Oh my poor hair. Y’all, it has been through a lot in the past 30 years of living on this earth – crazy colors, weird styles, awkward haircuts and the whole shebang of products and styling doohickeys and accessories. And yet it’s still here with me, thank goodness, plugging along as I make my way through life.
When I was about 14 I highlighted my hair for the first time. My mom strapped the cap on me and used the crochet hook thingy to pull sections of my hair out all over my head. We painted the chemical stuff on, waited 30 minutes (I think?) and rinsed it out.
That was just about the first and last time that I home-highlighted my hair and it actually looked good, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t use every out of town volleyball trip or other opportunity to change up my color. We (me and my hair) have done super dark, accidental green, red-turned-fuschia, and more. Like I said, it has been a journey!
I have tried a few times to go back to my natural color and honestly just felt like it was too boring and went back to blond. 16 years of being mostly blond will kind of skew that a little bit, so when I started to think about doing something BOLD with my hair I thought what could be better than going darker? Not chocolatey brown, but what if I (GASP!!!) went back to my natural color with a little bit of fun thrown in?
I went to my wonderful friend Mandy who worked her magic and came out with a hair color that I’m excited about. But let’s talk about this: why do I feel like it’s a bold statement to have the hair color that God gave me?
I have absolutely nothing against playing with hair color or changing hair color or doing what we want with our hair – my concern is my heart behind it all.
For me to feel like I was beautiful I felt like I needed to be anything but what the Lord gave me to work with. This is one that could be applied to a lot of areas of my life, but I think sticking with hair today is best for brevity’s sake. I felt like I should only ever have blond in my hair in order to be pretty. I felt like I couldn’t go back to that dark blond without sacrificing beauty.
Why can’t I see that the Lord’s divine plan could actually include me with dark hair? Why am I not allowing myself to see that I was BOLDLY created to look a certain way? Who am I to say that what the Lord made with intention isn’t good?
While stepping out with darker hair and very little blond may not seem that bold, it is a bold move for me. It’s bold because it means that I am embracing with a ravenous spirit the woman God made – starting with the physical and moving into the heart. It’s bold because these poor, abused strands are known in detail by the one who created them. My job and my joy is to look upon them as beautiful for everything they are, and thankful even for the things they are not.
Will you join me? Boldly claiming the women that we are and that we are beautifully and wonderfully made, crafted to perfection by the One who gave it all for us? I hope you will 😉
And feel free to share your hair horror stories below. I’m in between the time that I dyed my hair black and then it turned to green after 2 washes or the time that I dyed the tips of my hair red and they turned fuschia about 2 days before I met Nate’s family for the first time. OY.
I think you look even more beautiful with your “new” old hair:). I want you to meet my precious friend Katie ( also a former student) who recently began writing her blog, MireandManna.com. I think you two would really enjoy one another. Xoxo
Oh my goodness, I LOVE that blog! I totally sat and sobbed for hours at her last post about their new sweet little girl. Just such a beautiful story!
End of high school. Chopped off my loooong hair to chin length. Decided to call it quits with my God-given stick straight and perm it a tight curl. When I look back at pictures, I looked like a 50-year-old substitute teacher. Awesome.
Every girl is created differently. Love your own! 🙂 I know there are some woman out there who envy your locks. I have a straight, black and shiny hair but I also wanted to color it light brown and hoping to curl it too someday. You know the saying “the things that you have are some of the things you always wanted?” haha I can totally relate to it. 😉
OH yes, totally relate! I always wanted perfectly stick straight hair and it just ain’t gonna happen. But I’m totally OK with that now!
I too have had a multitude of hairstyles, hair color changes in the last 40 years. A couple years ago I went round and round with my hairdresser about my highlights. I wanted what I would call linen color, which I never got. Never that is until I took the plunge and went all natural. Funny how hiding underneath all that color and bleach I had the color I had been yearning for! The older I get the happier I am with the body God gave me, or maybe I am just glad to have one to house this soul!!
Love your color and love you!
And I love YOU! Such a great lesson too – the more I have this color the more I love it and don’t miss the blonde anymore!
