What Matters to God

I was standing in the sandy soil on my Grandmother’s farm when my hair started to fall out. Chatting with my cousin and absentmindedly raking my fingers through my hair, I didn’t expect the long, brown chunks that appeared in my fists. My doctor had warned me that hair loss might result from the two twelve-hour surgeries I had recently endured. I just wasn’t quite as prepared as I should have been for the sudden loss of it all.

I let the hair slip through my fingers as lighter strands were carried away by the breeze and heavier chunks fell to the ground. I combed my fingers through my hair again and again, and it seemed there was no end to the loss coming from my scalp. Raking and releasing, this is how I let go of the hair that had been with me for years.

My hair wasn’t the only thing that had to be released. With the diagnosis that followed the surgeries, came the reality that life as I knew it would be markedly different. Limitations within this new reality would abound. With no cure or treatment available for the genetic disorder I now knew I carried, I was forced to let go of dreams I had nurtured for as many years as my hair had grown. A career in the fitness industry, gone. The hope of growing our family with another child, gone. The expectation of living long enough to meet my grandchildren, gone.

With all that had been seemingly lost, it would have been easy to assume that God placed little value on the life He had given me. It would have been easy to assume that the life I had lived so far had been insignificant to its Creator. It would have been easy to assume that God knew nothing of the hair that was lost, the dreams that were released, and the emptiness that followed.

Except that He knows everything about my life, even down to the strands of hair that He counted Himself. He sees every hair that was lost and every dream that was released. God cares for the very details of all that He created. He cares for me because my life has value to Him. If He cares enough to count every one of my hairs, certainly He cares enough to replace my dreams with His plans.

Several months passed, and my bald scalp has now been filled in with new hair. It’s short and it’s stubby, but it’s there and it’s growing. And with it, so are new dreams.

Lord, remind me that in the midst of disappointment and loss, my life and my dreams matter greatly to you.