Why I Cut My Hair.

So for those of you who hadn't noticed yet, I cut all of my hair off. It was a recent decision, but a very thought out one. I'd like to put it on the record why I did what I did, because it wasn't just for a change. And maybe if you don't like how it looks you'll be ok with that after reading. Or not. I don't really care.

   Lately I've been thinking a lot about culture and identity, my culture and identity specifically. Not just as an American, but as Nevadan, as a Sanders woman, as me. Over the past few years I have seen myself changing my outside to fit what I think will be best received by others. I can remember a time in my life, during high school specifically, where I felt totally comfortable with who I was. I didn't answer to anyone, I didn't try to fit in, and I didn't try to be pretty. My close friends knew who I was and where I stood, and that was all I needed. Other people judged me immediately from my appearance, but to be honest, I kind of liked ruining their expectations of who I was. It was a time where I felt truly abandoned to the Lord, nothing and no one holding me back. I was so free.
   But slowly that changed, whether it was a boyfriend who preferred me to look a certain way, or other people that I knew would judge me by my looks. And then I came to Southern California! I didn't realize until this semester how much pressure there is to look a certain  way here. I remember being so comfortable in Nevada just wearing jeans and a t shirt every day, but here I constantly feel the pressure of making an appearance, and I finally had enough of it.
   I need to get back to who I am. I've found myself in the shoes of some girl that I don't really know, which is why I think I feel so uncomfortable with my looks sometimes. I am not this girl that keeps up appearances. I'm the girl who dyed polka dots in her hair, just 'cause. I'm the girl who hates expectations based on my looks or my gender. I'm not the girl who molds herself into those expectations. Cutting off my hair was a way of running away from that girl that I don't know. It's a way of rebelling against that pressure. It's a feeble attempt at freedom, with the hope that God will go the rest of the way in freeing me from the temptation to simply please other people.

   A lot of my friends tried to convince me not to cut off my hair again, but really that made me want to do it more, just to prove that I can without feeling like a disappointment. So, I'm kind of saying... "I'm a girl. I have short hair. Deal with it." My heart's desire is to not be concerned with anyone's opinion but the Lord's. I did this all on my own, not in response to anyone telling me this is how I'm supposed to be, and it felt really good. I want to be free again, and for me, this is a step in the right direction.

   So, there. If you don't think it looks good... big deal. Tell me. It's something I want to be ok with. I want to live life with arms open wide to the Lord and whatever He brings my way, instead of hoping and praying that I'm doing things right. I know it's a superficial thing... but I'm hoping that somehow the short-haired, relaxed, joyful Nevada girl inside me will come out in response to my outward change.

May it be so.

Ministering Angels

After I wrote my last post, I continued to struggle with feelings of discouragement and isolation, despite the hope that God had already given me. I felt like I had already come face to face with so much heartbreak and desperation, and I was beginning to feel desperate myself. Every set of eyes with hopelessness in them and every person whose dignity had been taken away I took as a personal blow to my inner being; I took it to the core of who I am until I doubted even that. God has called me a mother to the motherless, and yet I felt helpless in this huge place, so full of people who need that kind of love. I want to save everyone, I want to fix everything, and when I can't, I get overwhelmed. I can still feel myself being pulled into a place where I am tempted to want so badly to help somehow that I lose hope and am not able to help a single soul, not even myself. My doubt in who I am as a lover makes me incapable of love.
But God is faithful, and the day after I posted my reflections on the "City of Angels," I opened up to read where I had left off in Walter Brueggemann's Prayers for a Privileged People, to a passage called "Sustained by Angels." Irony. This is what waited for me toward the end of the passage:

"So we pray in the Lenten season,

give us primitive freedom to

take full stock of Satan and the power of

evil still among us in our prosperity and

wealth and sophistication,

and give us primitive openness

to your ministering angels

who are present with care and gentleness."



I'm finding myself in a balancing act. Balancing reality with Truth, and trying not to let reality win out. My eyes were taking in the realities of the pain of individual people, the systemic injustices, the inequalities. But I had not yet practiced looking for the Truth, and my heart was totally unguarded. I realize now that along with my perceptiveness in seeing the wrong things-- the injustice, the pain-- there must also be an openness to God's ministering angels. I had to admit my weariness, already, and ask the Lord to minister to me by His angels.

I am starting now to find a balance. I'm searching for what it means to have the freedom to take full stock of Satan's work in this city. And it is evident, as on the metro the other day when a homeless man got on with a box in his hands and sat down on top of it. The train started moving, and the man looked around at the crowded train and asked "Where is this train going?" and not a single person in the crowd around him answered. "Where is this train going?" He looked like a puppy who had been beaten too many times, who had to muster all his confidence to say it loud enough, though no one would look him in the face. Finally a woman five rows back answered him, to my great relief. But the stunning silence as the man looked around at everyone around him shocked me and angered me.

I am also searching for what it means to have primitive openness to God's ministering angels, and God has given me plenty of opportunities to be open. There are glimpses of hope here that give me that balance between reality and Truth. The reality on Thurday night was that a friendly, talkative young man named Teddy spilled his guts to Kim and I on the metro, about his drug addiction and rehabilitation, his relationship with Jesus, and his recent breakup. The Truth is that what Teddy needed was a face full of compassion and someone to listen to him, and God thought we were special enough to fill that role. In reality, the homeless man we saw for the first time walking home the other day was an example of societal tragedy and injustice. But the Truth is, Kim had prayed earlier that day for God to send her someone hungry, because she couldn't finish her lunch that day. God did; his name is Raul and God put him there so he could have Kim's sandwich.

God has answered my prayers by giving me opportunities to look strangers full in the face and share in their humanity. These people minister to me by allowing me to love the way that God made me to love. I am still in a balancing act over here, and I've found it to be more of a battle with my emotions than I thought it would. I need prayer for focus, for my thought life, and for encouragement. But I'm finding the balance more every day, and it is beautiful.