A Ponytail Parable

My Goddaughter, Mella, spends every summer with us and one morning Mella tells me she wants me to put her hair in a ponytail. As I do the ponytail, we go back in forth on whether she wants the back down or not. All of a sudden, She looks in the mirror, crosses her arms, and says, “I look ugly! I don’t want my hair up!”

I think she looks cute, so I tell her, “No sweetheart, you look great; we’re going to keep your hair like this today.” Of course, that's not what Mella’s 7-year-old mind wanted to hear so the waterworks came.

In that moment I could’ve just given her what she wanted, but I looked at her again and said, “Mella, you look beautiful! You are going to wear your hair like this today now finish getting ready for the day.” This response resulted in her having other crying fits and being sent to her room until she was able to calm herself down.

I texted my husband, Jhon, to ask for prayer because I didn’t think I was going to make it through the rest of his workday! I explain the occurrence to him and he says to my surprise, he says, “It might be punishment time”. To understand why I was shocked, you must know that my husband is smitten with our Goddaughter. I play around and tell him consistently, she has him wrapped around his finger. But back to our story…

Though Mella had taken me through this emotional roller coaster, I told Jhon I didn’t want to punish her for not liking something because there is truly nothing wrong with not liking something. But I also don’t want her to think that every time she doesn’t like something it will just change for her; life and situations don’t work like that.

Then it hit me; sometimes we as adults and teenagers struggle with the same thing. We go through situations that we don’t like and can't change, but we don't learn how to deal with them. Though there are things that we have the authority to change, for the next few days we are talking about the situations God keeps us in even when we ask for something else.