Mirror, Mirror

Mirrors can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. They either enhance the features you like, or they can pronounce the ones you're trying to hide. I think it's safe to say that most everyone has a mirror in their house. I have one in my room and often use it to analyze work outfits or seeing how defined my biceps are that day or maybe even when applying make-up.

The funny thing about mirrors is that the farther you're away from it, the more you miss the fine detail. You may see the whole picture but the intricacies are often missed. It's when you are up and close with the mirror that you can truly begin to see things for what they really are. Granted, mirrors are only reflections of the true image but I think it give a pretty accurate representation.

Funny how, for women at least, when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we are our harshest critic: "That dress makes me look fat, these pants are too tight, that shirt hits me on all the wrong places, what was I thinking buying this color etc." The list is endless. Sure - outfits are always changeable but it's often the things that are more difficult to change that bother us the most. "I wish my hair was straight, these love handles won't go away, I wish I had curves here or there, etc."  I feel as if those "hard to change' aspects of our character bother us in the same way...at least for me they do.

While clothes are a necessary addition to life, I sometimes think that they're cover-ups, in a way, to hide imperfection, or the flaws that we perceive in the mirror. Outfits and style are arranged in such a way as to seamlessly make everything cohesive. Much can be said the same of what we do with the flaws that we perceive, or maybe the ones that other point out, in our character.

I had a "mirror" experience recently. Not a literal one. I guess you could say it was a self examination of habits and the way in which I deal with people and situations. And it required me to get up close and personal with myself. My first instinct was to run and hide in my shell to weather the storm - the one in which I hide while I ignore problems and hope they go away and pass me by. It's so easy to ignore the hard things in life instead of facing them. It's much harder to come to grips with the fact that I may have screwed up and need to change my ways or make modifications to the way I have done things. It also means being more aware of situations and being cognizant of the people around me. Something I also have to work on. But I guess that's the beauty of life. It isn't easy. If it were, we'd all be bored. There'd be no ups, no downs, nothing to make it interesting.

I also believe that God bring situations like this across our paths for a couple of reasons. 1) it's His way of molding us into his image - provided we handle the situation correctly. It doesn't do our character any good to hang out in a shell for a while. 2) It gives other believers and non believers the chance to see how one is molded into the image of Christ. When someone truly gives their hearts to Christ, they begin a transformation of shedding the 'old self' and putting on the 'new self'. Watching someone go through this transformation, or a part of this transformation is a beautiful thing. It's a reminder of the power of God that can change a life.

The cool thing about the Christian Walk is that it is not an overnight thing. We don't simply give our hearts to Jesus and the next day wake up to everything being peachy keen. It is hard work. And it's Daily hard work. Much like a new relationship. Everything might be hunky dory for a bit but there will come a time when hard conversations happen and you have to take a good look at yourself.  When that happens, are you going to be willing to do the hard thing, face the aspects about your character that you turn a blind eye to and put in the hard work to make a change? Or are you going to dust off the shell in your closet, climb in and potentially miss the rainbow that comes after the storm?