To Pluck or Not to Pluck

As I was fixing my hair this morning, I was confronted by a gray hair. My hairdresser tells me that these hairs are brittle so the one I found was short and sticking nearly straight up in the midst of a fairly long mane of brown hair: very noticeable. I proceeded to pluck it out so it wouldn't be tempted to invite its friends to take root. I sighed with relief as the offending hair was discarded in the trash can.

As I went back to arranging my hair, I found another gray hair (gasp)! Over the past few months, I admit that I have noticed a lone gray hair from time to time (which is, of course, plucked out immediately), but never two at once! Twenty minutes later I had extracted four gray hairs! How could this be?

I was reminded of Easter years and years ago. My younger brother, two and a half years old at the time, was about to hunt for colored eggs in the yard. I held the basket for him so that he could focus on picking one up at a time. We didn't have many eggs so when he found all of them, he was disappointed about the end of such a fun game. We started tossing the eggs he found back in the yard as soon as he turned around to find another egg. Every time he placed an egg in the basket and turned to find another, I would throw the egg in a different part of the yard. After awhile, his face showed his confusion. He knew he had found a lot of eggs. Why weren't there very many eggs in the basket then? This was, of course, incredibly amusing for the adults to watch. (I was about 20 years old at the time.)

I started wondering if the Easter bunny was exacting revenge on me for messing with my brother all those years ago. Maybe the Easter bunny had contacted the Gray-haired Fairy to help him. There must be a fairy who goes around sprinkling gray hair everywhere so that everyone will look like her. Every time a person plucks a gray hair, she laughs her wicked laugh and sprinkles in more. Just like my little brother, we are confused. How can gray hairs still be there when I've plucked so many already? It cannot be an indication of getting older.

My son shared an out-of-the-blue statement with me last night. Hunter was telling his younger brother, Kaden, that he will have to listen to him when he's 50. "Kaden, when I'm 50, you'll only be 46. Everyone knows that a person becomes an elder at age 50 . . . you know, when their hair turns gray." (My son believes that anything said with confidence makes the statement true.)

So maybe I should just embrace the gray hairs that keep springing up. Then I would be an elder and everyone would have to listen to me, right? And now that I think of it, they're not actually "gray" hairs. The reason I can spot them so well is that they are silver. I love silver: jewelry, cars, platform sandals.

I could just consider them jewelry for my hair!

Proverbs 16:31--"Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained by living a godly life."