I had two other posts in my head about the topic of buzzing all my hair off, but today I got my hair cut, and if my hair is already long enough to get cut into a style then I can no longer use the buzzing as a current experience/experiment.  So this will be my last post on the topic, and as such I want to lay out some of the things I have learned this month.

1. I still look like me.

That sounds silly, but there really was part of me that thought I’d look like someone else: someone tragically ill, someone with hidden issues, someone unrecognizable. But none of that was true. In fact, my husband said he kinda liked it more than some of my other hairstyles (and there have been a lot) because he could really see my face. Which brings me to something else I learned.

2. I hide a lot, and it’s unnecessary.

When I had really long hair I hid my face behind it, kind of like Violet in The Incredibles. When I had short hair I used sunglasses. And it’s not that I was hiding my face as though I thought my face was ugly, it’s that in covering my eyes I was actually creating a safe space for my soul, my personality, my fear of hurt and rejection that I kept bottled up and protected like a treasure. The eye is the window to the soul, and when I was scared of metaphorical monsters I could just cover my eyes and believe that if I couldn’t see them they couldn’t see me. But that’s also not true. What’s true is that there aren’t really any monsters, and if there are it’s best to see them coming.

3. Patience is a virtue, or at least there’s nothing we can do about the wait. 

I’m not ugly but I’m not Aphrodite either, so for the first couple weeks after I buzzed my hair I’d kind of forget about it until I’d walked into the bathroom and catch sight of myself in the mirror, at which point I’d be taken aback and kind of go “gyeuchhhh” to myself in disgust. But then, after going through 5 possible ways to fix it in the span of half a second, I’d realize that nothing needed to be done except wait, and it’s in the waiting that transformation happens. Christians all over the world wait for the kingdom of God in this sort of “already, not yet” tension, and weirdly that’s how I felt about myself. I was already everything I needed to be, but I was not yet what I could become.

So that’s it for now, at least about hair. I haven’t landed for sure on the next topic but it’ll probably be one of the following: marriage, sex, kids/parenting, or when you’re a pastor’s wife. Stay tuned….

Pictures from 2008 to 2019.