Mirror mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all….
The face looking back at me runs through the litany of comments….
fat
ugly
selfish
prideful
wounded
graceless
blunt
tactless
opinionated
dominating
controlling
manipulative
jealous
this list could grow and continue and morph into whatever you see or hear when you look into the mirror.
Mirror mirror on the wall….you are a liar or maybe I am the one with the warped perceptions of myself.
I have seen the truth of these words in myself, but also within these words I have seen the lies.
The reality is that I can be domineering. I can be controlling. I can be ugly. I am wounded. I have wounded. I can be graceless. I can be blunt.
But the truth is that my wounds can be used for God’s glory. The truth is that when I wound, I can experience the beautiful gift of forgiveness. The truth is when I am domineering I have the opportunity to submit to the control of my holy, loving, gracious God. The truth is that all the parts of who I am–the good, the bad and the ugly– are all a part of me and who am I to reject what I see in the mirror. Rather than rejecting the ‘less than’ part of myself what if I were to offer those parts of me up to Jesus and surrender to whatever he wants to do to turn those weaknesses into a strength.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not giving myself license to be the worst side of me, I am giving myself grace to grow into the best side of me and that side is only found in Jesus Christ. If I am going to grow then I can expect failures. But failures are not a sign that I failed per se, they are an opportunity to grow in a specific tangible way. Only in him can we be our best and if we detect patterns of thought that produce our worst, and we don’t hold them up to him like a child holding up a broken lovey and saying ‘fix?’ then I am not submitting to whatever he wants to do to turn those weaknesses into strengths.
the truth within these words is that there is redemption through Jesus Christ.
Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all….
She raises her fist to the heavens and shouts her anger. She lets her heart ugliness spill out and over, and then falls to her knees keening her pain. She rocks back and forth, curled up within the pain, when she feels Him reach out His hand to comfort her.
He scoops her up, holds her close to His heart and whispers in her ear: ‘I love you, I am here and I will never leave you to go through this alone, will you trust Me?’
Her first instinct is to cringe and hold on tighter to the pain, but then she remembers….
He was broken for her.
For her.
And she uncurls from the pain and holds it up to Him as an offering and in His brokenness she finds her rest.
This is a conundrum of truth. That freedom comes through brokenness.
Christ’s brokenness. Our brokenness.
I have only ever experienced true freedom when I accepted Christ’s brokenness on my behalf and when I was willing to be broken. What? Aren’t we suppose to be victorious and more than conquerors and all that? Yes, of course, absolutely, no question about it, but there remains the truth that I have two patterns of thought waging war within me: the flesh and the spirit. Which will win? The Spirit can only win once I have experienced brokenness in the flesh.
You see, freedom is easily abused, is easily misunderstood, and is often misconstrued. Freedom is not a freedom to do what I want. To do what I please. Freedom is for doing God’s will. His will. Only his will.
So many things stand in his way. They are us. They are our foibles, desires, sins, idols, past, present, and future. All of these things stand in the way of freedom. The kind of freedom that God intends for us to run in.
We are set free to be who God intended for us to be—not some improved version of ourselves, but a new version of ourselves. Jesus did not suffer an insufferable death so that I could be reformed. No. It would be cheapening his grace if I were to merely be reformed. I need to be transformed.
Transformed.
Made new.
Renewed.
That’s the kind of grace that motivated my Savior to die a horrific death in my place. It is the kind of grace I want in my life. It’s the kind of grace that comes through brokenness and yes, that is frightening, but I know that my God takes this heart of mine that I hold out to him and he gently and tenderly touches all the places that need to be removed and in his wisdom and timing he removes the old and replaces it with new. There is never any leaving of the old. It is all new. My only requirement is to submit and to trust.
To be reformed is to retain some semblance of the original and to make improvements on it. To be made new, to be transformed, means being willing to let go of the original, watch it break and see something new made out of it.
