It’s easy to forget what you’ve asked for in prayer. The little things that didn’t need an answer before you could move on, the questions about life that work themselves out as you go. Sometimes God surprises me with answers though, with the understanding my heart cried out for but my head didn’t require. Sometimes it’s the little things that show how deeply you are loved and cared for by our big, big God.

Usually when I look in the mirror I am disappointed with what I see. (No, this is not a manipulative, “Tell me how pretty I am!” post. Just hear me out.) I pick out everything I don’t like and study it, mourn over it a bit, then get to work applying makeup, smoothing the hair, figuring out the outfit; camouflage to hide the problems I see. It’s been life as I’ve known it since I first became captivated by the mirror as a kid.  As it turns out it is symbolic of my life as a whole. It’s also a trap God’s been walking me out of step by step. It looks like this stronghold is the next to go. Yikes.

If you’ve read my testimony (So Then, God) then you know this has come up in various ways lately, letting go of the image I’ve created and instead holding on to Him and the being He’s created. It’s been about recognizing the Lord as my Creator, Savior, Redeemer and putting Him back on the throne in my life; about trusting God and His will more than I trust myself and mine. This prayer I’d forgotten opened the door to another place in which He’d like to work; to set me free from myself.

I’ve been asking through prayer to see others through God’s eyes, to see what isn’t apparent to me, to give me love for those I find it hard to love. I’ve been praying this for a long time now. It works. Anyways, one day I was frowning at myself in the mirror and my girls came in and started frowning at themselves too, and picking themselves apart. I thought I’d been doing a good job of keeping my negative thoughts about myself to myself, but kids pick up on the stuff we do not actually say, they soak it all in and squeeze it right back out in their own thoughts and actions. As their mom, who loves them, I was watching and listening to how they see themselves and was thinking, “No! No, you’re taking one small piece and criticizing it out of context to the rest. You’re not seeing how that piece fits in with the whole and makes you beautiful! How can you not see how altogether beautiful you are?!” *Sigh* The whole ‘practicing what you preach’ thing is severely inconvenient as a parent. I had been doing the same thing to myself. Now, I could have attempted the false self-esteem baloney preached in our culture to women, trying to mentally convince myself that we are all supermodels. But yuck. Making an idol of physical beauty was not the goal either. So I prayed about it. “Lord, how do you see me?”

And then I moved on with life.

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The image in the mirror hasn’t changed, but how I see her, has. Softly, so quietly I didn’t even realize it was changing. The other day I looked in the mirror and was happy with what I saw. It caught me by surprise. It wasn’t a good hair day or a clear skin day. But I could look in the mirror and give and honest smile. This was not a “Daannng, girl, you look good!” feeling, it was, “Thank you God, for creating me the way you have.” It was a startling change from my normal reaction.

But isn’t this what we do? We take one small part of ourselves and obsess over it; either burying it in condemnation or masking and lifting it up in pride. When all we really need to do is turn it over to the Lord and let Him work. It’s funny how Christ works in us. I gave Him this piece of me, a coin with pride written on one side and condemnation on the other. He flipped it and handed it back to me all shiny and new with a better word inscribed. Thankful.

This new way of seeing myself isn’t about a lack of reality; my face hasn’t changed, my mirror didn’t get foggy (although it is a little dirty) it’s a heart change on how I react to what I’m seeing. Instead of seeing “Not Good Enough” I’m seeing “Loved Before I Even Drew Breath.”

God’s thoughts are so much better than our thoughts. I sometimes wish I could trade all of me for all of Him all at once; but then I’d miss out on this adventure of love; this relationship we call a life in Christ.