I Have Brown Hair

I have brown hair.  For those of you who know me, I'm sure you are thinking, "Thank you for pointing that out.  Why do I care?"  Let me explain why this is a big deal. Growing up, my sister had beautiful blonde hair.  (She still does, but it's only important that she did as a kid....)  My cousins Julie and Becky both had beautiful blonde hair.  I blame the three of them for my story today.  (Heidi, you are welcome. :D)

So the point is this. I always considered myself a blonde.  That's even what my driver's license says.  I made lots of dumb blonde jokes with the intent to poke fun at myself.  I'd claim 'blonde moments' among a long list of other blonde things I related myself to.  Again, let me remind you. I have brown hair.  Always have.

About three years ago (yes, this embarrassingly enough took me until the age of 29 to figure this out) I was sitting at my desk at school.  The background picture on my computer was a photo of Scott and me when we were first married.  I stared at it for several minutes.  Suddenly it dawned on me.  I HAVE BROWN HAIR.  Here I was, 29 years old, and only just NOW realizing what color my hair was...  I honestly always thought my hair was blonde.  I stared at that picture for several minutes after that realization.  I started searching my memory for other pictures of myself growing up, thinking, "Did it go darker when I got older?"  The picture that comes to memory is my 9th grade yearbook picture.  (I always picture that one because it's the first one where I don't look like a dork...)  Nope.  Still brown hair.  I think farther back to elementary school.  The picture that comes to memory is the one when I had shorter hair.  Still brown.  VERY LIGHT brown, but still brown.

Hmmm.  It was a humiliating moment for me, but also very enlightening.  It explained a lot of looks over the years as I made blonde jokes about myself.  It explained the doll I received as a small child that was supposed to look just like me but I never understood because it had brown hair.  It explained the clarification at the DMV about my description of myself.  (At the time I thought the question about what my hair color box said was because I have horrible handwriting...  Maybe it wasn't...)

My point is this.  Sometimes we have thoughts and beliefs about the world, the universe, God, etc.  Those thoughts and beliefs make up our reality.  Then suddenly we learn something new.  We realize that what we have always thought is not what always was.  I always had brown hair, no matter what I thought or said.  My sudden identity crisis (three years later and I'm only just now able to say without pausing that I have brown hair...) did not come about because of a change in my appearance, but a change in my understanding.  Didn't make it any easier accepting the new truth just because of the realization that THAT was how it had always been.

This is just a little encouragement to everyone.  Give it time.  Gradually each new thing we learn works its way into our new reality.  That is how we grow.  That is how we improve.  And that is how we become more like God.