The Professional

I can now laugh about this event; however, it was significant and potentially devastating at the time. After being away on holiday, my husband and I returned home to out-of-control and dense weeds in the garden. Wearing gloves and work clothes, I began the job of pulling the waist-high weeds, leaning into them to grab them from the roots. It was pure drudgery. As I worked, I noticed burrs attaching to my clothing and hair. I thought there were only a few burrs and kept going to get the job done.

After about three hours, I finished the job, only to realize I was covered with burrs! My husband, Bret, seeing a tight helmet of tiny, troublesome green burrs covering my head, exclaimed, “What on earth have you done?” Naturally, I tried to take care of these burrs myself. I took a shower, using conditioner and then vegetable oil. But neither worked. Bret tried to pick out the burrs by hand, removing only about fifty of the estimated four thousand burrs. I began to think I would never get these burrs out of my hair! My thoughts went back to when I had lost my hair after chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. The thought of having my head shaved again brought back bad memories, and the tears came. That Sunday night we realized that we had to call a professional.

My long-time hairdresser had come to our house previously to shave my head during chemotherapy. We made an emergency call to her.

She couldn’t see me until the following day after work.

She almost fell to the floor in amazement when she saw my hair, but she knew exactly what to do. She (later together with her mother) worked methodically to remove each burr, taking over six hours to get my hair soft and smooth once again. What a relief to have all the burrs finally gone! We all have “burrs” in our lives —things that get stuck to us, sins we cannot shake, toxic people, bad decisions with damaging consequences, and occurrences that leave us in a mess. We all need to go to a professional —a Savior who alone can remove these burrs, these sins, and heal the damage and the mess. We may try to fix ourselves, but it does not work.

Our Savior, Jesus, is the only One who can forgive and provide a clean and undamaged life. We need to go to our Professional, our Savior, daily.

Karen Dobbin