The mirror and the photograph

24 weeks pregnant

your burden=your breakthrough//your hardship=your passion//your story=your inspiration//your struggle=your spoils.

The anecdote that helps me understand the power within hardship is from great thinker and man of God, Graham Cooke.  He says, the bigger the problem, the better.  When we have a problem, we can delight in it.  The nastier the adversary, the bigger the celebration in victory.  Technically, you could call up your best friend and say, "Guess what?  I'm gonna be even more awesome because I've got a huge problem.  Yeah.  I know, it's great, isn't it?  It could be a doozie.  Overcoming it doesn't look possible.  Great news, ay?  Want to share it with me?  We're gonna be so much better and more beautiful once we've walked through this one!" 

He has a wonderfully sassy way of explaining himself.  I heart him.  [I tell you this because you're probably thinking-- dude, this guy's a little off...]  It's all about looking at our circumstances from a heavenly perspective.  We will prevail.  I've read the whole story and good wins.  If we really walk through it, bring in His perspective, seek good counsel, find thankfulness and joy in the difficult, we will overcome the problem.  When we approach a mountain, we can know that we will be bigger than that mountain!  [That's intense, especially if the mountain looks looming and rugged].

Even though I "know" this, I think back to how many issues and problems God has walked me through and I think, wow.  You're great.  Thank You for your Faithfulness!  Let's celebrate what has come to pass.  Yay goodness, yay hope.  But, when I look forward, I don't have this same perspective.  Do I believe that I will be taken over by my current circumstance?  (not really...)  Do I believe that this issue I'm facing is bigger than whose I am and who I am?  (stop it, of course not).  So, when I come up against a wall, a mountain, an obstacle to living my life in fullness, why do I get all freaked out?  Eh?

My ongoing obstacles: the mirror and the photograph.  The lie I am currently sitting under: my face is swollen and I would be more beautiful if my face was thinner.  I don't want people looking at me and thinking, "oh, her face looks swollen."  I spend time at the mirror sucking my cheeks in.  If only my face looked like this!  Then I'd be more beautiful. 

{Thoughts that have come through my media and image-laden brain the last few weeks: OH!  Delete THAT picture, I look chubby.  Friends, delete that picture of me from last weekend, don't put it on facebook, my face looks swollen.  Let's compare it to THIS picture of me after my honeymoon.  Oh my GOSH my face was so thin!  Maybe if my hair were long and really blond like THIS picture, I would look thinner and people would think I was beautiful.  And, I don't even need to go into my files to see the picture of me from new years eve in 2008.  It's seared into my critical brain.  I was so pretty.  My eyes look so big when I have such a thin face.} 

Here's the true irony and truth of the matter.  Before I got married, when those "thin face pictures" were taken, I wasn't really eating healthily.  I wasn't really that happy.  My best friends were sprinkled across the country, I was going through counseling for major perfectionism issues, and my husband to be was hours away.  I was striving like crazy and my weight was way down because I didn't care about food- sometimes I would eat a snack for dinner out of loneliness and I walked around the track at the university for my lunch hour. God was good along the way.  He was transforming my heart and preparing me for a battle in true beauty.  But even then, at 109 pounds, with no breast tissue, and clothes I kept for when I would have a smaller waste waiting in the back of my closet, I felt thought I should be thinner, I should be more tan, I should have clearer skin.  And, new years eve 2008, when that big-eyed skinny-faced picture was taken?  That night wasn't even that fun.  I had been fasting fast food for a whole year and the biggest joy of that night (seriously, it wasn't a fun night) was eating a cheeseburger.  I still hid my body from imaginary viewers when I changed my clothes, I still stood in front of the mirror and wished my thighs were smaller.  I'm sure I had pictures I was comparing myself to at that point, too.

Some of you know how sad this really is-- this current mirror and photograph struggle.  You're probably thinking, she's really off base... isn't the girl preggers right now?  Don't you want to shake me!?  I want to shake me!  I mean, let's do it together: "MEGAN! YOU'RE SIX AND A HALF MONTHS PREGNANT FOR GOODNESS SAKE!  YOU HAVE MORE HORMONES IN YOUR SYSTEM RIGHT NOW THAN HAIRS ON YOUR HEAD!  ENJOY YOUR LIFE!  DO NOT LET VANITY AND UNTRUE BEAUTY TAKE AWAY YOUR JOY!  LOOK AT YOUR BLESSINGS!  MEDITATE ON THINGS NOBLE AND TRUE! THERE'S A PERSON BEING CREATED IN YOUR WOMB!  SING TO HIM!  DREAM!  PUT THAT PICTURE DOWN!  IT DOES NOT CAPTURE YOUR ESSENCE!  IT DOES NOT CAPTURE YOUR KIND EYES!  PUT YOUR BLUSH ON AND LEAVE THE MIRROR!  THE LINES OF YOUR CHEEKBONES HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR VALUE!  YOU ARE GOOD!  YOU ARE VALID!" [please excuse the all caps, I really am yelling].

Here's the caveat: pictures are not for evaluating our physical shapes in the first place.  They are for creating art, or capturing a moment in time.  Our iphone obsessed culture is really on to something in terms of documenting our lives and finding beauty in unexpected places.  However, does our memory get booted out for the isolated image?  I don't know about you, but I don't remember my life in two dimensions.  I remember in heart and feeling and touch and beauty and hope and redemption.  Yes, there are images to help my mind bind it all together.  But, the joy of my life is not determined by my time in front of a mirror!  It's determined in sacred moments, of sharing hearts, of deep laughter, of creating something new, of contemplating, of worshipping, of waking up late in warm blankets over Christmas break, of dreaming about my son and praying for his heart.

The photograph and the mirror.  They seem so strong when we're gazing into them.  It's all a ruse!  They're just one little speck of life.  Life and beauty are so much bigger.  I will find the good in the photograph.  I will find peace with the mirror.  But, in the meantime, I will become bigger than these mountains of false beauty, and I will embrace my pregnant glow, my cushy arms, my soft thighs.  For I am becoming an abode, a safe place, a healthy transition for a little person who will not look at the angle of my face in a photograph to find my worth.  And God doesn't do that either.  There must be other people out there who want to forge this mountain with me.  Imagine us, healthy and lovely, with no mirror or picture that can take away our worth.

My body is adjusting to a growing person and gaining weight in all the right places and giving me cravings for the nutrients the baby needs. I have a heavenly glow in my expectant and lovely face.  And that, is beauty.

May you have eyes to see the beauty. --Meg Tess