Long Hair and Answered Prayer

photo by kim harms

I was eight months pregnant with my first child when we met on a hot July day. Sitting beside Marti at a company outing, my beach ball belly eliminating all chances of finding a comfortable position, I was struck with the realization that this new acquaintance was an answered prayer.

My college roommate had moved out of state. My husband and I had just moved to a new town. And I was preparing to quit my newspaper reporting job to stay home with our baby. I was lonely and fearful about all the changes in my life. Every day I asked God for a friend.

I didn’t realize until years later the significance of meeting Marti. God knew we would need each other in our years of motherhood.

Why? Six boys in six years. Yep. We were each blessed with three boys. We would spend years up to our ears in dirt, bugs, superheroes and light sabers, followed by years of tripping over giant man-shoes in the entryway and desperately trying to keep up with the bottomless pits in their bellies. God knew no woman should go through such things alone.

Marti and I have laughed together a million times. We have cried on occasion and we have prayed for each other more times than I can count. Several years ago, when my then long-haired middle son cracked his head wide open back-flipping into the community pool, she was the first person I called.

“Will you please pray for Owen right now?” I asked, feeling faint from the sight of his wound.

I don’t remember a lot of her words, but I will never forget the way she finished that prayer.

“Please Lord, allow the doctor to fix Owen’s wound without cutting his hair. He is so proud of those beach boy locks.”

His blood-matted mass of hair hadn’t even crossed my mind. But she was right. A head shave would have broken his heart. But before I could think of a gentle way to broach the topic of a possible haircut with Owen, we were whisked off to a prep room where a nurse began tenderly washing blood from his hair. She then very carefully parted the blonde locks so the doctor could close the wound. Not one hair was removed from his head that day.

Marti’s friendship was an answer to my prayer years ago, but it is the answers to her earnest intuitive prayers for my children that continually bless me.

Kim Harms

Kim Harms is a writer and speaker who is represented by Literary Agent Karen Neumair of Credo Communications. She is under contract with Familius Publishing for her first book, tentatively titled Life Reconstructed. Harms has a degree in English: Literary Studies from Iowa State University and was a regular contributor at the former Today's Christian Woman. She underwent a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction surgeries in 2016 after being diagnosed with breast cancer and writes about her Life Reconstructed at kimharms.net. Central Iowa is home, and she lives there with her husband Corey and their 3 ever-growing man-children.

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