Mirror, Mirror

A few weeks ago I ran a poll on social media to glean into the stats of how women feel about themselves when they stand in front of a mirror. 

The results speak for themselves:

• 12% are content with what they see

• 33% nitpick 

• 27% try to look with soft eyes at themselves

• 27% don’t look in the mirror

A whopping 60% of women don’t have a positive experience or avoid any experience with the mirror at all. 

I recently spoke to a woman, whom I admire for her healthy confidence and joyful personality, and she revealed to me that for many years she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror. She only recently started looking up, only to look away shortly thereafter. In my eyes she is beautiful and, based on her comfortable personality and easy-going style, I assumed she is comfortable in her skin and in who she is. Not so much… 

With soft eyes

We are bombarded daily with messages screaming at us to nitpick, to continually make ourselves more perfect, to persistently compare ourselves to others (or to our younger self) and to desperately buy the latest beautifying remedy that will finally bring us to a place of peace within ourselves.

Do you really think that attaining a standard of perfection will bring peace?

I dare say no.

This will only raise the bar higher.

And the scurrying continues. 

Therefore, I suggest a more transformational approach that starts from the inside out: Making a deliberate decision to look at yourself with soft eyes. To actually smile when you look in the mirror, instead of zooming in on everything that’s wrong with what you see there. 

Trust me - if you’re looking for issues, they will be there. 

Try this practical exercise when you stand in front of the mirror again:

• Before you look up - resolve to look at yourself with soft eyes

• As you look at yourself, smile softly and look yourself in the eyes

• In that moment, make a firm decision to keep your eyes soft and to quench any critical voices that aim to rudely intrude this moment

• Ask the Spirit to show you how He sees you and how He wants you to see yourself 

• Make this a daily habit and you will soon start to experience a revolutionary shift in how you see yourself and how you feel towards your body and yourself

The crown of creation

Eve was created as ‘the crown of creation’ - the grand finalé in which the creation process culminated. 

She was the epitome of portraying the beauty of God, even more so than the beauty that was vividly evident in nature. 

Taking the above into consideration, do you not see that one of the enemy’s most powerful tools to break you down as a woman, is to make you doubt that you are beautiful? 

God’s heart towards you is to be in His rest and to rest within yourself. The enemy aims to destroy this place of rest and prefers to have you in a place of strife with yourself and to feel that you just need to achieve this, then you’ll feel beautiful and content. 

The enemy of your soul wishes to destroy anything that’s beautiful, whole and pure.

The lover of your soul encourages you to preserve and cultivate that which is beautiful, whole and pure. 

Essentially, you’re at a crossroad daily where you need to decide which voice you’ll be heeding when you look at yourself. 

It’s either one or the other. 

Which mirror defines you?

There’s a Scripture that powerfully portrays which mirror we must turn to when it comes to defining who we are and who we will become. 

2 Cor. 3:18 - “And we all…beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

This Scripture emphasises the truth that ‘we become what we behold’ (William Blake). 

If you choose to define yourself by God’s standards and based on His opinion of you, this will radically transform your life from the inside out. Without much effort, you’ll think about and view yourself in a much different light. You’ll gradually become more yourself as you behold who you were created to be, instead of constantly trying to live up to the standards thrown in your face by the world around you. 

Contentment and peace will be the sweet, sweet fruit when you behold yourself in this Mirror. 

If the world and the media becomes the mirror you aim to find yourself in, the most natural result will be discontent and a constant nitpicking at every aspect of who you are and what you look like. It will never be enough. 

Instead of mistakenly assuming that a certain external standard of beauty will bring peace and acceptance, I encourage you to consider the idea of attaining peace with yourself through an inside out approach.

I want to leave the below with you - chew on it, absorb it and let it form the deepest part of your identity:

"Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. 

This is the true self. 

Every other identity is illusion."

(Brennan Manning, Abba's Child)