Blogger: Polly Boyette
We’ve all been guilty of getting out the scissors and attempting to lightly trim our bangs or the length of our hair. I know I have cut my bangs many times. Sometimes they turned out quite nice and other times I had to disguise my handy work by styling my hair a little different than I normally would. Usually these types of tasks do very little harm and go completely unnoticed by anyone else. However, on one occasion I decided to go beyond the bangs.
I wear my hair very short and normally have my hairdresser even shave around the sides because I have very coarse hair. But sometimes the rest of my hair doesn’t need cutting; only the sides need trimming. So to save money I decided to watch some videos of women shaving the sides of their hair. It looked simple enough. Why spend money just to have someone do such a small, easy haircut?
So I purchased some clippers and got my courage up. I started out very slowly and was very careful. However, when it came to doing the back of my hair I found it very difficult to see what I was doing. You know how it is when you’re looking in the mirror and everything is in reverse. But I was determined to keep going.
I thought I was being very careful, but the clippers suddenly zipped up the back of my head, cutting a path right through the middle. The more I tried to fix it, the more hair I shaved off. When I had finished, I had shaved the whole back of my head. Not cut, shaved. I was horrified. There was nothing I could do. Actually, I had done too much already.
Just at that time my sister, Robbie came up the stairs and found me standing in a pile of hair that should have been on my head. She didn’t blink for an hour. I could tell by the expression on her face that my new hairdo looked as bad as I thought it did.
I quickly contacted my hairdresser, somehow thinking she could work a miracle and un-shave my hair. But after glaring at me with disbelief, she just told me to come back in four weeks when I had hair. I had to just live with my do-it-yourself haircut.
Needless to say, those were the longest four weeks of my life. Every day I would stare in the mirror, coaxing my hair to grow back, but four weeks felt like a lifetime.
Sometimes we take on problems in our lives ourselves instead of handing them over to God. We decide we know what’s best and convince ourselves that we don’t need to bother God when we can easily take care of it ourselves. Only after we find ourselves with no other alternatives do we turn the problem over to Him. We make matters worse instead of better by not calling in the expert. But God wants to be involved in every area of our lives. He wants to take on the big and the small problems of our lives. What are our chances of success if we do it ourselves?
“Jesus was blunt: “No chance at all if you think you can pull it off by yourself. Every chance in the world if you let God do it.” Mark 10:27 (MSG)
Don’t call on God as a last resort. Call Him first. Let the expert handle it. Also here’s a piece of advice. Watching your hair grow does not make it grow faster. Step away from the clippers. Let the expert do it.