Grace.

In the middle of a thunderstorm, I lay on the bottom bunk, letting my weight sink into the paper-thin mattress that I paid $8 to sleep on. My headphones sang the newly-released Julien Baker album, dark and depressing in my ears, as the light from my phone reflected onto my freckled cheeks. The other dozen bunk beds were filled with mostly strangers; a few who’d just stumbled in drunk, making noise as they snuck into their bed and locked away their bags. I wanted to fall asleep, but I didn’t feel ready yet.

I will never forget that moment, when Jesus spoke to me, in a hostel in Budapest, Hungary.

My hair was an absolute mess. I had spent the day traipsing through the city in the pouring rain, so by sundown my hair was riddled with knots from roots to end. My messy hair was a symbol of all I wanted to hide that day—my fear, my melancholy, my unspectacular.

After a day that was meant to feel dreamy and magical, Ifelt defeated. And I felt like every inferior moment of that day had been abyproduct of my worth. Only a “less-than” kind of girl has a “less-than” kindof day in a city like Budapest. It was meant to be a spectacular day, yet Ifelt so flat. I was falling asleep that night with barely enough desire to wakeup the next morning.

As I uncomfortably wrestled with my emotions that night,from feeling guilty to guarded, God offered me grace. He quietly (but firmly)whispered, “my hair still tangles, even in Budapest.”

I was feeling guilty about misusing the moments God gave me so I became guarded in order to hide my shame. And that’s where God handed me grace. He brought me back to the incarnation. When Jesus thirsted, hungered, and cried it didn’t make him unspectacular, it just made him real. When my hair gets tangled from the wind, when I feel flat and lonely, it makes me real, too. We can embrace our humanity because God did first. He embraced our ugly, our boring, our dark. He embraced it SO fully that he put on skin and gave himself hair to be with us. He took on the seemingly mundane to offer us ultimate life.

Not every moment of mine has to be magical or dreamy, even in Budapest. My humanity doesn’t compromise my worth because it doesn’t make me “less-than,” it just makes me real. Regardless of what side of the sea I’m on, my hair will get knots, and I’ll have days that feel gloomy. The point is that wherever I go my issues will come with me, but so will Jesus. And he of all people knows what it’s like to have tangled hair, even in Budapest.

words by Amy Block and photo by Sarah Mohan