here's the truth, a handy pair of scissors is more powerful that whatever mess you're combing through. I know this for sure- that sometimes the best way to get out of a mess it to cut off it's life.
Now I'm not giving you a license to kill, I'm just encouraging you to run after living and living well apart from holding onto what is quenching your ability to truly live. I don't know the mess or the vice in your life. I know I'm living proof it just takes one moment of bravery to take the scissors and snip the mess away. One brave moment is what started my journey blogging about my crazy family and life and dreams and goals and so much more. Another brave moment occurred when I first published this site after keeping it in the dark for so long. This morning, finding that I have reached one thousand site visit's propelled my bravery even further. My grammar isn't always squeaky clean, and I don't have a friend or a professor grade each post before it goes live but its raw and true and I hope you feel that I'm just across the table from you speaking each word. Now it's your turn, dear reader, embrace the bravery, cut the locks that seem to hold their grip.
