I Don't Have to Change the Outside Looks

         I will admit that I came up with the title last month but there were other things that I wanted to write down and get out of my mind. I thought the other things I wrote before this one would help more people so I wrote them first so I wouldn't forget them. Now I am trying to catch up with my mind a little bit, which at times can be hard since I think so much about things.
         Back in October, it was probably the start of October because there are some days there that are really important to me, I was looking through my old pictures on Facebook and other pictures that I had of me. When I say old pictures I mean from college onwards and I compared them to some of the now or more recent ones of me. Granted they were pictures that I meant to pose in and before events that I dressed up for but still it made me think about something important. Something that I needed to be reminded of and I guess lost not too long after I moved to AR but it is all making sense again.
          Those pictures I was looking at, my college pictures, were pictures with me of my long hair. I compared them to the pictures of me with my short hair now and they are not the same but I got this strange feeling while I was doing that. I know God was speaking to me while I was looking at the pictures and told me this, He said, "Tiffney, you were trying to fit in and be something you were not when you first moved here. You were trying to make people around you happy and for them to like you. You also changed because you were still mad at things that happened in the past and thought looking different would give you a new life. When all you really needed was more of Me."  
            Now some of you would probably think that is strange of me to cut my hair but it was something I had control over and something major that I could do. Now I look at the pictures with my long hair and I miss my long hair once again but this isn't the first time I have missed it. God said something to me when I was looking at my long haired picture last month and this is what He said, "Tiffney, don't you feel different on the inside now? Don't you feel closer to me? You didn't need that hair cut, all you needed was to be with me and let Me be in control of your life." When I heard that last month, I was so relived. I felt like I was changing for the better and I was growing more deeper with God.
             Maybe it is because I have been through a lot these past few months and God has shown Himself for real? Maybe it is because I miss the true me? I think it is more the first one then the second one but still it doesn't matter. What I learned through all of this is that God will bring us back to Him if we are going away or towards another path that we are not suppose to go towards. I just felt like a new person when I heard God saying, "It is the inside that really counts, not the outside." 
            I also remember thinking and I think even hearing somewhere that "It is the inside that counts because you are suppose to live from the inside out." To me that means that you need to take care of your heart and the inside first before you worry about what you look on the outside. No one will care what you look on the outside if you don't have the inside worked on. So why get a hair cut on the outside when you need to work on the inside? That is the world today, though, people are so caught up on the outside looks that they even forget about the inside and their heart at times. They forget that there is really a different person inside that is struggling to get out. The person that God made you to be, not the person that the world wants you to be.
           So lately, I have been more focused on the inside, hoping that it will overflowing to the outside, where it will shine for God and point people in that Direction. I think I am going to let my hair grow out again because I really did like it in the pictures. I'm just not the same without that long hair.