My sister and I roomed together at a women’s retreat this fall. I spoke for the general sessions and taught one workshop. My sister taught a workshop based on her testimony of living out a “Ragged Hope” experience.

One night after lights out, I rumbled around a plastic bag in my purse, trying to keep quiet, but having a terrible time masking the sound of searching.

“What are you doing?” she whispered from across the room, the darkness making both her voice and my rumbling seem louder.

“My tweezers,” I said. “I found a chin hair.”

“One? You found only one of them?”

Like pre-teen girls, we giggled in the dark over how ridiculous we sounded.

Despite the hour, despite the risk of waking my almost-asleep roommate, despite the lack of light in the room, I was desperate to take care of that offending chin hair. I pawed through that plastic bag of purse extras until I found the tweezers and removed the offender.

Am I ever that determined to remove other offensive things in my life? Would I move that quickly to change the channel on TV if something inappropriate scrolled across the screen? Am I that determined–chin hair determined–to, even in the dark, clear my conscience with God? Would I go to any lengths to stop a thread of gossip? Where’s my fierce conqueror mode when the subject is a small hair of resentment or disappointment?

When I dig in my purse now and hear that familiar rumbling sound, I’m reminded to be at least chin-hair desperate in dealing with other things in my life that shouldn’t be there.

Have you ever caught yourself fiercely determined about something relatively meaningless? Still doing that today? Or are you an overcomer?