To Forgive is Simple. Shave Your Head.
some hidden milestones still matter
I heard this one before.
“Lynn, you’re so impulsive!”
So, I smiled as wide as the eastern seashore.
I had a gut feeling something was coming. Probably a comment that I wasn’t ready to hear.
Still, I asked, curious:
“I ammm?”
“Well,” she said, “most people when they want to clean the glass door on an oven, they take two steps:
spray and wipe the outside, then spray and wipe the inside. They don’t take the whole thing apart.”
“oh interestiinggg. They do!!” I replied, cheekily.
But I kept thinking:
Even if there’s that dark brown river of grease staring at me? I’m just supposed to ignore it?
Oh no—that mess can’t live rent-free in my house.
This oven door is coming off today. Not tomorrow. Not next week after my Finals. Today.
Then she added:
“And remember that Saturday you went to wash your hair—and came out completely bald the next day.”
“ Uhm. I do not recall,” I said—knowing fully well what she meant.
But later, I realized:
How could I hide my forehead….when there’s no hair to begin with?
And maybe that was the point.
Eventually, to heal, don’t we need to break the mold?
I hinted at this last week.
Growing up, I was picked on.
So I’d hide part of my face everywhere I went. Grocery store. Concert stadium. School. Anywhere, really.
I didn’t want to give others a reason to make me feel small.
But even after hiding in shame, I still felt angry. Empty. And lowkey plotting revenge on every single one of them.
But God slowly allowed me to forgive them while I was a junior in high school.
I knew their names and faces so well.
But ask me now? Nothing comes to mind.
As I learned to let go of this internal anger, I got more of Jesus—His love and heart.
My faith had become my own. And I got baptized on Saturday December 12, 2015.
Still—we all know that healing takes time, even with God in the picture.
Shame was tied to my hair.
And on Saturday, December 11, 2018, it had to go.
There was this nudge I couldn’t ignore. It kept saying:
If your worth and beauty are tied to something material—it has to go.
And did I want to do it?
Of course not.
What would my family think?
Do I really want to give my 75-year-old grandma a heart attack?
Probably she’ll start saying, “Oh no, we’ve lost her.”
But eventually—I did it.
Shaved everything off.
It wasn’t an impulsive haircut. It was a deep cleaning—emotionally, spiritually.
And weirdly enough, it helped me understand something I hadn’t seen clearly before.
I already knew Jesus as our advocate in front of God the Judge.
We sin—hurting Him, others, and ourselves—and yet, He defends us.
When we ask Him to forgive us, He presents our case better than a top 1% lawyer ever could.
But letting go of my hair helped me find three missing pictures of God:
Shame & Honor – we don’t have to cover our insecurities with titles, job offers, or fake confidence. He’ll handle it.
Love & Justice – they’re not opposites. With God, they work together. Always.
Lost & Found – we don’t need to perform to be worthy. We already are.
For me, that meant:
Showing up, not hiding.
No longer trying to be “good enough.”
Being loved beyond my wounds and past hurts.
How could someone experience this type of love—and not forgive?
Forgiveness is wild because it feels like someone is getting away with something.
So we hold onto bitterness and say, “They don’t deserve it.”
Who are they, we ask.
Yet—that’s kind of the point.
We forget we didn’t deserve it either when Jesus forgave us.
And the tricky place we find ourselves is this:
If we don’t forgive, those people who hurt us?
They still control us.
When we take matter in our own hands to prove a point, rub it it their faces…
oh no, we’re not just hurting them.
We’re hurting ourselves… becoming just like them.
Even years after they’re dead, long gone… they’re still controlling you.
And when we live like that, it means we haven’t fully accepted Jesus’ forgiveness.
We think we have to perform to get His love.
And we start expecting others to do the same.
But God’s love is not earned; it’s unconditional.
Now here’s where things get really layered.
If we only see a God as just, we’ll picture Him as a harsh father you have to impress.
If we only see Him as loving, we’ll treat Him like an assistant.
We’ll take control and ask Him to bless whatever we decide—chasing the job, the goal, the plan—whatever will give us comfort. But not our heart, we get to make the calls there.
We compartmentalize Him.
“God, touch this… but don’t touch that.”
But He is both. Love and justice.
And when we get the full picture—everything shifts.
For people who were bullied, that trauma changes you.
You become cautious around people—because you’ve seen what they’re capable of.
