You know, I am a typical woman...or rather I should say a typical human being. There are days when I look in the mirror and I see all that is going right for me...somehow all of my features kind of come together and I look at myself and I'm able to smile and realize that I have a lot going for me and that I can take on the world. Other days....well lets just say it's less so. You know...those days where nothing really seems right -your eyebrows don't match, your teeth are a little crooked, and your hair stands up where you don't want it to...
As people, we all have those days...whatever the quirks are for you. We all have the times when we can see who we are and why people would like us for who we are...and other days we want to hide in a closet and count the seconds until the day is over.
And I've come to realize that this is one of the saddest things about us. Ever since the garden of Eden we, as humans, have failed to recognize our identity and what that means for us.
When you think about God, you generally think about all of the qualities that He is. In the Bible He is even defined by I AM. This thinking holds across into Philosophy. We generally define God by everything perfect, everything powerful, and everything present -and since we have an inadequate way to describe a God we cannot see we describe Him with powerful language.
But have you ever thought about how we define ourselves? We generally define ourselves by the things we are not. If you need proof then think of when you look in the mirror, how often do you see the things you are rather than look for the things you are not?
I think Adam and Eve had the same problem. I think they were comparing themselves to God and saw all the things they were not, instead of all the things that God created them to be. In the garden, Satan was able to draw their attention away from the positives in their relationship with God and onto the things that were seemingly lacking.
When in truth, nothing was lacking at all.
You see, Adam and Eve were exactly who God had made them to be. God loved them for exactly who they were at that moment. He created each part of them with such passion and devotion that it broke His heart when they couldn't see themselves the way God saw them.
And that's the way it is with us.
So often we get into the mindset of what we are not and who we are not that we forget who we are. We are children of a God who fashioned each one of us with His own hands and His own creativity. There is nothing about you (outside of fleshly nature) that God does not love and cherish with His own perfect heart. He is looking down and beaming at each one of us because He can see us for who we are -we are His.
So I think we need to reconstruct the way we see ourselves:
We need to stop believing the lies that we aren't enough,
we need to stop thinking that God created us in a faulty way,
and mostly, we need to start looking at ourselves for who we are instead of letting the world tell us who we are not.
I'm not saying that I understand where to go from here, but I do know that I want to see myself in light of God instead of in light of the world. So I think we need to stop comparing ourselves with each other and the world's standards and start comparing ourselves with who God designed us to be -recognizing the beauty on the outside and fostering beauty on the inside.
And with that, we need to start celebrating the identity we have as ourselves and within our communities.
Kate
