The Haircut (a.k.a., Growing Pains

As she was cutting fist-fulls of hair from my head, my hair stylist told me this story:

“When I was younger, I always wanted to have short hair and my mom wouldn’t let me. Then when I was in beauty school, I asked one of the instructors to cut my hair and she wouldn’t either. So one day when we were on break, I had one of the other students cut my hair. We had like 15 minutes. Maybe 20. And we walk back in, and my hair is soaking wet, and it’s all cut off and this other girl just looks at me and says, ‘I hate your hair.’”

At this point, I maybe should have wondered why my stylist was choosing to tell me this particular story on this particular day. Snip. Snip.

She continued, “I told myself. I don’t care. I’m going to rock this haircut. And I did. I went out and got some product, and I learned how to style it, and I rocked that haircut. I got so many compliments. It was like two weeks later and that same girl came up to me and said, ‘I actually love your hair. Will you cut mine like that too?’”

Then she spun me around to face the mirror.

Prophetic Analogy

I love this analogy. And make no mistake: it is an analogy. It reminds me of the prophets whom God sent to demonstrate with physical representation the message He had to share. Hosea was sent to marry a prostitute to declare God’s continued devotion despite Israel’s unfaithfulness. Ezekiel was sent to lie on his left side for 390 days and on his right side for 40 days to bear the sins of Israel and Judah respectively.

I much prefer the message in a haircut.

I’ve gone from one extreme to the other in the last several years – growing my hair nearly to my waist, then cutting it back to chin length.

And now…

I thank God I am not a prophet; I just wanted a change. Yet with this change, God reached into my life and gave me a physical representation of a spiritual principle.

More than my hair changed with this cut.

This is the same idea that underlies the concept of sacraments in those denominations who practice them. There is something that goes deeper than a symbol. There is an outward manifestation of a spiritual happening. Like God appearing to Abraham as a smoking firepot (Genesis 15) or to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3). God’s presence, unseen beyond the physical enactment, changes it from a mere symbol to a sacrament.

I’m not saying cutting your hair is a sacrament (although hair plays a notable enough role in Biblical history, particularly in the Old Testament, that it wouldn’t be entirely unprecedented.) I’m saying God is meeting me here. The same way God always meets me here, wherever here may be.

This time, He has given me a picture to understand.

I’ve grown out short hair before. I know what is coming. Some time from now my style may be beachy-sand-blasted whether I want it to be or not. Still, there is something deeply symbolic in the transformation.

Sometimes you need an outward change to represent an inner manifestation.

And the manifestation I’m hearing is this: I have given you what you need. What you do with it now is up to you.

What You Do With It

I suspect this message is not just about hair. This message is about life. It’s about phases and chapters, changes and growth, pain and “rocking it” anyway.

I love this haircut so much.

The style? Shrug. My personal jury is still deliberating. But the haircut, I love. I love the change, and I love the growth that is coming. Even when it might be visually painful.

What I intended for change, God intended for a lesson.

I am going to rock this haircut. I am going to rock this haircut until it grows into a new phase.

And then I am going to rock that one, too.

Thank you, hair-stylist Hilory, for a lesson worth learning. And a rockin’ haircut to boot.

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Janet Beagle, Ph.D. serves as director of graduate programs for Purdue University’s College of Engineering and is a writer, a Bible study teacher, and a student of God’s Word. In her spare time, she likes to eat other people’s cooking and hike with her two- and four-footed friends. Read more of Janet’s Christian reflections at www.mustardpatch.org