The Mirror and the Heart

By Jessica Breazeale

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you like what you see, or do your eyes go straight to the imperfections and stay there?

Now try a harder question. What about the mirror to your heart? What do you see when you look inside, at the part no one else can see? Do you like what's there, or do you dislike that too?

Where Our Self-Image Comes From

How we see ourselves is multidimensional. Our self-image doesn't come from one place. It's pieced together from many:

• How others see us

• What people say about us

• What we assume people see or say (often louder than anything they actually said)

• Our culture

• Our religious community

• Our social standing

• Our wealth, or lack of it

• Our attitudes, opinions, and beliefs

That's a lot of voices shaping one reflection. So how do you see yourself?

Take Inventory

It's important to do a self-inventory every so often. Have you changed? How have you changed? What do you notice now that you didn't before? What have you stopped noticing? Some changes are growth, and some are drift, and we can't tell which unless we stop and look.

What God Sees

We've heard this scripture our entire lives, but let's look at it again.

It comes from 1 Samuel 16:7. The LORD was guiding the prophet Samuel to choose Israel's next king. Samuel saw Jesse's oldest son, Eliab, tall and impressive, and assumed he was the one. The LORD corrected him:

"Don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7, NLT)

God passed over all of Jesse's older sons and chose David, the youngest, who was out tending sheep. David wasn't perfect, and he wasn't the most likely to succeed. He was chosen anyway, because God looks at the heart.

Step One

Here's how I see it. Step one in loving yourself is liking yourself. Step one in liking yourself is believing that God cares most about your heart, not your reflection, your résumé, or your résumé of mistakes. That makes it extremely important to get our hearts right. Self-reflection is hard. It means looking at what we'd rather skip past. But the reward is in the hard.

What’s the bigger picture?

So today, take a long look in both mirrors. Don't just see what's wrong. Ask what God sees, and let that shape what you see too.