Hair Confessions

To make a long story short yesterday I passed a joke to my wife via twitter/facebook that read as follows:

@ShannonBranam did not mean to cancel the revival @LibertyBCDalton Sept. 30 - Oct. 3, she meant to instead cancel my hair color appointment.

The end result is that now people think I color my hair.  As hilarious as that is, I don’t.  At the same time I do have some confessions about my hair that I think are important for people to know.  Confession is cleansing.  It opens the soul.  Confession also helps others come out of the closet.  So here is my hair confession, perhaps countless others will join me.

In the 9th grade I had a mullet (see it here).  I wanted it to look like Andre Agassi of the ’80’s.  Instead it turned out to be a greasy mullet.  1987 was a bad hair year for me but a great hair year for Andre.

For a lot of years I had a bro-crush.  Not necessarily on a bro, but on a bro’s hair.  I crushed on Brad Pitt’s hair from A River Runs Through It.  I tried it.  All I got out of it was a bad butt cut.

When I moved to Birmingham I walked into a Salon and met a guy who was a former male dancer.  Male dancers have great hair so I thought I would be safe.  I just let him cut my hair however he wanted to cut it.  I went through about four style modifications in 9.5 years.  I trusted him.  He would cut my hair with scissors then he would sort of carve it with a razor blade.  So there I was, sitting in a chair having my head whittled by a male dancer with a razor blade.  I don’t know how my former church felt about the whole thing, but for the almost 10 years I was in Birmingham I think my hair looked awesome.  If it didn’t, keep your comments to yourself.  I am just now coming to grips with my bad mullet days.

So where am I now?  I am slipping into 40 grateful that I still have my hair.  I use a very expensive shampoo that is supposed to help you keep your hair.  I am also on cholesterol medicine.  When I run out of cholesterol medicine I give Shannon a few days to get me more.  No panic.  When I run out of shampoo I will wake her in the middle of the night to make a Wal-Mart run.  This means that I am more afraid of losing my hair than I am of having a heart attack.

When I wash my hair in the mornings there are always three or four hairs stuck to my hand.  I grieve over this.  I know in time a hair must let go and leave you, but will it grow back?  They say that if you pluck out a grey hair, two will grow in its place.  Does this mean that if I pull all the hair out of my head that it will come back twice as thick?  Every morning I fear that today I will lose my hair.

I do still have my hair and I have allowed it to grow longer since leaving Birmingham, but when you are an almost 40 year old preacher, you can only go so far.  But secretly, for the last several years I have wanted to look like a Spartan warrior.  I know he wasn't Spartan, but if I could have Brad Pitt's hair in Troy, I would take it.  (Oh my gosh, maybe I do have a bro-crush).  But it would be so cool if I had huge muscles, perfect abs, and long flowy hair.  But I don’t - none of it.  But I do still have my hair.

Thank you Lord.  This is my confession.