Heart Lice

Last February, I, and several of my friends, had the amazing, fascinating, and educational experience of dealing with head lice. I had the especial privilege of being the first to discover it...er, make that the first to have it discovered. I was getting my hair cut when the stylist found them. Extremely embarrassing. Knocked my pride down a few pegs, certainly (especially since one of the only physical features I actually LIKE about myself is my hair!). As I was hyperventilating, having nightmares ("day"mares?) about having to chop off all my hair, my mom was busy doing some research about what exactly it was that we were dealing with. The answer was not encouraging

Neither my mom nor I had any past experience with lice. We had always associated them with...well...dirtiness, not realizing how common they are, nor how easy they are to get no matter how often you wash your hair. One female louse can lay ten nits a day, eggs that unrelentingly stick to tiny strands of hair. The live bug may wash out when you wash your hair, but the nits are firmly GLUED in, and won't come out unless they are tediously picked out. And they are so small you might not even notice them until they are already hatched adult lice laying more eggs.

This got me thinking...sin can creep into our hearts just as subtly as lice can creep into our hair. Just as one louse can lay many nits, one little compromise can give birth to a whole epidemic of sin. Each sin lays a bunch more "nits" in my heart. I can spot treat the obvious"big" sins...but by the time those are killed they have already birthed more. The way to truly treat "heart lice" is to go through my heart, little bit by little bit...picking out those evils that can easily take over the whole of my heart. The process is tedious and painful and requires letting go of *my* plans and preferences...reclaiming the infested pieces of my heart (possibly ripping out a few pieces in the process) and giving the whole tattered mess to God.

Sin is sin. And guess what it always produces as fruit? More sin. Lice don't clean up after themselves after they've been in your hair for a while...they just keep on laying eggs. Sin won't clean up after itself either. It takes effort. And, just as you can't remove nits from your hair yourself but need help from someone else...you can't remove the "heart lice" of sin without help from your Heavenly Father. Ask him to "comb" through your heart and reveal what is truly thriving inside.

After a couple weeks we were satisfied that the lice were gone from my hair for good. My hair was not in too bad a condition (all things considered), but was certainly the worse for wear after going through pretty much every treatment in the book, natural and otherwise. Gels, special shampoo, apple cider vinegar washes, sleeping with my hair soaked in olive and tea tree oil...taking two hours out of every day (for TWO WEEKS) to comb through my hair with a fine tooth comb...you get the picture. Not a fun process. But what a joy to be freed of the critters I didn't even know I was sharing my life with (and who were the reason behind my itchy scalp!). And as I continue with the process of picking and praying my way through the junk in my heart...what a joy to be freed of the unseen but often felt weight of sin and compromise I have carried with me for so long.