The Rounded Brush

The round brush! It is the brush your hairdresser uses to give you the most perfect blow-out ever. I always leave the salon with the bounciest volume, shiniest locks and a clean smooth coif.

Then I go home and I get my same round brush and attempt the feat all over again only to wind up with one side straight the other side wavy. One side fluffy and full the other side as flat as a door mat or the rounded brush stuck in my hair.

I have sworn off the rounded brush after one too many times of that same incident occurring. I have seen my reflection in the mirror with a brush stuck on the side of my head more times than I would like to admit. I have seen my sister in tears for the very same reason. And just a few months ago I had to witness the precious little 5 year old girl that I babysit in the same precarious situation, with tears streaming down her face. I had to tell her that all women learn this and luckily she learned it at an early age.

Typically yanking the brush from your own hair while trying hard not to pull too much hair out with two functioning normal arms and hands is a hard task…doing it with a half mobile arm and a crippled hand is perhaps something else that should be celebrated.

My Mom had to deal with this the other week. Like I said-she learned to wash and dry her own hair but unfortunately the love/hate affair with the rounded brush came back to haunt her. She said it took her nearly over an hour to get the brush out. She was so exhausted from the experience she sat down and cried. I think I would have too!

But you know what-I bet you that was the best occupational therapy she had all day. She probably used her arm and hands more than she had all week. I am sure that it was not the most practical method of working her fingers and arm movements but she had to do in order to get the brush out. So yet again what looks to be a horrible experience can be viewed as “beauty for ashes!”

You know the more I think about this situation the more I see a silver lining. I haven’t been much of a Pollyanna these days but I am seeing this experience with a little more of an eternal perspective. Often times God sends things our way that seem like a darn rounded brush stuck in our head. We started out trying to achieve glossy, “Jermack bounce-back beautiful hair” with our life and instead all we got was a brush twisted around in a tangled web of hair and bristles. Then ultimately the knotted up mess becomes untangled and we are free of the brush. So we may not look like we just stepped out of the salon but we don’t have a brush stuck in our head anymore and we had to go through quite an educating ordeal.

Sort of like when we think we know where our path is going and we hit an unexpected detour and instead of that taking us in the wrong direction it really allows us to either avoid more damage or obstacles ahead. We come up better in the end. I need to remember that God’s timing is perfect, he has a plan that is far greater than my own agenda and I don’t need to despise the detour but rather take delight in the fact that I have a new road open for me.

No one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
-Isaiah 64:4 (NIV)