"Almost cut my hair..."

(And yes, that title is a quote from the David Crosby song on the C,S &N Deja Vu album.)

I pity the hair stylists who land me in their chair. I place upon them so much responsibility as I describe my vision for a "look" that communicates both, "I refuse to fulfill your expectations of an American Charismatic pastor's wife," and "I refuse simply to follow the latest trend." Usually, I have compiled from three or more glimpses of haircuts gained while riding the London underground a vision that I attempt to communicate to Texas hairstylists with wild hand-gestures and words like "messy," "a bit uneven," "unique but not weird," and the ever-popular "edgy". Even the best stylists have resorted to presenting me with large books of pictures and saying, "Just point to what you mean," attempting to hide their frustration that I am trying to channel my huge inner need to make a statement through their tiny scissors!

Recently I left a local Azle stylist with a decent haircut. We had communicated as well as could be expected and I looked fairly "uncategorizable," which made me happy. I should have been fine for at least a month. I wasn't. Whether it was the intense Texas summer heat or the fast pace life had taken recently, I just wanted even less hair on my head than the geometric edges left to me. Ridiculous thoughts I had never had before came and would not leave: "I could probably cut hair--I do calligraphy." So, on Memorial Day when it was really hot and all the shops were closed, I picked up the scissors and proceeded to do my own version of Annie Lennox.

I'll spare the details, but a few days later, I sat in another stylist's chair again using words like edgy, messy and unique, but now asking her to "fix" what I had butchered. To fix it, she had to make it really short, since I had already taken it to short. When she finished, I felt a great degree of resolution. I assumed that that the satisfaction was simply a hair crisis averted, but for the last few days, I've been thinking it was more. Indulge me while I make sense of it. (And though this blog entry may have seemed gender-specific until now, here's where it goes universal...)

I have spent years studying God, the world, the culture, and the Scriptures because I could not help but do it. It was my worship, suggested to me by no one but the forces of my own heart. If I found a moment's down time between all the activities of suburban church and family life, I ran to a pile of waiting books, journals and a computer and continued to build my stock of revelatory observations about this amazing Kingdom journey that God inspires. Everywhere there was treasure and I was the explorer. In the arts, the sciences and even the business world (where I had formerly counted myself a real outsider), I found both evidences of, and potential for, God's touch! And I looked at it, thought about it, and attempted to record it much like Monet recorded the light that flashed upon a landscape in a single impression.

Recently, it became apparent to me through the wise counsel of others, that my little aresenal of collected thought could indeed find a welcome outside my own brain. It was time to take my inner world on the road, so to speak, and let it inspire and affect others! What followed is well known to any artist who attempts to connect natural passion to necessary promotion: a lot of work, planning and packaging that some days feels right and other days feels like embarassingly disorienting self-agrandizement and finds us saying, "What am I doing?" I am used to unearthing revelation that makes people stop and wonder, not trying to compete with all the trendy Christian things "out there"! My friends were right in nudging me outward, but there were things to process.

I honestly believe the haircutting fit was somehow related. I was hating the sense that I needed to add extra "grooming" to myself to "look good" in a world where appearances were everything. Wasn't the spiritual information I had enough? The haircuts I found myself longing for reminded me of the way medieval nuns are portrayed in movies--shorn messily close to their heads, with no regard to appearance. In some way, I think I was longing for just the simple life of devotion I had before I thought anyone might be watching. I wanted the extra weight of not just "being myself" but now "packaging myself" to be whacked off, no matter how it left me looking. I wanted to be free from the temptation to preen and posture. I didn't want to succumb to the performance-orientation and competitiveness that smacks of religion rather than Christianity and ultimately chokes true worship.

Of course, it's only hair. It doesn't really matter either way. But just as I begin to aplogize for choosing this topic for a blog entry, I think of prophets like Jeremiah and Hosea and I think perhaps I don't owe an apology. Jeremiah's physical appearance was often metaphorical and Hosea's metaphor even extended even to his marriage. It seemed God used all aspects of the prophets' lives to "make a statement"! Who could have thought that the torture I put the stylists through could be related to a Bible story? (I don't think I'll tell them that.)

Funny, I have made a statement this time with my hair--not to society, but rather to God. To Him, I am crying out, "Help me believe NOW--as I emerge slowly from the sanctum of obscurity-- what I have always believed: that you are the Master Artist not just of my inner world, but also of my destiny and the path I am to take. Help me look past all the politics and competition that dances around the fringe of the Kingdom--stop me somehow from being intimidated by it and refocus me on You! I don't want to play the game or sing the song that marketing demands. I only want to continue to share my inner world of worship with those who need to be warmed by it. I am willing to work hard, but I am not willing to lose my life of worship. Deliver me from the 'strife of men' and teach me to live in a secret place with you, even in the midst of a crowd--or Christian feeding frenzy."

I really did cut my hair... I may never need to physically "shake it off" in the same way again, but I am sure I will continue to apply the lesson learned. If I am not enough, just as I am, to be thrown like seed to the wind in the hands of the Harvest-Lord, I will never become enough by adding the polish, scheming and technique that I pick up from scanning the market horizon.

To read what I'm really saying in fewer words and without any cosmetology mentioned, go to Micah 6:8 and Psalm 131