Mucher Than Creative Services - Creative Writing Portfolio

We’ve all gotten our hair cut. We’ve leafed through the latest styles. We’ve seen the dyes, the highlights, the hair products that promise to make us gorgeous. They play on our desire to look good. Stay young. Be beautiful.

Hairstylist Jane Gamroth of Edmonton, Alberta knows what it’s all about. In the business for fifteen years now, she has seen more than her share of cuts, colours, and styles.

Perfect Solution
With a creative flair and a love for people, Jane delved into her studies and mastered the techniques of clipping, colouring, and connecting. Instructors coached on refraining from talking about religion and politics,
but Jane was soon to discover that these were two of the issues weighing most heavily on the minds of her customers.

Having been a Christian all her life, she found herself responding to questions and concerns with the Answer she herself had discovered. Though she never pushed her faith in God on others, Jane took opportunity when people asked her what she would do in a given situation. Jesus was the only solution she had to offer.

“As a general rule, people tend to feel very safe for the forty-or-so minutes they are in that chair,” Jane says. “They can pour out their hearts and know they won’t be judged or condemned for what they say.”

Shining Highlights
Nine years and three children later, Jane began looking for a way to keep her career yet not take away from one of her highest priorities: family. Leaving the commercial hair salon, she began her own business in her home.

The workplace shift gave her more advantages than she had anticipated. There was no longer the pressure of not mentioning God or religion, and her home atmosphere created a more personal location for clients to share their hearts if they wished.

Staying in Style
It was only a year later when Jane started to question her profession, wondering if what she was doing was current with what God had in mind for her. And she began asking herself, “Is hairstyling a God-pleasing
job? Here I am, getting people to colour their hair, add texture and stay in style. Is making people’s outer appearances beautiful - or even artificial - godly?”

Not receiving alternate direction, Jane continued in her career. When the tragic events of September 11th took place last year, she was overwhelmed by the opportunities to testify of God’s love and mercy in the midst of human tragedy.

“How could God allow this?” people would question, and some would break down, utterly shattered by current events. Having established relationship, Jane was able to encourage them to slow down, take life a
day at a time, and not blame God.

Lasting Fullness
This January, Jane again was wondering about her career, when she felt prompted to look at her motives. As she did so, she realized that her real motivation now was to speak into lives and point clients to faith in
Jesus.

That same month, Jane, a regular viewer of It’s a New Day, watched a program with guest Nancy Stafford. As the former beauty queen and present actress spoke on inner and outer beauty, Jane listened intently.
“It’s a New Day is so down-to-earth,” she says. “The program has so much to offer. Nancy’s message really spoke to me where I am.”

A look back over the last fifteen years showed Jane the many people who have come to her for help on their outer beauty and left the salon with not only an outward touch-up, but also something much deeper.
The opportunity to speak Jesus into lives is greater than it would be in many other professions.

For now, Jane remains a hairstylist, practicing the art of outer and inner beauty. She has learned that although it is important to take care of what is on the outside, what really matters is the inner beauty she has found – and can share.