When I was a child, I never looked in the mirror very much. Really, as I think back, I don’t remember spending any time in front of the mirror except to make funny faces, or to let mom fix my hair. No, my childhood memories feature cartwheeling, dancing, creekin’, adventuring: freedom. I practically lived in a dark green velvet gymnastics leotard. I was totally uninhibited by thoughts about my body, about self. I just was and I didn’t think about it.
As it does with everyone, nearly everything, that changed with time. I began spending quite a bit more time in front of the bathroom mirror. Life started to pick up speed. Our family moved two times in one year. Bullies became more prevalent in my social life as did the opinions of peers. Amidst all this, my time in front of the mirror was consumed by thoughts of not good enough, discontent. I was figuring out who I was and how others perceived me.
Where before they hadn’t even been an afterthought, my thoughts of self were constant. I shifted from the freedom of childhood into the prison of self-aware adolescence. All my pictures from late middle school are tinged with feelings of insecurity. My lack of confidence had seeped out of me somehow and now stains all the ink in those photographs, like a sepia tone filter. Leaving middle school, I began to fit into my social identity in high school. As I neared the end of that period of life, I had learned to appear a certain way. Although it had improved since middle school, my confidence had kind of leveled off. It wasn’t completely absent; it would pop in and out, like a fair weather friend. Boyfriends helped with this, family helped too. What stayed always throughout these pitfalls and rises, however, was that low whisper, that chant: not good enough.
I didn’t even know that this had been my bondage until a few months ago. I was sitting in the athletic training room after a long run on a Saturday morning. As I iced my shins and stretched, I watched the coach’s two daughters playing in the room. They were so goofy with each other and their dad. They were flipping around, kicking their legs up and laughing ridiculously. Their bodies were everywhere with boundless energy. They were totally uninhibited by thoughts of self and just simply were. I thought to myself how lucky they were, how beautiful that time was. For the first time I realized how free I had been as a child - free from my self. I wanted to tell them to treasure it because it changes, it all changes, and you can’t ever go back. Of course, what good would that do? It’s beautiful because we don’t even think about it, we’re not worried a bit and because it’s fleeting.
I’ve been traveling on this journey of acceptance, but not just acceptance, of joy, in who I simply am. I don’t want to look in the mirror and say not good enough. Who does? But I don’t want to even say good enough. I want to say, proclaim, hear, good. Lovely. Loved. I don’t want to settle. I want to celebrate. Remember that fair weather friend, confidence, from before? Well, I decided I liked to have ‘im around. Generally, I was happier when he paid a visit. I wanted him to stay.
Insecurities are heavy burdens to bear, yet they amount to nothing in the end. On the scale of significance, they weigh in at next to zero. How can something so eternally immaterial as what people think of my new haircut be so hard to shrug off? I’ve found that the only way to truly rejoice in who I am is to start spending more time in front of a different mirror.
I have grown up in church. I know the Bible. I was a trophy winning junior Bible quizzer. Who was the oldest man in the Bible? Methuselah. How long did the Israelites wander in the desert? Forty years. But I knew the Bible as a child knows it. For so long, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, in regard to scripture. During my first year of college, I was discipled by an older woman of God. I was surrounded by mature Christians who taught me to grow up into my faith. Now I see my Bible as my mirror and I'll never be the same.
"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" 2 Cor. 5:16-17 (NIV)
The word of god is a mirror that reflects back to me truth. Not what I want to see, or what I think I should see. It doesn't hide my flaws - certainly not. But it covers me in grace. God knows me fully, and because of his truth, he calls me good. Lovely. Loved. By a love that never ends. When before I was bombarded by anxiety about what the world told me about my image, I am now overwhelmed by a beautiful and humbling truth:
The Lord loves me. He created me. He gave His son to die for me. He delights in me. And He has a specific purpose for me.
My identity is in Christ, who is perfect.
This is something I can not only accept, but rejoice in. I am free. I may no longer live in a green leotard, but I am clothed in something much better: grace. I may not have the same boundless energy or goofiness of childhood, some of that I have left behind. But I have rediscovered a joy in being uninhibited by thoughts of self.
I'll be honest, there are still days when I struggle to be positive as I look in the mirror. I've found the importance - the abundance, the joy - in spending more time in front of the mirror that reflects to me what is true.
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Cor. 5:21 (NIV)
