Shorn

Bear with me... this is about more than it seems.

What's a girl to do when she suffers from the stress of tight budgets, deadlines, job hunting, relationship fracture, and friends in crisis?

She changes her hair, of course.  And because of stress contributor number one, she visits a hair cutter rather than a hair stylist.

Which results in five inches less hair in length and roughly five pounds less in hair volume.

I don't know where my hair went, but it's no longer at the back of my head. I feel bald in behind from ear to ear.  I can only be thankful it is now hat season, and that perhaps with no hair, my head may finally be small enough to fit a hat.

Of course hair grows back, and in comparison to starvation in the Sudan and testicular cancer not to mention everything being endured in the world the state of my hair is an unmentionably infinitesimal, paltry concern. So I'm not really complaining about it. I'm merely sharing my shock. I went from searching for some way to shake up my life while simultaneously wresting back some control to feeling scalped and vulnerable.

Again, not that my situation bears any resemblance, but in the bible study I'm following, the people have been led out of Egypt and slavery and Pharaoh and are figuring out how to follow God and trust Him. He tells them He will provide, He will be with them, and that He will be talking face to face with Moses.  They're quite keen to go along with that, and say, yes, Lord, whatever You ask of us, so shall we do.  Well, Moses is away from them for a few days, and they go bonkers, thinking God has left them, and they take matters into their own hands. That's where the golden calf business got them into trouble. They forgot to trust God, and things got pretty sticky there for a while.

I haven't been rescued from Egypt or slavery or Pharaoh, but I am having to put into practice... I have to live day to day my faith, my trust in God. He brought me here, back to Sohoe, to Lake Town, which I love so much. I have had this wonderful job that I have enjoyed thoroughly - honestly, there has not been one day that I have dreaded going to work. This year has been blessing upon blessing, and now I must believe that what comes next will be just as fine, that I will still be provided for.

I would so love to be able to carry on with the same job, in the same home, but I have to let that go. I can't turn what I have into a golden calf.  I do my part, of course: searching and applying. But the biggest part is to trust.

So I'll do my best to be stripped of anxiety rather than be shorn of more than hair.