At some point or another, all of us have lost our phones, only to realize they’re in our hand, or our sunglasses, only to realize they’re propped atop our heads. It’s funny because the place we find these things is always the place we last left them. Whenever it happens to me, it is because I have far too much going on around and/or within me to remember where I last left the very thing I need.
In the last eighteen hours, the very thing I needed was that rainbow promise, and there was simply far too much going on within me to remember where I had last left it. The external happenings of my day were nothing out of the ordinary, but they were too much when added to what I had going on inside of my heart and my mind. So much so that I knew my only choice was to abandon normalcy and seek until I found what I was missing.
What I was graced with in the abandonment of normalcy was amusing, actually, because it is something that is very much a part of my every day, both in its existence and in what came about this particular day: my hair.
The majority of my life was spent following trends. Like most females, I wanted to fit in, to be part of “that group.” What that actually translated to was being lost and insecure; I either had no idea who I actually was or I didn’t like who I was and wanted to hide…or, more accurately, both. It wasn’t until just a couple of years ago that I was able to look the woman God created me to be in the eye and begin to embrace her. One of the ways this manifested externally was with my hair.
Seemingly superficial, our hair is actually in great part tied to who we are. We invest time and money into caring for and styling our hair, often employing it as a means of self-expression. One of the most difficult aspects of cancer treatment, especially for women, is often when hair is lost. Our hair is a part of who we are. As such, denying myself the right - the privilege - to be who God created me to be for so many years resulted in denying myself from being that person even in the way I wore my hair.
On my venture to find what was missing, God reminded me that His promise was right where He last left it. His promise is woven into the unique identity He designed just for me. I wear that identity from the depths of my soul to the very tips of my thick, wavy hair, and when I am walking in it, people see, people notice, and people speak about it. Yesterday it was a quiet reminder through a sweet drawing. Today it was a loud, repetitive reminder through the kind words of absolute strangers.