Letting Go Pt. 1

Hello, everybody. I meant to write sooner, but this past week has been a little busy.
Let me start off by telling you a story:

I was very excited to get my hair cut last Tuesday. It was pretty long after 9 months of free growth and wasn't looking the best, so I decided it was time to trim! I left school to make the journey about 50 miles northeast to a city by the name of Midland.

>Something you will soon learn is that I really do love my hair, maybe too much.<

See, the reason I travel an hour to simply get my hair cut, is because I really trust the lady that does it there, and she's never given me a bad cut. I arrive with, my dearest mommy, about 5 minutes before my scheduled appointment, everything's going great! Until...

*suspense*

My regular hair-cutting virtuoso is out sick! The secretary says we should have received a call so we could reschedule, but we never got one. She offers politely to have someone else cut my hair, and I think time stopped for a moment. Everything inside me twisted up in horror! I couldn't talk! I looked at my mom for some sort of comfort, but all she did was say, "C'mon she wouldn't hire anybody that sucks at cutting hair!"

So, I gave in.

Not even the regular lady that washes my hair was there, every comfort I had found there, everything that I knew, and was familiar with, was gone! I felt like I was making my final march to my execution, as the soccer moms and beauty queens all watched in silent horror and mourning.

Suddenly, the over-played, chart-topping hits that were being blasted over the radio, were replaced by a lone trumpet player, off in the distance, quietly confirming the end with his slow, sad, hymn.

If you're still reading this, I'll cut to the chase. The lady cut off too much, I asked for a little trim, about 1 1/2 inches taken off, and she decided to almost cut to my hairline in the back. The sides used to be below my chin, and now fall just below my earlobe! Oh no!!

For the rest of the night I was nothing less than devastated. My mom apologized for egging me on, and I knew I couldn't hold it against her, but come on, that was 9 months of hair! I remember the last thing the lady said to me was, "Look at all that hair!", pointing to the floor at what she had just cut off.

Yes, look at all that hair. Look at what's been a part of me for the past nine months. It was more than just a part of me physically, but mentally, also. That hair had been with me through the absolute toughest part of my life, and to see it laying on the floor, soon to be thrown away like trash, made me want to scream. It held so much more "weight" than what could be seen.

---I've already written quite a bit, so I'm going to split this post into 2 parts.
Part 2 will tie all of this in spiritually. How am I going to relate a haircut to our daily spiritual struggles? Well, I guess you'll have to wait and read Part 2 and find out!---

-Sam