A Fistful of Hair

There are down sides my baby having so much hair! The other day we had an incident that seemed to happen in slow motion. I was across the room and was adoring little Gracey from afar as she sat on Grandma's lap. She is in love with her hands right now and was busy admiring them, flinging them around as if directing a choir, and then it happened....she found her hair!. At first she was just kind of petting it, I thought...."how cute!" as her long hair began weaving through each of her fingers. But then, (I know you can see where this is going) she got a fistful and decided to grab it. She began screaming, and my mom couldn't figure out what the problem was. I dashed across the kitchen into the living room and began attempting to pull her hand from her head. It was hard though, the more pain it caused her, the harder she pulled and clenched her fist.....finally....freedom....but there was an aftermath for dear Gracey. She cried for quite awhile and I am sure that she had an awful headache and her head was tender for the remainder of the day. I have been thinking about this for about a week now. The funny thing is that even as adults we still do this....wrap our fingers through our hair and pull and pull and pull. We may not physically pull our hair, but when we are hurting or caught up in sin, we often continue to create more pain as we try to deal on our own. We weave our fingers through our hurts, habits, and hangups (I swear this isn't a STEP commercial), and we grip onto them so tightly causing ourselves more pain and chaos. We want to let go sometimes, and to stop the pain, but sometimes we have been doing it for so long that we don't know how to stop. We feel helpless like Gracey. Then, there are people in our lives who can see the pain that we are in and they see our destructive behaviors, but they cannot figure out the root problem, they cannot "release our hand from our hair." (just like my mom with Gracey...she couldn't see what the problem was, she could hear the shrieking, but couldn't solve the problem). I imagine God watching us, he is often admiring us, and we bring Him joy, but then He can see our hand going for our hair, he sees us weave our fingers through it, and clench it as we get ourselves wrapped up in it. I imagine Him grieving as we refuse to ask for help, because He knows that He can release our "clenched fist", but we are too stubborn to ask for help....as we say in STEP, He sees that our "asker" is broken! But....He waits patiently to release us and give us freedom and peace from the pain that we are in. When we finally understand that God can give us the strength and courage to let go....I imagine Him saying, "at last my child, I can rescue you, I have been waiting patiently for so long" as he works to unclench our fist, and slide our hair from our fingers. And just like Gracey, we do have an aftermath to our hurts, habits and hangups,sometimes it is physical pain, sometimes it is more emotional, but just like I held Gracey, comforting her through the pain, God will hold us, comfort us, and bind up our wounds.