Most women don’t enjoy looking in the mirror. It’s a necessary evil, something we do with a corrective eye. Tweeze this, cover up that, straighten this, add color to that. If only we had so-and-so’s eyes! If only we had so-and-so’s hair! If only we had so-and-so’s body!
I’m guilty as charged. Born with very distinctive coloring and features, I spent most of my life wishing I could fade into the woodwork. Some people who were supposed to be the ones who loved me most made me most self-conscious: “You look sickly!” “You either need to lighten your hair or get a tan. It’s just not natural.” “Your eyes are like dinner plates.” “I could run a chairlift off your nose.” And so it went.
And then I added my own self-denigration to the menu. I was too short. My thighs were too big. My feet were too fat. I was too freckled.
My first experience with being comfortable in my own skin happened when I was 20 and I had been given what I considered a very expensive dress – it cost $60 – and I decided to wear it with an attitude befitting it. So for the first time in my life, I carried my head high and walked across my college campus with confidence, feigned though it was, all the time wondering just how ridiculous I must seem.
Imagine my shock when I was approached by a fellow student, who had been waiting across the four-lane road for a bus going the opposite direction but changed his route to come talk to me. “Who are you?” he asked. “You have everyone in this whole place looking at you.” (For the record, that very thought was– is still – mortifying to me.)
Maybe it was the dress, but more likely it was the attitude. But I learned something that day about how people could perceive me and even about how I had perceived myself.
In reality, however, it was many years later, after God delivered me from 25 years of toxic relationships (see July 4 post), that I truly became comfortable in my own skin. Finally I embraced my distinctiveness. I stopped being embarrassed to be me.
I never had an epiphany or some kind of physical transformation, but that didn’t matter. What changed was not external but internal. It was the realization that I was precious in the sight of God, who loved me before all time began. Instead of seeing a freakishly distinctive-looking woman, I instead saw a Man in the mirror who had created me in His image. (See Genesis 1:26-27.)
I was suddenly okay with having dinner-plate eyes whose color – a changeling green – my family considered an anomaly. I was okay with my black hair contrasting against my stark white, freckled skin. I was okay with my diminutive stature and even my thighs.
I was okay with the very distinctiveness that had caused me to cower because God showed me He had used that to make me approachable to people of all ages. (I can’t count the number of times strangers have asked me if I play Snow White at Disney.) And my approachability was a gateway to the gospel. People want to build a relationship with me because I look like a Disney character. I can live with that.
But self-image goes beyond our perception of our physical endowments. It also extends to the shame we allow to stain our countenance. We look in the mirror and we see a sinner: a fornicator, a drunkard, an adulterer, a liar, maybe even a baby killer. But if we are in Christ, God doesn’t see us like that.
First John 1:9 tells us that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” He remembers our sin no more. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us,” Psalm 103:12 tells us with certainty. So if we continue to allow that sin to stain our countenance, it is an assault upon God’s great grace.
How freeing it was for me to look at myself through the mirror of His grace, in which I could see the face of my loving and gracious Creator and Redeemer. Set yourselves free, my friends, and see yourselves as He sees you: perfect and stainless, beloved and whole. You can use my mirror.
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