FRIEND OR FOE?

Moi – “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

Mirror – “Not you, never you. Never, ever you”.

My mirror has spoken so loud for the longest part of my life. And my mirror, it has lied to me forr the longest part of my life. It has been my foe, my nemesis, my dreaded companion. It has not been my friend at all. But my mirror, it said that because of what it saw. It didn’t see someone who felt valuable, it saw someone who wasn’t worth very much and so it said that I wasn’t going to amount to much. It said that I was indisciplined, ugly, fat and a loser. And for the longest time, I swallowed it all.

No more. Because after all the badgering, I finally had a talk with my mirror the other day. Well, not really. It was more like me talking and the mirror being forced to reflect the truth of my words. Because at the end of the day, that’s what mirrors do, isn’t it? They reflect what they see, they repeat what they hear and my mirror, all these years, it did just that. It saw someone who thought of herself as fat, ugly, incapable. It heard an insecure little girl who defined herself as a loser at life, worthless, bla, bla, bla. And so it told me so. And since it came with the authority of mirrors, I believed it all.

I have been doing a lot of growing up though, twenty two years of growing up. And for the last half a decade of these years, I have been learning and practicing to yield my thinking to the word of God, rather than my own judgments on things. And the process has been excruciatingly slow at times. I have lost many times, but I have won more too. And however slow the process might have been, it did its thing in me, it’s doing its thing in me, and the reflection in the mirror is changing. The image in the mirror is beginning to speak of confidence in a God so much greater than mirrors. And the image in the mirror, it tells the story of redemption.

I stepped in closer the other day, and examined the lines around my mouth, the lines around my eyes, the tummy that’s becoming flabby, the skin that’s losing some of its shine – ok, most of it maybe… But the mirror wasn’t reflecting loss, the mirror is not reflecting loss these days at all. The image in the mirror, it speaks of boldness that comes from knowing who is for me. And the image in the mirror, it tells the story of transformation.

I like this story. It speaks of love and joy and a future and a hope. It displays my weaknesses but glories in His grace.

I like this story. It puts God in the forefront. It makes Him big and keeps me where I belong. It has in it the spirit of boldness that God has given me, not timidity.

I like the story that God writes and I think I am going to continue to let it be the reflection I see each time I look at the mirror because timidity does hurt my need to bloom!