Finding Momentum

So I’m cut­ting my hair on Sunday–no big deal, right? I’ve been cut­ting my hair for the past eleven years (one mir­ror, one trim­mer and nerves of steel) to vary­ing degrees of suc­cess. Well… my stan­dard of suc­cess means that after my hair­cut, I should a) still be rec­og­niz­able as me and b) not elicit laugh­ter (a com­pli­ment here and there wouldn’t be bad, either!).

Sun­day, I gave myself a pretty bad hair­cut. It was a really hot evening, and I was impa­tient to be fin­ished. Well, buzzing trim­mer in hand (with no guard), I mis­judged the angle of my head and on my way up, and… whoops!

In one fell swoop, I had a crater on the back of my head. Fur­ther inspec­tion with a mir­ror revealed the hor­ri­fy­ing truth: It was bad; I could give the ozone layer a run for its money. And really, all I could really do was laugh.

I think this was the icing on the cake to a long trial period in my life where I’ve just real­ized how uncool and incom­pe­tent I am. I’m not very suave. The words that come out of my mouth can be Shock­ingly Dumb. I can be for­get­ful, I can be inse­cure, I can be totally, totally awk­ward. I’m a Neanderthal.

In short, I can fail in more ways than I ever thought I could, and I’m not as well put together as I thought I was, and that’s been super depress­ing to come to grips with.

I’ve been learn­ing the hard lessons of who I really am. I’ve had my pride knocked around a lot. Between myself and Sarah, I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m a Total Idiot when it comes to emo­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and all that good stuff (who can relate?!).

I’ve made mis­takes at work. I’ve been a bad friend. I’ve done a lot of things that just weren’t up to par. I’m actu­ally not as good of a guy than I gave myself credit for.

But, maybe that’s what leads to the laugh­ing. Maybe this is just it; maybe I’m going through the wringer to get hum­bled and get a fresh begin­ning on this post-college life. Maybe this is exactly what it feels like to know how much I need Grace, and to be at my wits’ end regard­ing my own abil­i­ties to accom­plish any­thing Good. And maybe there’s that joy that… heck. Crater or no crater, I’m loved. I’m not that big of a deal, and that’s not that big of a deal.

I know I need God. Dang. That’s the one thing that echoes through my mind every morn­ing. I can’t make it through the day with­out your Grace, Jesus. I don’t care about any­thing else.

A verse, ever-quoted through this blog, is James 1:2–5. The words stum­ble through my lips by losers and fail­ures like me, mak­ing them all the more powerful.

2 Count it all joy, my broth­ers, when you meet tri­als of var­i­ous kinds, 3 for you know that the test­ing of your faith pro­duces stead­fast­ness. 4 And let stead­fast­ness have its full effect, that you may be per­fect and com­plete, lack­ing in nothing.

5 If any of you lacks wis­dom, let him ask God, who gives gen­er­ously to all with­out reproach, and it will be given him.

So maybe it’s going to be okay. I’m still grow­ing. I’m still learn­ing to depend on Jesus.

I’m gonna go find myself a hat.