Bria, one of the alternate RA’s who lives on my floor, has been hanging out with my group of friends lately. It is a lovely surprise to have her around—I greatly enjoy her company. She is black or African American or whatever the politically correct term is and, thus, has a different kind of hair than I do. Well I have always been fascinated with black hair and how to fix it because I really had no idea it had to be treated so differently than mine until I gave a friend of mine a ride to the grocery store so she could buy hair products and I ended up standing with her in an aisle full of stuff I had never before seen. Bria randomly came to my room this evening to teach me how she fixes her hair at night to prevent it from breaking and to train it to curl correctly—she wears her hair natural and it seems to takes a little bit more time to fix. As she was “double twisting” her hair she explained to me what she was doing and why she was doing it and taught me other things about fixing natural hair. If I ever am so fortunate to have a black baby, I am going to keep her hair natural (I guess if/until she asks for a perm) and spend the time to fix it appropriately.
Like I said, her visit was a surprise, but it was not pointlessly random because we started a conversation about God that I really needed. My staunch individualism likes to pretend I do not need others’ wisdom, but I really do. I hadn’t told Bria anything that was going on in my life before she started talking about relationships, Godly relationships, what they mean, and how to go about it that general direction. Also without knowing my current decisions, she started talking about putting God first in our lives and not putting those we’re in relationships with above God. “How can you love the creation more than the creator,” she said. She also mentioned the importance of choosing God every time over the other things that we’re tempted to choose. Her wise words gave me strength to do the things that I don’t want to do, but really do want to do if that makes any sense. Like wanting to eat French fries, but really wanting to be skinny and healthy.
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