When Hair grows back....

 

Letter to the one with the shears pointed at her locks.

Beloved,

You will tell your friend that you want to cut your hair, just a few weeks after the breakup. She will ask you if you really want to do this or if its the pain talking. She has already held you as you cried, was one of the first people you told when it happened so she understands. You assure her that it is not the heartbreak, but the craving for something new. If only you knew that those two are the same thing.

You decide not to do it then, but months later, on a random August morning, you wake up to grab a pair of scissors and chop off 5years of dreadlocks. You do not really know what you are doing and why. 

Are you just chopping off hair, or are you letting go of an identity?

Is this just for fun or is this another way to silence the screaming inside?

Yes, it is unbearably hot and the hair has become too heavy to carry but is this not the hair you've prided yourself in growing for the past years?

It doesnt matter though, because the only thing more breathtaking than that first snip of the scissors is just how happy you are with your appearance afterwards!

What you expected to feel like regret ends up tasting like freedom and a new lease on life. Is it just you, or did all your heavy burdens lift themselves off your shoulders along with your hair? You spend months drinking in the delicious feeling of being someone you have never been before, of having no obligations to an established identity. The only identity that sticks now is Child of God, everything else is up for debate. You stop striving and fighting the feeling that you are somehow not where you are supposed to be. You accept you, for the first time in your life and you feel yourself content with the journey you have walked to get there. You are okay with the way things are now and only commit yourself to mourning the years you wasted trying to be anybody else but what God made you to be. This period of your life is coloured by emotional outbursts, tears of joy, excitement and passion all pointed in the direction of God,the lifter of your burdens. You taste and you see that He is indeed good and it is well with your soul!

But months later, hair begins to grow again , and with the sprouting of those tiny brown curls, you feel the old longings start to creep into your heart. You remember who you once were and even though you have no desire to be her again, it seems inevitable. It has been almost a year and yet, nobody loves you yet!

It is starting to feel like your old life, this new life. The old memories of unwantedness interrupt the taste of the new, bigger love you have committed yourself to. Only weeks after you congratulate yourself on shifting your focus off of male validation and onto the sustaining love of your Father, you go back to moving as though the only thing worth living for is romantic love. 

It is not as though you have forgotten what God did last year, i know. Neither are you unaware that you are being called to something higher. It is just hard to be someone you have never been before. The new year has been here for a whole month and all you have done is drown in your alone-ness. Instead of more love, it feels like all you have done is say goodbye to more people. Some days it feels like this calling God gave you is for pain. All you want is the new beginning that was promised that random August morning. All you want is to feel like you are beginning again....again. 

On this  day, when your hair grows back, remember that it is not the same hair you had back then. These are new strands, and although they are growing to look like the old ones do not allow your perception of them to be marred. Do not box them in with the old. Allow them to be the new you have always wanted.

Dear friend,

When your hair grows back, know this: that as your hair grows, you are growing too. And as long as you are growing, you are going to be okay!

Love. Light. Hope.

Siboe❤