Harrific....

Everyone is going natural these days… Well, most Nigerian ladies are.
This post isn’t just about hair. 

@tilola of africanaturalistas has beautiful natural hair.

I’ll liken going natural to going back to the basics, accepting Gods love and receiving His salvation, without dilutions with the chemicals of new age thinking. He’s a wonderful gospel, the truth!
It’s easy, but it isn’t as easy as it looks. Natural hair is a free gift, but you have to take care of it to have a healthy one. Salvation is beautiful…  It’s given for free but to enjoy its fullness, you have to let go of the old life. Salvation of grace doesn't mean the absence of activity, you have to activate it. You invest time in it, to be able to grow in it and show the fruit of it in your life i.e praying, praise etc.

To get your hair natural, you have three options: the big chop, transitioning or faking it.

My friend Ene, chopped off her hair!

The big chop is when you chop off your whole hair at a go to start from scratch. This is the case of he who puts his hands on the plow never looks back… they’re gone for good. You hear about it, and you’re sold to this message. You refuse to give yourself time to back out, and so you give your all, cut off all your hair to start afresh.
Sometimes you have to give it all up, to gain it all... "“If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me." Matthew 10:38-39(MSG)

Its daring for a girl to chop off ALL her hair, she must really be sold out to what it is she seeks to go that route, because we’ve been made to believe you can’t be beautiful without your hair. But when she cuts it, she stands out and ends up looking more beautiful in a unique way, on a league of her own, and her hair begins to grow again, in a way that she desires it to be, more beautiful than what she held on to in the past.
Most of Jesus disciples made the big chop when they chose to follow Him.  
“….Jesus replied to Simon, “Don’t be afraid! From now on you’ll be fishing for people!” And as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus.” Luke 5:10-11 (with emphasis)

Pretty Omada is transitioning...She's come to far to fall :)

Transitioning entails letting your natural hair grow till it pushes off the relaxed hair. This takes more time…. and many who have gone on this route have yielded to temptation and retouched their hair along the way. The temptation to retouch and go back to the status quo is real, all it takes is a wedding or some celebration to get them running to the salon for a little retouching. Most are able to see it through, but it takes discipline. Just like the parable of the seeds 

 “Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil; and at once they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil.
But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they dried up and withered away.” Matthew 13:5-6

 “Many of his disciples said, “This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?”… “At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him.”  John 6:60,66

We had people who followed Jesus secretly, the big chop wasn’t for them, they transitioned as they followed in secret and stayed true to the end, while others fell along the way.

“Afterward Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Jesus (because he feared the Jewish leaders), asked Pilate for permission to take down Jesus’ body…. With him came Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus at night.” John 19:38,39

“That’s why we have backsliders today. They never went into this thing of being a Christian with everything they had. But it takes exactly that to live a daily, successful Christian life” Kathryn Kulman

It’s really not the best route for some people, because their faith would waver when they don’t see results from their prayers immediately. They want to get a microwave kind of blessing, not the well-cooked type. Thus they fall off easily.
 

Yours truly, Me! I love to fake it!

Then, there are those who are faking it. Like me! We fake it because we like the fad, but we don’t believe the argument that relaxed hair can’t be healthy either. So we love our natural hair friends and we love having the look sometimes, so we head out to the market… buy a weave, get a good stylist to sew it in real nice and look like the team natural for a week, two or three and take it off and be normal again.

Amongst Jesus closest disciples was Judas, the one who faked it. In their midst, he stole from the treasury and ended up betraying Jesus. He liked the look of the salvation of the messiah and being in the inner circle, but he just couldn’t subscribe to it, so he faked it. 
“Not that he cared for the poor—he was a thief, and since he was in charge of the disciples’ money, he often stole some for himself.” John 12:6

There are loads of people faking it today, on a one month subscription to 'salvation', then back to the norm, and then when there’s some event in church, they dress in their best religious outfit and get to the front row in church and then head back to life as they love it, because you can’t say life outside Jesus is all bad. I mean, where’s the fun? Who’ll have all that fun if everyone is in the ‘solemn’ assembly of righteousness in Christ. Have you noticed how beautiful the hair of those who fake it look? More beautiful than the true naturalistas. That says a lot; sometimes, those who fake their salvation look more holy/religious than those who are sold out to the faith, that's why God says it's the state of heart that matters most.

Some people have drastic transformations when they hear the word, they turn their back on everything and follow Jesus. Others want it, but it feels like too much, and they trend softly, but some run at the slight sign of a trial, because hey, who said natural hair is easy… or says salvation is easy, but others are able to stay the course and outgrow all the things they held on to and eventually embrace wholly the message of salvation…. Some pretend because it’s the fad, but they soon take the wig off when they’re tired of pretending, and put it on again if there’s a program in church or a problem that needs prayers.

Which of the category do you belong to?