Last week, I got highlights for the first time. Well, it was the first time in about 20 years. My very first highlights, given to me by some friends in my dorm room, turned out to be green. So this time, I decided to go to the salon, where they charge a bit more than my room mates did.

“It’s worth it,” I told myself. I’ve started seeing a few sprigs of gray, and while Proverbs 16:31 says, “Gray hair is a crown of splendor,” I’m not feelin’ it yet.

That night, while my family was eating dinner, my youngest son said, “Mom, I think the sun is giving you some highlights!” I smiled sweetly, wondering if now my husband would notice the results of my afternoon at the beauty shop.

But instead, Ken glanced at my highlighted head and then leaned over, as if he were sharing a private joke with me, and said, “Honey, is it the gray? He’s noticing the gray, isn’t he?”

All I could do was laugh and shake my head at the irony. Here I had been trying to cover the gray, and he attributed my new look to the gray.  My daughter, the only family member aware of my trip to the salon, said, “Dad! Those are blonde, not gray! Mom got highlights!”

Good thing I spent that money, right?

Proverbs 31:30 says,

“Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,

but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

Beauty is deceitful. It tells me that I must be beautiful to be praised. And it tells me that if I do have beauty, I will be praised. Obviously, my husband proved that notion wrong!

In reality, a God-fearing woman is praiseworthy. She doesn’t fear fading beauty or gray hair, because she has placed her hope securely in God. She’s convinced that come what may, He will be enough for her.

Her beauty is not the sort that will be easily overlooked by her husband.