Mirrors and Smoke

Looking in the mirror has been a dangerous business for me since childhood. I have struggled with what I see there. Sometime perhaps, it will be the time to share more of my ongoing battle with my appearance. It is this battle, however, that inspired surprisingly massive amounts of angst in me over changing my Facebook picture. Approximately four times a year, I have a day where I could have my picture taken and actually not cringe if it ended up on Facebook. So, I took advantage of one of those four days only to discover I would later freak out, wondering if posting a picture of a good day was inauthentic, prideful, shallow, consult your thesaurus for further adjectives. I know what I usually look like--favorite tee stolen from hand-me-downs intended for Joseph, faded jeans, hair pulled back haphazardly, zit constellation, and eyes reddened from allergies and contacts.

I've always been very honest in telling people I'm a liar by nature. I honed it early on and perfected it in late childhood and too many of my teen years. It made me sick. I hated being a liar. One day I decided that if I heard myself begin to lie, I would just stop right then and say loudly, "Ummm, so yeah, that wasn't true." It was pretty embarrassing, but I did it. To this day, I still have that rule for myself. Lying was prison. I did it to cover myself, so no one would see my sin and shame and so no one would see me. After all, if I hated myself that much, surely no one else could like me either.

The Facebook photo had faint echoes of a lie. I felt uncomfortable and fought the urge to change it to a tree branch or a bag of gluten-free flour. I stopped myself when I realized there was truth in the picture. Sure, my hair won't look like that again in 2013, but my smile was because Joseph was taking the picture. Elijah was coaching us. We were all dodging a really aggressive wasp. And we were laughing. And there was joy there. Not just a pose. And for once, my hairstylist can be OK with me referring people to her.

These days, the mirror and I still fight, but I don't look in it very much. I choose God's Word more often because just writing about it makes me well up in tears, knowing the great delight and tenderness with which God sees me. The more I see of the height and depth and breadth of his love....well, the less I need to look in the mirror and catalogue the flaws. Oh, I am loved.

As for smoke? Our state is on fire again. All winter, as snow was light and days were strangely warm, I trembled to think of another season of fire like 2012. It's here. The air is smoky. Fires are all around. This week's plans have changed--we won't be getting together with a friend. She might be evacuated at any moment. Someone else already lost a house. Our non-air-conditioned house is full of smoke. We can taste it. The smell is in everything. Our lungs are not happy. Uneasiness is everywhere.

Mirrors and smoke--without knowing the love of Jesus Christ, how is it possible to navigate either?