When you last looked in the mirror, maybe you saw some things you didn't like. Maybe you saw a sorry-ass excuse of a person standing hopelessly in front of the mirror or maybe you saw yourself shaking under the oppressing weight of your poor self-image. Maybe you saw all your mistakes and all of your shortcomings staring back at you... or maybe you saw colorful pieces of trash piled together to make one landfill of a person.

Maybe you've been looking through kaleidoscope eyes for so long that all you can see are small fragments of your pink and purple beauty amongst huge segments of your ever-present blue-black pain? I don't know what you saw when you last looked in the mirror, but I do know that your eyes aren't showing you the whole truth if you saw anything other than a work of art.

You are not the broken person your mirror keeps trying to show you. Your kaleidoscope eyes are lying to you.

The lies your eyes can tell are horrifically amazing, and believable. Somewhere deep inside, you know you are something close to a Picasso, but when you look at yourself through your kaleidoscope eyes, your imperfections are somehow magnified; you start looking less like the Picasso painting you are and more like a series of unintelligible scribbles. If you are not careful, all you will see when you look in the mirror are those little remnants of yourself. If you're not careful, you will become something you are not.

Your kaleidoscope eyes will lie to you if you let them... so... stop letting them.

You have to remember that you are impossibly brilliant. By (God's) definition, you are a fearfully and wonderfully made creation who's worth is more than the sum of a million blood-red rubies. You are full of honor and hope and humility; all your adjective were born of adversities that you stood up to; adversities that broke you and left you in pieces.... but who said pieces weren't good-looking? You are a work of art whose creator took the time to shatter and re-smooth the rough parts of you. He wanted to make sure you were perfect.

Stop looking at yourself through eyes that tell really horrible lies. Trust that God made you whole and unique and special. Try looking at yourself through his all-seeing eyes and I promise, you'll start seeing yourself more clearly.

You are a masterpiece. Don't allow your kaleidoscope eyes to tell you otherwise!

#stayencouraged