Snip, snip and it’s off. And it feels so good.

You see, for the past three years, I’ve been growing out my hair. When it was still short, my daughters told me that it looked stiff and old-lady-ish. That was motivation enough to have me cancel my next haircut and start trying to get some length to my hair. Then, I started looking at other women my age to see what my hairstyle options were. There was a beautiful woman I saw at church whose haircut I admired. She had a lovely chin-length bob. So why not go for that look, I thought?

The problem is that she has good hair and I don’t. When the Bible says that “the very hairs on your head are numbered,” God wouldn’t even need to get into five digits for me, it’s that thin. And saying my hair is in a “pony tail” when it’s pulled back is a misnomer. Mine is much closer to a rat tail in thickness.

So after repeating the long, short, long, short, long cycle of hair length one more time in my life, I have come to the conclusion that short is going to be the way I wear my hair for the rest of my life. As much as I fantasize about having hair like Sonya Vergara, my German heritage just isn’t going to pull it off. If you’ve seen photos of Angela Merkel, you’ll know what I mean.

Like the mortgage that we couldn’t afford, my hair was weighing me down. We lightened up by reducing our living space by about 1000 square feet. Why not do it personally too and lighten up by cutting a few inches off my hair? Once Kim at Solo Hair Design had done her magic and six inches of hair lay on the floor, I felt great.

When Kim cut it, it was like she cut off three years of recession that had been weighing me down. My neck immediately felt longer, I felt like a burden had been lifted from me.

I’m hoping that this lighter feeling translates into a lighter, brighter outlook on life no matter what the headlines say.