Full Steps

For Wilshire Baptist Church

My hair started falling out today. I was told it would, and after taking a half step yesterday at the barber shop, I’ll take a full step tomorrow.

Let me back up a moment and explain that I was recently diagnosed with a tumor in my right sinus and we’re attacking it with chemotherapy, and beginning next week, radiation. The oncologist told me from the start that I would lose my hair, and last Friday he said I would start losing my hair by today. He really knows his stuff, which I’m grateful for. So, with a haircut already on the calendar, I conferred with my stylist and we decided to go very short but still comb-able.

That was a good half step and I was satisfied with the results. But just two mornings later, I found my hair coming out with the slightest pull, and it won’t be long before it starts falling out on its own. So partially to avoid looking patchy, and more practically to avoid shedding all over the house like a dog, I texted the stylist and told her I need to come back. For grins, I sent her a photo of myself when I was maybe four years old sporting the buzz cut my Air Force-veteran father specified for all the males in the family. “This is the look I need,” I told her.

I’m wishing now I’d already taken the full step on Tuesday. Half steps are OK, but they often require a follow-up half step to get to the full step that was needed and should have been taken all along. Maybe I was a little bit vain; perhaps I was just timid. After all, I haven’t seen my scalp since I was that four-year-old kid in the photo.

We Americans seem to be good at half steps. They let us hedge against unpleasant, uncomfortable decisions, even when the need for doing more is obvious. Getting from a half step to a full step usually requires spending more money, but we seem to have plenty of that so we’re willing to pay more than twice to do what we should have done in the first place. 

Half steps also let us convince ourselves that “at least we did something” to address the problem, and you can fill in the blank on whatever that problem is: hunger, education, gun violence and violence of all types, poverty, injustice, mental health, immigration. But taking half steps on those problems costs more than just our financial resources. We pay for it in lives lost, children unprepared to be adults, health care that patches rather than heals, community disfunction, societal unrest.

Like it or not, half steps are prevalent at the nexus of our faith and our humanity. We love and affirm some people but maybe not all people. We applaud the spiritual gifts of some but not everyone. We embrace beliefs that protect our blessed interests and rights but don’t think about how others may be harmed by those same beliefs.

I’m guilty of taking half steps. Some are laughable, like home improvements that patch a problem but have to be redone by a professional to get it right. Some make me wince, like the times I’ve sent a check to placate a cause instead of giving my time, my voice and my heart.

So, when I get my head buzzed tomorrow, I hope to channel it as a time of meditation and prayer. I want to reflect on not just the things I have done but also the things I have failed to do. I want to shear away some of the timidity and vanity that has held me back from taking full steps that really matter.