Looks great!! I almost always think people look best in their natural hair color, truly!
Summer of 2004 I decided, in the middle of the night, that I wanted caramel highlights. A store kit and an hour later I had burnt orange streaks in my hair that only the most die-hard Longhorn fan would be proud of. I spent the entire next day at a salon getting all the color stripped from my hair, a dark brown dye job and caramel highlights. Two weeks later a trip to the beach turned my highlights blonde (which I hated), so another store box of color left me with dark brown hair that was seriously damaged.
By the time my wedding rolled around a year later my hair was so brittle that I could hear it crunch under the grasp of my own hand. I cut it off to a very short bob on my honeymoon and vowed to never put color on it again.
Here I am, eight years later, with my God-given color plus a few silver strands. I have no desire to ever put color on my hair.
Isn’t that always the case that a haircolor decision comes in the middle of the night?! I know that was the case for me so many times! And I love your haircolor – it’s so rich and beautiful!
Looks great! You’re beautiful, no matter what your hair color is. I’m encouraged by your seeing an important message in “little” things such as coloring your hair. 🙂 Love and miss you, friend!
I love and miss YOU TOO!!!!
I totally thought the blonde was natural — but I think I always assume that unless it’s super obvious.
I think this though — your heart is incredible…and looking past the hair and to the heart takes guts. Love you!
Thank you sweet girl 🙂 I tried to justify it being “natural” since I am still TECHNICALLY blond…but yeah. Highlights are highlights 😉
I recently had a milestone birthday. I am now officially OLD. 🙂 My hair has naturally gotten dull and muddy with gray, not in a cute way. Heather, getting my hair colored and styled every 6 weeks is the best way I can justify spending a treasure trove of money, because it makes me feel like me again. I tried several times for a drastic change, strawberry blonde with dark red and blonde highlights. I have always been blonde. My hair did not co-operate with the red. Back to blonde but longer and flipped instead of my long time bob. I will go down some day, but this girl is going down swinging! 60 and sassy! Works for me.
I recently had a milestone birthday. I am now officially OLD. 🙂 My hair has naturally gotten dull and muddy with gray, not in a cute way. Heather, getting my hair colored and styled every 6 weeks is the best way I can justify spending a treasure trove of money, because it makes me feel like me again. I tried several times for a drastic change, strawberry blonde with dark red and blonde highlights. I have always been blonde. My hair did not co-operate with the red. Back to blonde but longer and flipped instead of my long time bob. I will go down some day, but this girl is going down swinging! 60 and sassy! Works for me.
YES! I say own it Lynn – your hair sounds SUPER cute!
My best (worst?) horror story was about two weeks before I returned for my sophomore year in college. For whatever reason that a 19-year-old has in her mind, I had taken to perming my naturally curly hair. Ok. That sounds extremely stupid (and was), but I was attempting to get even curls throughout my head (the bangs are ridiculously curly, while the back has nice curls). On top of that, I was “sun-streaking” my hair. Well, this time, my hair played a trick on me and decided that it was tired of being changed and turned this horrible shade of orange-red. Yep. With a head full of tight curls. To say that I looked like a cross between Little Orphan Annie and Raggedy Ann is an understatement. I cried for days. I also NEVER got another perm–just found someone that actually knew how to cut curly hair (imagine that!). Sigh. Growing up in the 70’s with brown, curly hair wasn’t easy.
Girl, I feel your pain on perming curly hair. I totally did that too because my curls were unevenly distributed!
Somehow I didn’t realize the blond wasn’t your natural color. I love your natural color and it looks perfect on you. 🙂 What you said here “For me to feel like I was beautiful I felt like I needed to be anything but what the Lord gave me to work with” just wrecks my heart. For years, I fought my naturally curly hair and tried so many things to make it be what it wasn’t meant to be. Now I’m slowly undoing all the damage (and btw, the one time I tried dying it blond was the worse decision ever) and learning to fully embrace what God gave me.
I’m LOVING the curly hair I hated for so long now – if only I’d known how cool it would be a few years ago 😉