I decided long ago that I would not be a Christian. 

I’d heard enough from guest preachers who had visited my church while we were in between pastors. They espoused doctrine that stuck like straight pins in the soft and receptive mind of a six-year-old child:

“A woman is not to have short hair, for long hair is the glory of a woman.”

I remember looking at my grandmother, Nanny, I called her. I watched as she reached up and fingered the wisps of dark hair that curled along her neckline. Her already stoic expression shifted into an even more hardened mask as she quickly withdrew her hand, placing it back in her lap. 

No, I thought, quite clearly and distinctly. This is not correct.

This is not true. 

Anyone who knew Nanny could tell that she loved her Lord and her church. She worked in the nursery on Sunday mornings and taught children’s classes on Sunday night. She was a van ministry unto herself before our church had one, picking up children in her large, green Chrysler for regular services, as well as for Vacation Bible School. She hosted Women’s Missionary Union gatherings at her house. 

All the ladies in attendance, I observed, had short hair, as they sampled refreshments that Nanny had prepared.

In another service, not long after, I was stretched out on the carpeted floor in a partitioned section at the rear of the sanctuary, separated from the main area by an accordion-style plastic divider. I was working away in my coloring book when my ears pricked to a different preacher’s words, another gut-punch of half-baked theology:

Dancing was a forbidden activity for Christians.

That settled it. I would not become a Christian. For if being a Christian meant that my Nanny and all the other ladies like her were out of favor with God simply because they had short hair, then I could do without it.

If it also meant that I would sin whenever I went to my beloved tap and ballet lessons, then I’d just go to hell.

I already loved Jesus, having been raised by a family who took me to church and spent their lives doing as Jesus did: loving their neighbors as themselves, and loving God with all their heart, soul, and mind.

The mind part was just as important as the rest, for Nanny also had an entire library of religious texts and commentaries that she studied. My favorite was the ten-volume set of that famous children’s Bible anthology, The Bible Story. The books’ spines—bright turquoise on the top half, earth tones on the lower—took up a chunk of space on the bottom bookshelf at her house. I spent untold hours enjoying the stories, especially through the vibrant illustrations.

I loved them all, but the greatest one to which everything else seemed to point, even in my child’s mind, was the story of Jesus. The miracles He performed were more than just make-believe stories. Feeding the 5000 from just five loaves and two fish, healing the blind and the sick, and bringing Lazarus back to life all culminated in the scariest part—Jesus was arrested, beaten, and then killed, in the most horrible of ways. Dark gray clouds colored the pages depicting the crucifixion of Jesus, but there was hope! For on the next pages, the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, and there He was—alive again!

I had a real Bible, and as my reading skills improved, I began to read Scripture more seriously, reading and re-reading my favorite story. Jesus suffered, died, and then rose from the dead. I was drawn to it, and the best part was that it was told not just once, but four times, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 

I’d read enough in my own little Bible to know that Jesus didn’t mention hair length or dancing as a prerequisite to salvation. He didn’t say that I had to go to church so many times a week to be “saved,” as we called it, or that I had to wear certain clothes. 

He had a bone to pick with the Pharisees. I could understand that, for now I know and have the words to describe what I felt in my soul even as a child—that one of the pathways to hell is paved with legalism.

And so it was that I arrived at the crossroads of truth, faith, and decision, as it does for all those who come to Christ. Another guest preacher, this time at a three-night revival, spoke the Word of God without mentioning dancing, hair length, or some other legalistic minutia drawn from an errant interpretation of Scripture.

The first night of the revival, I listened to the preacher, and I held on to the pew in front of me as we all stood for the invitation. My heart beat within my chest, moved more intensely by a force outside of myself. I already knew what it was like to feel nervous, before a test at school or before getting in trouble at home. This was not nerves. This was something else entirely different.

I didn’t “walk the aisle” during that invitation, for I needed to think about it more, just like a hardened sinner would.

The second night was a repeat of the first, but even more strongly, if there could be such a thing. Back at home, I opened my Bible, for I felt the answer to what I should do would be within the pages. My mother found me reading, and when I told her what I was going through, she said to keep reading and praying and to ask God for help.

She also said that if I felt the same way the next night that there was no need to be afraid or to question it. God is with me, Jesus loves me, and that feeling I was having? That was the Holy Spirit doing His work—pulling me to surrender.

Ultimately, coming to faith was never a question of whether or not the story of Jesus was true, and it was also never a matter of love for Him, either.

It all came down to whether or not I was willing to give up my then seven-year-old pride. After all, I had said I’d never be a Christian. But it really was the simplest thing in the world, driven home by all that time reading my favorite stories—all those about Jesus, first in the children’s anthology, and then in the Word of God.

He called: “Come, and follow Me.”

I answered: “Yes, Lord. I will.”

I stepped out of my pew that third night, and my life has never been the same.

Oh, but I’ve had lots of dance parties since then, praising His name with my hands raised high, my hair, at times, as short as Peter Pan’s. It didn’t make me any less of a woman.

It certainly didn’t make me any less of a Christian, either.