On my way to work one
morning last week I was fuming about some family things and these words from a
song I wasn’t really paying attention to came across loud and clear:
Look in the mirror, but you
find someone you never thought you'd be.
I was
stunned. If I would’ve been walking, I would’ve
stopped in my tracks. Rather I was
driving, so I did pull my foot off the gas pedal for a second as those words
sunk in… Look in the mirror, but you find
someone you never thought you'd be…
And I thought
to myself, “when I was a young girl, this
is not the person I envisioned myself being!”
Sure, life’s
circumstances are WAY different than I had planned, but regardless of what this
life has thrown my way I realized that my younger self would be totally disappointed
in how I was behaving. My internal
frustrations weren’t turned into outward acts of violence, but my thoughts—which
God clearly knows—were unkind. Growing
up I always thought of myself as a kind person.
To say the least, I was disappointed in myself.
I later
looked up that song (Matthew West - Mended) and listened to the whole thing. I was left shaking my head in wonder of our
awesome God. I was not listening to the
music coming from my car’s speakers that morning, but He opened my ears to hear
the one part of that song that I needed to hear. God does speak to us. He will sometimes use what is right in front
of our eyes (or ears) to send us a message.
Those words were exactly what I needed to hear to get me out of my funk.
No, life is not perfect. My husband is not perfect; I’m not perfect;
we don’t have a perfect marriage; I don’t have perfect stepkids. But I can rely on a PERFECT GOD to carry me
through life’s unexpected circumstances and I can choose joy within them.
Consider it pure joy, my
brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know
that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you
may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. {James 1:2-4 NIV}
I think it
would do us all good to look at ourselves in a virtual mirror and think about
what our younger self would think about how we were responding to our daily
circumstances. My reflection wasn’t so
pretty, but now that I’ve seen that image I’m working on improving it!
Love &
Hugs,
MK
