It’s so easy to tell Hashem, You can have my dolls and teddy bear. My Shabbos and kashrus. My elbows and knees… but my pearls, my tzniyus, my hair— that’s mine.
It was only a few inches. Dark blonde, with just a few golden streaks as a last lingering ode to the long-gone summer. And it lay in little patches on the floor.
I tilted my head to the right and then left, searching the mirror for the blonde curls (or carefully straightened locks of hair) that used to fall past my shoulders. But they were gone, and though it would be mere weeks until they grew back in, I knew I could never again wear my hair in loose curls a few inches down my back.
It started with a lesson. And a story.
Jenny was a five-year-old girl who loved her bracelet of faux pearls. Just small balls of white plastic, but to Jenny, those pearls were priceless. When her father asked what she would be willing to give up out of love for him, Jenny offered her favorite doll and most-loved teddy bear. But the pearls, she insisted, were hers.
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