Replacement

I rarely get my hair cut. Not because I don't want to cut it, but more because it hardly ever moves far enough up my priority list to sound appealing on the evenings where I can declare myself kid-free. Normally so many months pass between my visits to the salon that I can donate to locks of love every time I go. I figure that makes it totally worth sitting through the "you wouldn't have split ends if you came in every three weeks" lecture that comes right before I tell the stylist how many children I have.

So when Steve and I were walking through the mall the other day while waiting for our movie to start, I figured I might as well get a trim. The girl who called my name was pretty energetic in a pixie kind of way, within five minutes I knew more about her plans for the weekend than I knew about my own.

Absentmindedly, as I listened to her big dilemma about what food to bring to the salon potluck, I ran my fingers through my curls.

There it was. My arch enemy: a long white hair. Not gray, mind you, because I've apparently just jumped straight from brown to white. So I did what any woman does when faced with a physical reminder of her age: I got rid of it.

"Ack!" my stylist interrupted herself. "Don't do that!!"

"Why not?" I asked, completely dumbfounded. I mean she of all people should know why I would want to pull my white hair, right?

"If you pull it out, it just comes back thicker," she cried, putting her hands up to her face in horror.

Well, that was interesting news. "I had no idea," I replied, wondering if I would now have to reconsider my staunch anti-hair dye stance.

I soon realized that this phenomenon didn't just apply to eradicating white hair. After all, I have frequently been on the "take chocolate completely out of my life" to "binge all night on chocolate cake with chocolate frosting" pendulum.

I've learned that I can't just take something away without replacing it with something else. If I do, it ends up coming back bigger and bolder than before. So when I felt God leading me to spend less time in front of the TV, this time I didn't take drastic measures. Instead, I replaced a portion of that time with more time with my spiritual antenna. I prayed, I dug deeper into God's Word, and I spent time just sitting silently in His presence. The amazing thing was that I was able to ration my television time without feeling like I was cutting off my right arm.

I have a long way to go, but I've found that saying Yes to God first is so much easier than saying no to sin later.

Totally worth a few white hairs.