We Made it Through

My soul cries out, "We made it through! God being our helper."

So real. So right. It felt like THE hardest boulder-strew road I've traveled. And yet, if it got me to where I am right now—today—then it was well worth every scrape and cut into my life-core.

You see yesterday, I left my new condo early in the morning to go to Kareema who generously manicured my locs that were born alongside that same road. They now mark my first right turn into freedom on November 1, 2001. I sat in my neighborhood barber's chair and voiced one gentle but firm command, "Please shave all the permed hair off my head."

Astonished he said, "You can't be serious. All this beautiful silver hair?"

A half-hour later, I walked out of that barbershop, feeling the November chill on my freshly buzzed scalp, daring not to look back for fear of turning into a pillar of salt.

As I turned the key in my car's ignition, I realized that it was more than my hair that I left on that barbershop floor. The hair represented "release" - release of the old and dysfunctional to embrace the new release of the pain of yet another failed marriage. Release of my contrived agenda that superceded God's plans for me. Release of the guilt that I held onto in spite of God's forgiveness for the part I played in the breakup.

In that moment between "Park" and "Drive," I wept a joyful three full tears and shouted, "I's free now."