I Cut It Off Myself In The Bathroom

Back home, when a storm comes through, nobody stands in the wreck the next morning blaming the tree for going over.

They say it was a bad one. They mean the storm. Nobody blames the tree, because everybody there has seen what the wind does and knows what it can take out.

I want to begin there, because the way you have been telling yourself this story has the tree in the wrong place.

There was a night. You were in the bathroom. You had scissors, and you did something, and it was not planned, and it was not a haircut in any sense that anybody would recognize.

And afterward there was the cleaning up, which you did alone, and then there was the morning, and then the explaining, and then the months of it growing out with people making remarks and you saying that you had fancied a change.

And in all the time since, you have thought about it as a thing you did.

That is not wrong exactly. Your hands did it. But it is the smallest and least useful true thing available about that night, and it has been the only one you have been carrying.

What was actually happening

Let me ask the question nobody asked, because I do not think anybody did.

What was going on that week?

Not that night. That week, and the month before it. Because a woman does not do that out of nothing. It is not an act that arrives on its own out of an ordinary Tuesday, and if you go back you will find something, and it will very likely be several things at once.

Something was happening and it had nowhere to go. That is what the scissors were.

Not a decision about hair. A pressure with no exit, and a body reaching for the only thing in the room that could be changed in ninety seconds.

You are looking at the mark left by a pressure rather than at a choice about your appearance, and that night has never once been about hair. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman what was actually happening in a room she has only ever seen one way, and Psalm 147 says what God does with people who are broken and what He does with wounds.

And here is the second half, which is where the shame sits.

The shame is not about the act. It is about the strangeness of it. A woman who has been a competent adult for thirty years did something at eleven at night that she cannot explain in any sentence that sounds sane, and so the whole memory got filed as evidence of something wrong with her.

But look at it again. A person under a pressure with no exit did an unusual thing once. That is not a defect in a character. That is what a pressure with no exit produces, in anybody, and the fact that it produced something visible is the only reason this one is still being carried.

You are carrying a night as evidence about your character, and it has never once been anything except the mark of a pressure with nowhere to go. Scripture in Psalm 147 says He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds, and the Spirit of God is the one who reads a hard night correctly.

He bindeth up their wounds

There is a verse in the hundred and forty seventh Psalm and it is two short clauses.

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3, King James Version)

Bindeth up their wounds.

That is what you do with an injury. It is a physical, practical act, done by somebody who has come close enough to reach. It is not instruction and it is not assessment. Nobody binds a wound while explaining how it happened.

And notice the category the verse puts a person in. Wounded. Not failed. Not foolish. Wounded, which is a thing that happens to somebody rather than a thing they did.

You are put in the category of the wounded rather than of the wrong, and there has never once been a verse anywhere that filed a hard night as a defect. It is written in Psalm 147 that He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a woman out of one category and into another.

And there is something else in the ordering that I want you to have.

Healeth the broken in heart comes first. Bindeth up their wounds comes second.

The heart, then the wound. The inside first, and then the visible thing. Which is the exact opposite order from the one everybody else used, because everybody who saw you that autumn responded to the hair, and nobody asked about the first half at all.

You are attended to in the right order by somebody who starts with the heart, and the visible thing has never once been the first thing He goes to. The Spirit of God is what puts the heart before the wound in a woman's own account, and the written word says He healeth the broken in heart.

One sentence, and then something warm

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves.

Tell one safe person, or an empty room, one true sentence about that night. Then do something warm.

The sentence is not about the hair. That is the whole point. Something like: I did that because I could not stand the way that month was going. Or: I have never told anybody what was actually happening that week.

You are telling the truth about a week rather than about a haircut, and the hair has never once been the thing that needed saying. Psalm 147 says he healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds, and the Spirit of God is what brings the real sentence up out of a woman.

One sentence. Four seconds. To a person if there is one, and to a room if there is not, and the room version is not a lesser version.

And then, immediately afterward, do something warm and slow with your hands or your hair. Not as a reward and not as a repair. Because a wound that has just been named should not be left in a cold room, and warmth is what you give somebody after they have said a hard thing.

You are able to say one true sentence about a night nobody ever asked about, and it has never once needed to be explained in full to be set down. The written word in Psalm 147 has God binding up wounds rather than asking about them, and the Holy Spirit is what makes warmth afterward into care rather than into consolation.