I was halfway through watching one of my faves Macy Gray in a new music video when the thought crossed my mind, “I want hair like hers,” and just as quickly as I thought I wanted it I thought, “I’m going to get hair like hers.” From want to execution, the jump was quick.
Never mind the fact that I am all the way white…and Macy is not. This didn’t present itself as an issue in my mind.
Step one would be to find an off-book, under the radar hair dresser. I knew a proper-above-board hair dresser would never agree to giving a white girl an afro perm. I needed someone with grit. A back-alley-type girl who wasn’t afraid to do something bold….dumb is the word I now know in hindsight would be better placed here…but in the moment… I was feelin’ bold.
2 days later. It was done. I had a HUGE frizzy, white-girl version of a Macy Gray perm. And when I say white-girl-version what I really mean is it was awful. It didn’t work. I did not look like the white Macy Gray.
But, because I had done it, I was going to own it. I was convinced it was the best thing that ever had happened to my hair. All I had to do was hang it out the window wet and POOF there it would be 30 seconds later…in all it’s damaged, frizzed up glory.
But there was a major kink in my post-afro world (besides the million kinks in my hair that were not curls…definitely just kinks)… the husband, he was presenting as an issue in this new marriage to white Macy Gray. He hated it.
How did I know?
A few days post-kink we were at dinner and I realized he was doing everything in his power to not make eye contact with me…or so I thought. Turns out, he was trying to not make afro-contact, because everytime he did he laughed. Like had to hide his face he was laughing so hard. Y’all, my hubby couldn’t even look at me. For shame.
Long-puffy-story short, I lived with that glorious afro for a whole 2 weeks before I bid it farewell.
Saying goodbye to it and all the dreams of vibey-raspy-Macy-ness was hard.
I tried to say goodbye and I choked. Tried to walk away and I stumbled.
Friends. I’d like to say that this is the only time I have done something impulsive.
It would be a lie from the pit.
I am impulsive. Period. Always have been.
Choices are not hard for me to make. Risk is assumed in the story of my life.
I act-now-think-later on the daily. No one would ever call me calculated.
As my heart has matured in Jesus, I have seen the beauty and the brokenness of this part of my personality (which at times feels like the whole of it)
The beauty has shown up in the ways that God has given me BIG-HUGE-GIANT things to take on and made them a part of my story because He knows that risk is my jam and tackling big things gives me life. Saying YES to some of the scariest things imaginable…the most unpredictable risks, has been somewhat easy for me.
I see so much beauty in the wiring that he placed in me…the quirky, spontaneous, a-little-muchness that I bring to any table has served well the specific callings on my life.
Don’t hear me bragging. Keep reading.
However, the brokenness of this part of me has played out in the most interesting ways:
I have learned that my impulsivity has developed over the years this cyclical need to reinvent myself. When things are settled, and easy and mundane I am quick to look for change. Same and stable can often feel suffocating to me.
So the hard has been asking myself, “Is this God or is this me.” Man. Tough question. Is God telling me this or asking this of me, or is this being born out of my need for change, for unsettling, my desire for the rush of risk.
My desire for unsettling is born out of an inability to settle, to rest, to ground and root.
I have also learned that impulsivity doesn’t leave room for boundaries…and with no boundaries you enter into a danger zone of overwhelm.
And last summer, in the thick of completing an adoption, preparing to travel to meet my QueenE, the Lord began to whisper the first hints to my heart that it was time for change.
Duh, Lord. I’m about to head to China and pick up my child. No small change there.
But it wasn’t that. It was deeper. He was beginning to scratch the surface of something else. He was asking me to wade into the wreckage of unchecked impulsivity and take a really hard look at what had been affected by my lack of boundaries.
My heart didn’t know yet what He would be asking of me…but the excitement of the next risk was buzzing in my heart.
“Babe,” I burst through his office door a mere 4 days away from a plane ride that we knew would change us forever, making us a family of four, I mean to be fair we did have a lot on our plate at this point.
“Babe….let’s get rid of all of this and live in an RV.”
Insert better-half-heavy-eye-roll because I mean… I had once gotten a Macy Gray white girl perm. I had a track record of crazy. I’ll give him that.
I had no idea that these scratch-the-surface whispers from the Lord would not necessarily be leading to another BIG THING… but to a fine tuning of the zoomed in nuances of my heart and as a result a good hard look at the rhythms of my life.
What was coming was not big at all. It was actually tiny.
And that would bring the biggest struggle. That what He had in store for me was stripping, going smaller, peeling back, rooting down….all the things my heart was not super pumped about doing.
Stay tuned friends…much more to come.
Loved it, I think I saw you with the Afro!