Get Your Reflection Straight

Being as it's a New YEAR- I'm going to be stereotypical...REFLECTION TIME!(Your expectation for the entire rest of this blog should be CHEESE. These New Year's deals are nothing but CHEESY- just promise me to keep reading.) I'm a big fan of nostalgia and I feel God is a big fan of periodic self-examination. Putting the two together gives you tears, growth and best of all HOPE. Regardless of how cliche it is to look over the past year and evaluate how it went and make a few vows to the coming year- I consider it slightly necessary. But in order to properly REFLECT on the past, I am going to advise, you better be properly seeing your current REFLECTION.

My daughter was examining her beauty in the reflection of the window. The long drive and quickly blackening sky meant she was running out of constructive ideas of how to entertain herself until she drifted off to sleep. I had my rear-view mirror strategically turned so I could see her and she could see me. (Us animated types feel 80% of conversation rests in the facial expressions, so proper viewing in the car is essential to our communication.) She caught me watching her fluffing her hair and putting on imaginary make-up (while watching the road, I promise...it's a talent of mine). "I'm pretty, huh, Mom?" "The prettiest thing I know," I truthfully spoke. She smiled as if I had never said that exact response before and turned back to primping. "Hey, Mom! Guess what!!! I think my hair is turning blonde!!!" I tried not to laugh, because Zoe hates it when I don't take her seriously (how can I with comments like that?!?!) "Zoe, you're hair is ALREADY blonde." And then, the best blonde joke's punch line exited my daughter's excited face, "I AM!?! AWESOME!"

I'd like to end that story with "I don't know where in the world she gets it from", but I can't start this whole thing out by lying :( ... I do the same thing, not with my hair color mind you, but my CHARACTER. I look in the mirror and see what my emotions tell me to see. I do this over and over and pretty soon I've forgotten who GOD has said I am. Then, when it comes to my attention what I should be seeing- I am shocked. Sometimes embarrassingly so, because all this while I've been throwing myself together in front of the mirror thinking "this works, this is good enough" just to find out I've slowly let my true design go. I'm caught replacing my God given beauty with hurried and careless cover-up when deep cleansing was really in order. (Facially speaking, we all know what this means----it catches up to us in the form of pussy ol' zits.) The flipside to that is seeing a woman who is just not enough day after day staring back at me. Then, God in His everlovin' blessin' heart, re-introduces the girl HE actually sees. It's flattering, but in a very painful and humbling way. (How is it He sees grace in the middle of a frumpy mess?) I hate knowing I spend the majority of my time on this side of the mirror telling myself things OTHER than what God speaks to me and about me. Can't my mirror just grab God's eyes and keep them there- so even on days I haven't equipped my OWN eyes, I can still see what HE sees?!? I do believe my silly mirror has a personality of its own, can I talk it into hookin up with God to get that set up? (anyone else NOT believe mirrors have personalities? check out peopleofwalmart.com...those people had mirrors that LIE...) Seriously though, if I don't figure out a way to perceive myself well, (really the only good way to see ourselves is through God's eyes...we can be "self aware" all we want, but if it isn't by God's truth, we got some awareness comin our way....) how can I reflect on who I have been and even try to dream of who I want to be? How can I know what God is asking me to do if I don't even know who He sees as He's calling?

Sometimes, I worry- if God was interviewed and then I were to be separately questioned- we would have completely different answers on "who is Rosie". (I am doubting I'm alone on this issue of reflection perception.) I want to get to a point where we describe the same person, because my sight is from His. In looking back over the year, I want us to be describing the same year. (We all know how one event can have MANY different stories depending on the witness...In this case---different stories equals a bit of a mess---misdirection, confusion...you know it...)I want to see my failures, my growth, my blessings and my losses the way God sees them, so that in the end- I see one more bit of His intricate story. I want HIS take on my story, not mine (mine is quite a bit more cynical at times, a lot less patient and sometimes overly excited about things that aren't even part of the real plot.)

When I wake up in the morning and move toward the daring eye shadow and finish with the cute new shoes, I still want to see the clean bride God called from the very beginning. So---along with all this New Years reflecting business, I am doing a little work on my REFLECTION. I don't want to coerce my mirror to lie to me (although sometimes I'd love to be as "uninformed" as many naive'ins...) and I can't train my own eyes to see beyond their human capabilities. But I learned something pretty cool a while back....(I can only hope all you ladies are pretty excited to hear the trick...). I, like all other women on this planet, was having a fat day---more like a fat month. I was REALLY degrading myself in the mirror (can't imagine God was all too flattered by the continual disgust of my image). I even was praying that God would help me see me the way He did, so I would get out of this weird "self-criticizing" mode. One day, I had people over to my house to pray, we were moving from room to room anointing certain things in the rooms and out of nowhere a guy friend of mine (he DEFINITELY didn't know I'd been struggling with my reflection) just walked up to the mirror in my room and anointed it and started praying the very prayer I had been pleading for quite some time. Revolutionary! So, do it. Anoint your mirrors (even if not literally, metaphorically, get those mirrors introduced to some Holy Spirit vision). The Holy Spirit is God IN us, and in this case that would be the exact set of glasses we need to be looking at the world through- including when we're looking at ourselves.


Beautiful reflection=joyful reflecting.
I want my story to be a joy even when it's painful- I want to be a joy even when I'm not perfect. The only way to capture that is to grasp God's vision for us while He sees it all.
Inaccurate perceptions=misguided assumptions.
I'm the queen of assumptions (hence the "long way around" life I've mostly lived) and I have ended up in a lot of dead ends because I took a bunny trail based off my own perceived truth. God, Your truth is the only one I'll accept, even when the mirror seems to argue. :)