Shave Day

(This is my new little nephew,  a man who really understands me.)

It finally happened. I kept wiping stray hairs off the bathroom sink like I do every day before leaving, but it took me so long to do it. I didn't notice as my mind was far away thinking about the carpool I was running to pick up.  Then back again to brush my teeth, ran my fingers through my hair a few times, and there I was again with a tissue, picking up stray hairs, over and over...and then the lightbulb turned on. Today is the day...shave day. I had decided to get it shaved off when it started to fall out, so that's what I did. If you are a woman, there are few days in your life that compare to shave day, and Lord willing most of you will never have one anyhow.

What to compare it to?  The day you got braces? The day you cut your childhood long hair off for the first time? The day you got into into a non injury car accident?  I don't know, hard to say for anyone else. For me its the day Leviticus 14:8 came to life, "he (the leper) shall shave off all his hair.." whoopee! I never realized when I read this years ago that I would really relate to it one day in such a personal and tangible way.  I have to say it was much easier than getting it cut short.  I will even go so far as to say that I feel unemotional about it, but still thought I should report it as a landmarker of significance in this journey.

You might have read the post where I explained what it felt like the last time I came out of anesthesia  following my second operation. I called it shredded world because that is how I remember it looked to my consciousness at the time. I remember feeling like a soul without a body. Well, today I feel a little bit the same, only this time a woman without any hair.

Hair does fit you into one slot or another. If its pencil straight, long and parted in the middle, you're in high school. If its gray, curled, and close cut to your head, your might be in the grandma group. If it's somewhere in between and colored, then you're probably in the in between ages, like where I have been hanging out for a few decades. But now, I'm just me. Not young me, old me, or middle aged me, at least as one is categorized by hair style and color, just Molly. Hmmm. I'm getting a feel for the Leviticus 14 leper,  something like being a chalkboard that is wiped clean with a damp cloth, or a floor that is swept and mopped.

With God I have learned there are no coincidences, rather He is aware of every detail and often coordinates them in miraculous provisional or instructional ways. I told my friend today about my one and only baby picture, a birth announcement sent to my grandmother (on mom's side) which was taken the day I was born, and by the way I had more hair then. The "why there is only one" is too long to tell now, but the story goes that when I got married our photographer made a slide show of Ben and I growing up, and guess which one picture could never be found again?!?  I was so upset about that I whined and complained to everyone, which included the creator of the universe.

A long time later I found a box with papers that had been cleared from my deceased grandfather's (on my dad's side of the family) bottom desk drawer.  Twenty five years before, for whatever reason, he threw a birth announcement of one of his four grandchildren into that drawer and it was soon lost in a collection of old wills, work papers, maps and the like. I was sorting though all the junk as a favor to my parents, and I still remember the moment I once again saw my little black and white, one eye swollen shut birth face again, and I couldn't believe the miracle!  Before I ever lost my copy of that photo years later He had answered my prayer with a thoughtless stashing away of an old picture in a bottom desk drawer!

Things like that story have trained me to consider the small things in life as significant because obviously nothing is too small to be significant to my Lord. So I've lost my hair. Is this significant? Yes! Why? Well that is part of the discovery phase. Why Lord? Why is this small detail important? What am I to learn from this? What are you saying to me while I am here? The leper didn't understand the drops of blood but I do. There is always something to leave behind, an old way of thinking, an old way of feeling that has made a groove in the soul which needs to be resisted. I'm willing, I'm actually excited. I know what these grooves are because He and I have been "dialoging" for a long time about a few of them. I just happen to be one of the most stubborn people He ever made so everything takes a long time to change.  It's been long enough already, so here's to new beginnings, and  of course, new hair one day down the road.