You can see it unfold like a movie. How cliques form. How echo chambers are built.
How people just surround themselves with mirrors of themselves.
You notice the dissonance—their words not matching their energy.
You feel the incongruence—their smiles don’t match their eyes.
Life is funny when you’re a past wallflower.
Some people look at you like you’re fragile.
That you lack confidence.
They hear one phrase and assume you’re seeing stars.
Dizzy spirals.
Tom and Jerry type of stuff.
You stutter = just genetics. You pause. You restart. Doesn’t make you any less confident.
And suddenly they’re like:
‘It’s good… (fill in the blank)’
‘Well,… (bleh bleh bleh)’
lol.
“Que je pète, we met 5 mins ago!”
Does true confidence need to be loud to be real?
But here’s the thing:
You’re not broken. You’re just observant.
Self-aware people aren’t wounds.
Most likely it just means that we’re no longer emotionally constipated and that took a lot of work.
And sometimes justice is what protects us… even though we might not see it play out in real-time. It’s amazing how, time and time again, both His love and justice are always working together—for us.
So we don’t have to get even ourselves.
He will take care of it.
Last week, I also shared how normal beauty standards are a trap.
Because they keep changing.
If we try to keep chasing them, we lose ourselves. Then, we project the same good enough checklist on other people. And that keeps the hurt going.
But forgiveness breaks that cycle.
It says: “Nope. This ends with me.”
I forgave the bullies.
That doesn’t mean what they did was right.
And it’s not all kumbaya, let’s be best friends again.
Trust and forgiveness are not the same thing.
But forgiving them?
It helped me let go of that red crimson anger.
The ticking timebomb I kept swallowing—only to explode later on my own family. My sisters. My brother. That thing needed to go.
Because I didn’t want those people to keep controlling my life. My decisions. My peace.
Senior year, I stood on a theater stage in front of a hundred moody teenagers and told the story. That was May 14, 2016.
Scary? Yes.
How did I find the courage? Jesus.
What I remember most from that day isn’t the lights. Or the nerves.
It was a girl who came up to me afterwards. We were just about to head into the cafeteria—ready to eat some good Caribbean food.
She paused and said:
“You know… your story touched me.”
This made me realize—oh no, I shouldn’t be ashamed of my faith.
It’s not offensive. People want to hear that there’s hope, and that they’re not alone.
Still—my mental health struggles didn’t end in high school. At 17, it was just the beginning. Because sometimes, to build something strong, you’ve got to deep clean.
For me, that meant letting the hair go.
Letting the insecurity go.
Letting their opinions go.
Slowly, I could walk into a room and not be weighted down by stares. If someone didn’t treat me with respect, that reflected their heart and what they value.
This had nothing to with me. I chose not to hide anymore.
Because some deep cleaning means… starting over. To break the mold of what beauty is, I had to first question it. Not letting culture define it—but letting God define it.
For my life. My context. My story.
Maybe you don’t need to shave your head like I did—to stop hiding and
camouflaging—to look like everyone else.
But one thing I’ve learned is this:
If we’re too attached to anything for our security and worth—
A relationship, a look, a friend group—sometimes we may need to branch out.
It might just need to… get out of the way.
So God can do what He does best.
To heal us. To help us grow.
He is a God of:
Shame & Honor — who covers what we try to hide.
Lost & Found — who rebuilds what others tried to break.
Love & Justice — who says, “Oh no, my child. You don’t need revenge. I’ve got this.”
10 months.
I leave you with this:
Joseph was my favorite Bible character growing up.
He knew what it felt like to be rejected by the people closest to him.
His brothers. His employer. His friends.
They forgot him in jail when they promised… “I’ll be there for you. I’ll remember you.”
He had no one to lean on.
But one.
He kept talking to God in his pain.
Somehow… Joseph forgave them.
All of them.
That was the Old Testament, friends.
Before the Holy Spirit was available to everyone who said YESSS! to Jesus’ salvation gift.
Isn’t that something?
We have Someone now—to hold our hands when forgiveness feels too big.
But Joseph? He didn’t. Not like we do.
So, how much more should we forgive those who hurt us?
Heart Call:
To forgive, we need to keep reminding ourselves of God’s full picture. If we lean on Love and not Justice, we lose sight of God’s heart.
And I’m thinking:
What are you holding onto as a special type of covering for your value (to be enough)?
Is there someone you need to forgive?