The Mirror That Lied
A couple of months ago, my husband was out running errands and came home with a new purchase. A beautiful, full length, wooden framed, mirror. It’s nice. It’s heavy. And so he propped up against a wall in our master bedroom.
Do you know the secret about slightly angled, propped-against-a-wall, mirrors? Yep. They have quite the skinny feature. I loved that mirror and where it stood in our bedroom. I would stop a few minutes in front of that mirror each day. Sometimes, very faintly, I could hear it whisper, “Nice Krista. Lookin’ good. Flat tummy, toned legs. Good girl.”
Did you catch it? That nice little shift to the past tense? That’s because I’m now mourning the mirror.
A few weeks ago I came home from running errands.
“Hey Honey. Guess what? You will be so proud of me. I hung the mirror in our bedroom.”
“You did what?” (I’m pretty certain my head whipped around 360 degrees, like a scene from a horror movie, and quite possibly I had the scary voice to go with it.)
“I hung the mirror.”
“Flush to the wall?”
“Well, how else would I hang it?”
“Never mind.”
I huffed off, mumbling under my breath. I mean really. That mirror was fine resting at an angle against the wall. I’ve even seen such decorating protocol on HGTV. It’s perfectly acceptable.
After humbly admitting to my husband why I preferred the mirror at an angle, his solution was a pair of wadded up socks. Yes, socks. The socks now sit between the wall and the mirror to give it the angle it had before.
Ridiculous, right?
Even as I write this, I’m embarrassed. Because what I’m really saying is that I’m perfectly fine living with this distorted view of how I look. I’m okay telling myself this little lie.
It makes me wonder how many other truths I don’t face. For instance, the News. Sometimes I’m perfectly fine not knowing what’s going on in the world. I prefer my little bubble of happy.
When friends and family suffer a crisis, it seems easier to look the other way. To move forward quickly–past the problem–to where it’s nice, and right again. Ignorance seems better than the truth of the situation.
Sometimes God’s word trips me up. I read certain scriptures and can’t turn the page fast enough. That truth can pierce deep.
The truth can be so difficult to face sometimes. But no matter how difficult the truth, a lie is worse. A lie is bondage. Truth is freedom.
Do you have a lie?
I get it. I understand.
But I think it’s time to quit the lies. Embrace freedom.
It’s time. It’s time for me to remove the socks from behind the mirror.
LOVE this. Laughing, because I do the same thing!!!
Thanks, Krista for sharing a truth God spoke personally to you. I want to learn to accept each day as it comes fully trusting God and not fearing……but. This past month has been very trying for me with health issues, etc. Then I read in John 16:33, “I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble but take heart, I have overcome the world.” It’s one of those scriptures that’s easy to quote when things are going well, but one of those scriptures you want to read in haste and turn the page when life throws curve balls our way. Thank you for sharing your insights with us.