Thursday, June 03, 2010

Going Gray

For quite some time, I had been coloring my hair to cover up the gray. I would get a little weird when I would start to the see the gray hair starting to show. Honestly, I started getting a little "crazy" (in a funny way) about when and how soon I could color my hair. Almost to the point of obsessing about it. The fact was that I wasn't ready to be gray yet.

About 3 or 4 months ago I was reading The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, and the author told a story about a man who loved to read the paper. He faithfully retrieved and read the paper every morning. One morning this man went to retrieve his daily paper, only to find that there was no paper in his drive way. After first, he thought, "oh maybe it was throw into the bushes". After looking, there was no paper to be found. As he continued to look, his could feel his heart begin to beat a little stronger. Panic was setting in. "Where is my paper?" he thought. With his heart beating more rapidly now, he noticed in his neighbors driveway a newspaper. In his mind, he began plotting how he could take that paper without anyone noticing. At that very moment something inside this man's conscience snapped, and said, "What are you thinking? It's a stinking newspaper!!!" He immediately went inside, got on the phone and called the newspaper company and proceeded to tell them, "I need to cancel my subscription. The lady working that morning, asked if he just wanted to change his subscription to weekends. He responded, "No, I need to go cold turkey." This man realized that his reading the newspaper was out of balance and he needed to make a change.

You say...what in the world does that have to do with coloring hair, for me, everything! When I read this story, I could replace the newspaper with hair color and there you have it. I had become very out of balance with being preoccupied in coloring my hair. I could totally relate to this man's feeling of panic.

Now please hear my heart... This is in no way is a "Don't Color Your Hair" campaign. That is not the issue for me. The issue for me was my own personal view toward it.

So now here I am going gray and learning to be okay with it. I'll get there. But it was a good lesson along the way of moderation in all things. God is really teaching me about this in many respects. More blogs to come in that area.