Thoughts on Taking Care of Hair

If the Holy Scriptures calls our hair a glory, then that must be a good reason to take good care of it. That means different things for different types of hair.

I'm guilty of being a slacker when it comes to my hair, which is, in part how this whole head covering thing started. Not that I was simply being vain...

Let me explain. About a year ago I was suffering from depression. I do that. It comes and goes. Well, one of the things I've done in the past, several times in fact, when depressed, is cut off all my hair. Notice I did not say: Go to the salon and get a hair cut. No, I cut off all my hair when I'm depressed. Once, I took a set of clippers and the one inch guard, and buzzed it all. My feminist friends loved it. My not-so-feminist friends rolled their eyeballs and didn't say much. I kept getting second glances from some very masculine looking women at the grocery store, too.

Not a place I wish to return to in my life.

A year ago, I did the depression hair cut with scissors.

And then I repented.

I don't mean to say that I regretted the cut, but that I repented. I felt convicted. Like I had shamed myself by doing this and that it was a spiritual act. Like I needed to just let my hair grow long, as an act of obedience to the one who made my hair.

About a month after the haircut, the Bible study I was in studies 1 Cor. 11 and I felt convicted, so started wearing headbands and arty looking scarves a lot. Sometime in May I spoke to my priest and explained what I was feeling like God might be calling me to do, and he affirmed it. Talking to Fr. J about it was like a fleece...if he said OK then I could know I wasn't just being "willy nilly" or doing it because I didn't like my hair on some deep level and wanted to spiritualize the urge to cover it up for vanity's sake until it grew out. My husband was agnostically supportive at the time. Now he's a staunch advocate of me doing this, just for the record.

So here I am a year later, and I have to say: I have NOT been taking good care of my hair. After all, why bother, right? I just stick a scarf on it every day, so what's the use? I've been using PERT, for crying out loud. On curly hair!!!!

Well, someone at knitting group suggested I try going "No Poo" and just scrubbing my scalp with conditioner, then doing a rinse and more conditioner which I'm to leave in my hair. Two of my daughters also started doing that.

My youngest's hair has looked like straw for years and now it is soft and shiny with a bit of curl (it will get very curly once she hits puberty if she's like her sisters. She already has way more curl than they did at her age). My oldest's hair is also benefiting from this regimen.

Usually I wash at night, so have been sleeping with wet hair, and waking up to a huge mound of sticking straight up curls. This matters not since I stick a scarf on them and they flatten in a trice, but the other day I showered in the morning, wore a mantilla for morning prayers and allowed myself the luxury of letting my curly hair air dry with the conditioner in it. I was curious as to what the results would be.

I had a riot of rich looking curls with zero frizzing. They were beautiful.

I must say: We ought to take care of our hair. And then cover our glory. It's worth it. That way, we are offering a better offering to God, for one thing, I think.

And if there's a time late in the evening when the jammies are on and it's just me and dh, I think I should make an effort for my hair to look nice.

That's just my thoughts on the subject, for what it's worth.