They shaved their heads.

I love my hair. It’s long, dark, and curly. My mom calls it a mane. It has a lot of “bounce” to it.

I noticed the bounce especially over the weekend when I was at a wedding. All the pretty girls had all their pretty hair all dolled up and looking great. At the dance that night, as all the other girls were dancing, their hair would just kind of sway back and forth, hop a little bit now and again if they got really moving, but it all seemed very controlled. Very tamed.

Mine, on the other hand, could not have the same things said about it.
No.
Mine was….all over the place. Never what I would call “controlled.” More like organized madness (Which is probably why I am so fond of it).
I had it piled on top of my head with gobs of pins for the ceremony and dinner, but once the dancing started, well, that was the end of the coiffed bun and pins.
And then I couldn’t see anything clearly for hours what with my hair flying every which way, covering my eyes, and getting in my mouth.
As I said, it was….all over the place.
I’m sure I looked ridiculous. Luckily nobody could tell it was me…..because they couldn’t see my face.

While I will not say that most women love their hair, I will say that most women have a relationship with their hair. If our hair is feeling good one day, we will feel good that day. If our hair is not up to snuff, we will feel sick….or wear a hat. Our hair is our way of expressing ourselves, it is something that separates us from our peers, it is something about the way we look that we can easily change, manipulate, style, or control.  The Bible even says that a woman’s hair is her glory or her crown (I Cor. 11). For better or worse it is something that most of us feel defines us.

(Men, if you are reading this and are absolutely confused or bored out of your mind, feel blessed that I am giving you insight into the thoughts of women. And I promise I am getting to a point.)

When I was in Budapest I went to a Hungarian Jew Holocaust museum. It was harrowing, to say the least. I can’t see all of those pictures of people and objects that survived and not bawl my eyes out. Not mourn for their lost lives.

One picture I found particularly difficult to handle.

Take a good look at it.
Do you all see what it is?
Do you all know what happened?

THEY SHAVED THEIR HEADS.

Those are rows and rows of women. Women who had just been stolen out of their homes, taken away from their families, certainly some had watched their husbands or daughters or sons or grandchildren killed right before their eyes. They had been crammed into transport buses, or trains, never knowing if they would see any familiar sight again, and most of them wouldn’t. Not knowing what was coming. Fearing the worst and knowing that they had no idea how bad “the worst” was going to be.

They had gone through all of that, their homes, families, lives, dreams, and futures pried from their hands.

And then their captors shaved their heads.

And took with it the last shreds of their personality, differentiation, crown. Dignity.

Do you see the girl in the front row in the polka dot dress? The one too ashamed to show her face?

There was a courtyard behind this museum. Gorgeous.

On one side of the garden was a wall that had names of people followed by dates.

1893-1945
1912-1945
1904-1945

Anna Vidor

1921-1945

1921-1945?

But that’s only 24 years old. That’s pretty close to my age.

She was someone’s daughter. I am someone's daughter.

There is no doubt that she had dreams and plans and crushes on boys and all kinds of hopes for a house and babies and all the other girl stuff we think about. Pray for. Plan on.

She was like me. She was like all of my friends.
She was a 24 year girl.
Who knows, maybe she was one of the girls who had her head shaved, too.
If it was me, at that point I would have wanted to die.
What else would be left for me to live for? They had taken everything and then they had erased me.

When I see those women, those girls, in that picture, and their names with those dates on that wall, it puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

How often do we complain about stuff? How often do we sweat the small stuff? How often do we take for granted the fact that like, I don’t know, maybe we still have a house, or, I don’t know, maybe we still have food, or, I don’t know, maybe we haven’t seen all of our family murdered before our eyes, or, I don’t know, maybe we haven’t had our heads shaved by cruel, cruel people?

Do we take that for granted?

I know I do.

I know I am guilty of thinking my issues and my problems, which in comparison are not issues and problems, are the end of the world. But after I see this, it gives me more of a perspective on what the true end of the world---the end of my world---might more closely resemble.

Everything taken away. Then a forced shaved head. With nothig you can do about it.

Having a reality check brought in by the outside world is good for me. It pops the “bubble” that I live in and teaches me that, unless I find myself in their shoes, I haven’t got much of a leg to stand on if I think I have something to complain about because, well…I still have all that crazy hair on my head.