The Chin Hair

OK, it happened again last night. As I was brushing my teeth I looked in the mirror (you know, REALLY looked in the mirror) and staring back — above my very own brown eyes — were Eddie Munster's eyebrows! I guess I should've taken the hint when my friend Stephanie asked me this weekend if I had ever thought about waxing. Of course I laughed and said, "Been there, done that, and unfortunately when your hair is jet black, waxing only helps for maybe 10 hours and the pain and the red bumps last longer than the wax job!"

Even I couldn't deny the truth staring back at me. So to aid me in my quest to remove the GIANT BROWS, I grabbed my newly purchased "magnify mirror" — you know ... the one that magnifies every possible blemish, hair, zit, and skin disorder never before seen by human eye. (I now know why my grandma had this kind of mirror in her bathroom.) I bought it a few weeks ago, more out of curiosity, and truthfully was better off before I could see what was REALLY there. Ever since that purchase, my tweezers seem to be my long lost soul mate.

After removing 257 eyebrow hairs, my eyes moved down the mirror so I could come to terms with the damage in the "mustache" area. At that precise moment the light from my bedroom lamp reflected off my mirror at just the perfect angle to reveal the real horror. There it was — THE chin hair! The long, black, how could it have grown to my collar before I noticed it, chin hair! Now I know at 38 years old, I should count my blessings since despite the horror of the situation at hand, I do, to my magnifying mirror's knowledge, only have 1 chin hair — but honestly, friends, I'm just not feeling the fullness of that blessing this morning.

You know what I realized last night as I quickly, yet painfully, plucked it (and looked at it for quite awhile out of amazement)? My chin hair is a lot like sin. I know you were wondering if there really could be a biblical application to this horrifying story.

Sin is like a woman's facial hair. We don't really want it there, but sometimes it's just easier to "not see it" than to have to go through the pain or embarrassment or humility of dealing with it. We have the sins in our life — our bushy Eddie Munster eyebrows — that we think are really not "that bad" ... they can linger there and even grow without us really feeling any conviction or the need to do anything about it. And then there's the more obvious sin — our lip hair. This is a little more embarrassing, and is somewhat more noticeable, and we are at least conscience of it as we try to hide it (bleach it) and even remove it (wax it). Even though that gets rid of it for awhile, it seems to come back easily and we grow weary of the pain of trying to really get rid of it. We struggle with wondering if it's worth going through the painful experience of exposing the lies that we've believed while replacing them with truth — really confessing our sins and committing to lay them at the throne of God forever. (I guess this would be laser hair removal!)

The "chin hair sin" — and just admit it ... you know you have at least ONE — it's the really ugly sin that we deal with. The "thorn," if you will, that seems to creep up on us when we least expect it. It seems to have grown before we even know or acknowledge that it's there. We wonder sometimes, even though we fervently pray, if it will ever completely go away. It's the sin in our lives that people would be horrified to know we struggled with — the sin we really don't want anyone to know about or see — the one that we will go to great lengths to hide and to justify, and yes, even sometimes to defend. It's the sin that Satan doesn't want us to see until we are full of shame and we feel it's too late even for God to forgive.

Praise God that His light is stronger and more powerful than the darkness! God's heart cries out for us to see the truth of our sin because he longs to forgive us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). Just like the mirror combined with the light from my lamp revealed my chin hair, God loves us enough to shine His light — the Holy Spirit — into our sin so we can see it hiding in the dark places of our hearts and souls. If we open our eyes, He will allow us to see it clearly and then promises to give us the power to remove it — our true soul mate (even more powerful than my tweezers) — Jesus Christ!

I pray as Christians, that we surround ourselves with friends like Stephanie, who not only loved me enough to ask me about waxing, but who more importantly God brought into my life to share the truth of our yuck and our sin. A friendship that God ordained so we could convict and challenge each other to be better wives and better examples — women willing to look at the truth of our reflection in the mirror and to do whatever we need to do so that the next time we see what's really there, we see more of Christ and less of us. We all need Christian accountability. We need friends to help us see our sin, to call it what it is, to be tweezers in each other's lives so we can help pluck out our sin no matter how painful or embarrassing or difficult it may be.

My prayer is that I will be even more horrified by my sin than I was by what my mirror magnified last night. I pray that I will pluck the sin from my life as quickly as I plucked that hair from my chin. May my heart be even more important than my outward appearance and may I long for the light of Christ to shine through me so I can be a true reflection of the holiness and the flawlessness of the one who gave His life for me.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV).