Today I am dealing with the consequences of dying my own hair.

Today I am walking around with an unintentional hairdo. Yes, I will admit it- I dye my hair. I am 34 years old and have grey hair. To be honest, I have a long history of dying my hair. In high school, my best friend and I highlighted each other's hair for fun. However, when I started going grey in my mid-twenties, I knew it was time to take action and have been trying to cover the truth ever since. I started off having my hair highlighted at a salon. While I wasn't too happy about the price, I continued to go. One day I was told that I not only needed to highlight but I also needed to lowlight my hair. What? The stylist went on to explain that the highlighting was getting too light and she needed to darken my hair. Now this really didn't make a lot of sense to me. I had to first pay for her to make my hair lighter and then I had to pay for her to make my hair darker. Couldn't she just not highlight my hair as much? Let me tell you, this was a lot of money and I decided I could do it myself. Highlighting my own hair wasn't too hard but as more grey grew in, highlighting was not enough anymore. After each pregnancy, I lost handfuls of hair. As I mentioned before, that hair grew back curly- it also grew back grey!!! Isn't the unruly, curly hair difficult enough, did it also have to be grey? Well, about 4 years ago I moved to dying my hair. I have always thought of myself as blond; so I bought blond dye. I knew it didn't look quite right but I didn't think it looked that bad. I had deluded myself until I met someone for the first time and she said the dreaded word- orange. Yeah, I had been trying to convince myself that my hair wasn't really orange, but I couldn't deny it any longer. I told this person that I had attended Clemson University and she replied (yes I still remember every word) "at least you have the perfect hair for it- Clemson Orange". Oh my, there are no words to describe what I felt. I think I turned completely white (which of course, made my hair look even more orange). I knew I had to make a change. At that point, I decided to use a light brown and have been quite happy with that color. On Monday, my daughter said to me "Wow mom, I can really see your grey hair now". There was no doubt that it was time to dye again. Not a problem- I'm an old pro (LOL). The problem came when I decided to change colors and brands. Why, oh why, can't I stick with what I know? My first mistake was when I decided to go darker. I thought "if my hair normally gets darker in the winter, I should probably go with medium brown- it will certainly look more natural" (ha, ha, ha). Do I even need to tell you it did NOT look more natural? My second mistake was when I grabbed a color that was permanent. I had decided a few years ago to stick with the color that washed out after 28 shampoos because it was less risky, but apparently I had forgotten this. I wish I could tell you that my son was with me and was distracting me when I bought it, but then I would be lying. I was by myself and have no excuse for my bad judgement. Before I used the color I did take note of it being permanent but ignored that little voice that said "be careful". My third mistake was leaving the color on for just a little bit too long. The box said to rinse the color after 10 minutes but leave on for 15 minutes for resistant grey. It did actually warn not to leave it on too long or the color would be too "intense". Well, I figured I am a smart, logical woman. After all, who could reason better- a box or me? Let me tell you- the box won. I stepped out of the shower and looked in the mirror with a shudder. My hair was black. Yes, it was black. My son told me that I should not buy that stuff again. My daughter just looked at me and tried really hard to say something nice- she came up with nothing. The best thing my husband could say was "it doesn't really look bad". I have tried washing my hair several times since and it can now be called very dark brown. I have seen the looks of shock. I have heard the tactful (but insincere) comments. But I know, it was a mistake. I try to walk with my head held high and know this too shall pass. While the results of trying something different with my hair was not successful, sometimes it is a good thing to try something different. My daughter is studying fairness this month at church. This week the devotions have been about accepting someone who is different than you and treating them fairly. I started to think about someone different who I could get to know. Maybe there is a new mom in the neighborhood, maybe there is a mom you don't normally chat with at school, maybe there is a child who needs to feel some extra love, look around and find someone different today. Perhaps, there is someone different who you could try to show God's love to. It is worth the risk. After all, finding someone different to share God's love with must yield better results than finding a different hair color did this week for me.