Good Hair

3:25 p.m. Today's project was to take Steve for a haircut after church, a project that suddenly occurred to me yesterday afternoon when I saw how long a bottom layer had grown down his neck! The normal procedure for 28 years of our marriage would be that he went on his own on a weekend afternoon and got it cut. Because he has mid-stage Alzheimer's now, he doesn't mention that his hair is getting long on his neck like he would have as recently as last year. At that point, I'd drive him over to Fantastic Sam's in the nearby Mission Grove shopping center, drop him off with cash for a cut and tip, pop over to Ralphs grocery or KMart next door and return before he was finished.

Things are different this year, because I need to handle all of the steps, including answering the questions the hairdresser asks about how he wants it, because Steve looks over to me for his answer. I simply say, "Just like it is, only short." Men have it easy, don't they?

Our hair really does define us outwardly, doesn't it? I remember telling my mother quite confidently how doctors could tell a newborn baby girl from a baby boy when I was probably four or five: "The girls have hair, don't they, Mommy? And the boys are bald!" I'm not sure how in-depth she had to get, because I only have a younger sister, so it would have been tricky!

These days, women take more decades to stop coloring our hair than men do, because we are reluctant to let go of our "crowning glory." It's pretty common to see 50+ ladies sporting brown, blonde, red or black hair, accompanied by bald or white-haired husbands, just like the two of us. "Vanity (or more accurately, "frailty"), thy name is woman," Shakespeare wrote. Oh well!

In I Corinthians 11:14-15, Paul discusses the length of men's and women's hair in a section of directives concerning order in the church. I remember parents going crazy when the Beatles started the long hair fad for guys, and this passage was undoubtedly quoted!

Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given to her for a covering.

Is it our young adulthood we would like to recapture, as many of us older ladies wear our original color and longish hair length? I remember an era when women cut their hair short after they had children, for less fuss; or for career women, for a polished, structured look to help them break through the slickly suited glass ceiling of the corporate world. Now we pretty much look any way we want to!

Steve had the requisite long hair in high school in the 70's, attested by his yearbook picture. His dad Lorenz was fed up, but finally gave up trying to get his younger son to cut it short. At the same time, as a college coed, I went with the the parted-in the middle, literally ironed, straight long hair. Then, as a hippie in Colorado I let it grow out crazy and kinky in the mountains. (The "natural" look).

This is one "girly girl" who is glad those days came and went!

As a few of us discussed at a facial and makeup party yesterday, women love to look beautiful, from head to toe. And, think of the number of celebrated women in scripture who are described as beautiful, ie., Sarah, Rachel, Rebekah, Esther. After all, who created beauty in every aspect of life on the earth? And who gifted man with joy in beholding that beauty? God Himself.

We need not become obsessed with our looks, however. Peter admonishes Christian women in I Peter 3:3-4, to concentrate on the way we appear on the inside:

Do not let your adornment be merely outward--arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel--rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.

We may want good hair, but we need good souls!