More or Less

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?” Martyn Lloyd-Jones


Nailed with the truth. I am tired of beating myself up. Not a day goes by that I do not do it. And it mostly revolves around the mirror. I don't like to admit it, but it's true. I am my own worst enemy. 


I have had a revelation of sorts. I was thinking about C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and it hit me. Why would the likes of Screwtape or Wormwood have to bother with me since I am doing such a great job with myself? 


The Lord says in Deuteronomy 30, "Today I set before you life and death, blessings and cursings...choose life."


I am not making a resolution. I am making a choice. There is a difference--trust me. I am choosing the blessing. I am choosing life. I am, by God's grace, going to stop cursing myself nearly every time I look in the mirror. 


I am tired of constantly berating myself. If it's not my weight, it's my skin, or my hair, or my wrinkles, or my puffy eyes, or the way I look with my clothes off or the way that I look with my clothes on. I cannot win.


Yet God has pierced the armor of lies that I have so faithfully constructed over the last thirty years. I see that I am crippling my spirit and grieving the One who made me, the One who knitted me together in my mother's womb EXACTLY as He wanted me to be. Have I not ministered this truth to other women, yet turned away and believed the lie myself? What a paradox.


But the truth always wins out. At least that is what I believe. So I am setting my face toward a proverbial Jerusalem and asking the Lord to deliver me from this propensity of mine to curse myself. I have thought long and hard about this. I have prayed. I have sought the wonderful counsel of God's Word. I know that there is a fine line here. I know because I have spent most of my life on the other side of it.


I do not want to succumb to the culture's false notion of beauty and chase something that the Lord describes as vain and fleeting.


I so want the other beauty, the beauty that remains. The beauty of a woman who feareth the Lord...who regards Him and His beauty with awe and wonder...a woman who comes fully alive in His presence. THAT is the woman I long to be.


I am fifty-six. The mirror does not lie. But it is not too late. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Even if the joints are creaking and the wrinkles are multiplying daily, I have always been and will always be His beautiful daughter. 


I am speaking freedom in the name of Christ for myself and for any others who struggle with the image that calls out to them from the mirror. Let's call it out for what it is. A false image. An idol. I shudder when I write those words because I know that this focus on external appearance is a trap that has not only ensnared me, but countless women who are my sisters in Christ. Suddenly it feels really sick. And sad. 


So I am saying it again. It is not who we are in the core of our being. I am willing to let go of the lies. Won't you join me in seeking to walk out of the darkness and into the truth. Let's start believing that the mirror image does indeed reflect a woman who is fearfully and wonderfully made...inside and out. 


That's my prayer for 2011 and beyond...


Freedom. Joy. Peace.