Member-only story
How to Help a Hurting Person
As Christians, we are taught to love other people and help them if we can. But what do we do when confronted with the hurt and emotional pain of others?
The Haircut
When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, I stopped dying my hair a light golden brown. Grey patches and ugly grey roots were starting to show. I didn’t bother to color my hair because I knew that I would be losing it shortly. I wanted my hair to be short, so there would be fewer strands on my pillow each morning as chemo walloped my body. So I went to the hair salon knowing that this would be the last haircut for a while.
My regular hairdresser had moved away, so the salon assigned me to someone new. A lovely thirty-something woman came to look after me. She seemed like the bubbling outgoing kind. “Don’t you want a color as well as a haircut? You have a lot of grey and your roots….” she started.
“I am not going to color it because I going to be going through chemo,” I said, cutting her short. Whoa, the hairdresser quickly became quiet.
The hairdresser struggled to find words to talk to me. She cut my hair in silence for a few minutes and then started spouting every Christian platitude in the book.
I longed to tell her I was a Christian who understood that God loved me, wanted the best for me, and…
