Gray Glory

Gray hair is a crown of glory, found on the path of righteousness.

Proverbs 16:31

In my youth, I never considered gray hair to be a good thing.

There were always the jokes about growing another gray hair from worry or how your kids turned your hair gray from who knows what, but I don’t remember hearing that gray hair was a sign of righteousness.

Having hair that started graying in my late 20’s, I started dyeing it and continued for decades. It was only when my hair person told me my hair was about 90% gray that I decided to take the plunge and chuck the processing that had turned into a bi-weekly ritual with root touch ups in between.

I was told at the time about eight years ago that there wasn’t a gray dye on the market to color my hair and hide the roots while my processed reddish brown color grew out (now it’s popular for young women to dye their hair gray. Go figure).

She suggested “low lighting” which of course is the opposite of “high lighting” in that it adds strands of a darker color than your base color. It didn’t make sense at first to do that. Wasn’t I trying to get rid of my fake color to go all gray? But low lighting was a good choice because it was more of a controlled addition of color that added dimension to keep my roots from being obvious as I grew out my hair to glorious gray. It worked so well I only had to have the low lighting process done one time, and not once did I feel self-conscious about having roots because they were disguised so well.

THIS is why multitudes of women go to hair care professionals. Many a distraught DIYer has graced the salon begging for repairs of a dye or bleach job that went amuck, and they pay far more than money in damaged hair than if they had gone to the salon in the first place. I did okay for years doing a simple home color process myself but no way was I going to mess up my hair with anything more complicated.

All this talk about hair…is it really that important? I suppose in the grand scheme of life it isn’t, but most women consider their hair to be a source of comfort or embarrassment, like an old friend. We talk about it, play with it, and compare it to others. We caress it or fight with it. It’s a blessed woman who is at peace with her hair in it’s natural state, which brings me back to what the proverb says about gray hair and righteousness.

Every stage of life offers strengths and benefits. When we are young we have vitality, energy, and physical strength. As we travel the path of life we learn as we go and our wisdom grows as the strengths of our youth diminish. Our gray hair is like a badge of honor that shows that we’ve been blessed with a long life; hopefully, a life of righteousness full of wise choices and a humble esteem of God before all else.

Even our hair.