Gifts in the grey strands

This year, after a 25 year habit of covering my greys, I stopped dying my hair. Now mostly white and silver hair grows from my head, rather than the dark brown I was born with.

My first grey hairs sprouted when I was about 13 years old. The grey hairs seemed one more indication to my young teenage self that I was faulty. Whether from bad genes or poor stress management, I was broken (oh the things I now wish I could tell that girl-self!). Not long after, I began to cover the greys with hair dye. I was happy to do it for a long time, and kept up the pretence of all-brown hair.

My grey hair may seem a strange topic for a blog about drawing close to God. However, when you realise that God is an alive and diligent participant in all of life, it may not be such a surprise.

God will use anything that we see, do, think, experience and participate in to communicate with us if we are open to it. Hopefully, that also means there’s opportunity for growth in the little things as well as the major ones.

I didn’t start this dye-free process seeking personal or spiritual growth. I was just looking for a way to make life a little easier. But I’m finding deep gifts in this transition, or rather God is bringing them to me, which is his way. I’m just now beginning to unpack and explore them.

The gift of a new perspective on change

So often in my life I’ve viewed change as loss, a cracking in the fabric of some part of my life so that it is no longer complete. The shadow of what is no longer there, for me, can dull the joy of possibility of what is to come. I mourn for what was and am slow to see the value in what is new. Whether it is a move from one home to another or one city to another, a job transition, a friendship that grows distant, a change in stage of life or ministry, or the process of aging, my focus sometimes fixes on what is no longer there. This can make it hard to notice and value what is good in whatever replaces or grows in place of the old.

In letting my hair grow out, I feel God challenging and shifting my perspective on change. He is prodding me to realise on a wider scale that, perhaps, just because something is different to how it was originally, it is not wrong. It is different. It does not make the past wrong or the future wrong. Some changes are expected, and are necessary. Some even bring about a goodness that was not possible before.

I’m realising that sometimes God has to let something break in order to release the new. We may have to leave behind what was good for one season for something else that is better for the next.

There can be loss with change. And it is right to grieve for that (and even to lament) if we need to. But the prayer this gift brings forth in me is that I become alive to the possibilities that change brings.

The gift of re-evaluating brokenness

Seeing my new hair colour, and actually kind of enjoying it, has got me rethinking what I’ve considered to be faulty about myself. Perhaps the conclusion that something about me is wrong or broken is not actually based on truth. Perhaps, instead, that reasoning is influenced by popular notions of what is acceptable and beautiful. In uncovering my greys, I’ve begun to see that there can be beauty in what is not necessarily the orthodox or accepted way. And there can be joy in taking one’s soundings of beauty or rightness from something deeper than the world that usually sways us.

In removing that label of faulty from my hair, I’ve been opened up to the idea that perhaps other, less surface aspects of me may not be faulty. And that has felt like freedom and like grace.

The gift of greater authenticity

Now I am not saying that dyed hair is universally inauthentic. Far from it. I believe authentic creative or personal expression takes all sorts of forms. But for me, letting my hair become the colour it now naturally grows has been a small step towards greater authenticity.

This hair journey, small though it is, reminds me that the invitation to ascend the mountain, to relate to God more deeply and fully, is necessarily a journey to a more authentic self.

It is hard to know which comes first. The movement deeper into God and deeper into my true self seem both to happen at once.

That uncovering of the true self can be deeply uncomfortable. Being confronted with our shadow side means being aware of who we are at our worst. But unless our eyes are unveiled, we won’t be able to begin the journey of leaving behind the shadow self.

Further, God can get all the way in with his love only when we are our authentic selves before him.

Have you found God teaches you larger lessons from the small or ordinary things in life? What is your natural reaction to change? Do you enjoy the process of aging?

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