Going gray...

Gray hair is a crown of glory;
it is gained by living a godly life

Sigh.

I'm going gray.

And not just gray as in I-found-a-few-stray-gray-hairs-on-the-side-or-the-back-of-my-head. No, I mean gray, as in a nice large swath of gray hair smack dab on the middle of the front of my hair line. It's about a a nice square inch of gray hair in the middle of my head of brown hair. Right on my part line. And it's the hair that frames my face.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mind going gray. I'm sorta resigned to it. I'm pretty sure my mom had a head full of salt and pepper gray by the time she was 40 (but she colored it dark black until after I got married).  My sweet husband has had gray hair since he was 16. So I don't get a whole bunch of sympathy.

What I don't like is that it makes me look old. On a particularly tough day, I can look positively haggard. I get called Ma'am and get sympathetic looks from random strangers.

And I'm 35. I'm not ready to look or feel old. And I believe that gray hair can be absolutely beautiful.

I've seen it on my friends who are just now crossing into their 40's. They have a smattering of gray around their temples. I have a friend who's hair is regularly styled, and her stylist is able to hide her cute little gray streak.

For the past year or two, I've started coloring my hair, ever so little. But let's face it, I'm pretty lazy and it costs money we don't have. So, I'm trying to decide....what do I do about this gray?

I did a quick Internet search on attractive ways to go gray. And all the advice was for the 50 and up set. For the 30 year old graying set, the suggestion was essentially this: get it colored.

And where this takes me is to this place: I want to feel beautiful, every single day. I want others to think so too. But the beauty I want is internal. I want my beauty to be Holy beauty. I want to shine the radiance of Christ's love so brightly that the color of my hair or the makeup I don't wear or the simplicity of my clothes doesn't matter.

And that's my prayer. I tend to pray it a little more when I feel insecure--like the gray in my hair determines my worth as a woman, like when I feel that culture norms that I don't fit, like when I don't know how to feel about this gift that God has given me. So it's a prayer I pray often these days.

But the question still remains, what do I do with this hair?