Lakeside Reflections, Heartside Dwellings
Mirrors are great. They show us, well, us. And who doesn't like admiring themselves in the mirror when they're all dressed up and ready to go out with friends for a fun night on the town? We love to share our mirrors, too. I mean, "mirror selfies" are a thing now...not that I'm any good at them. We take pictures of ourselves looking at ourselves in the mirror, so that we can look at ourselves twice AND share all the awesomeness with 1,000 of our closest friends on Snapchat.
Ok, ok. You get it. The point is, people seem to LOVE looking at themselves. At times, we're like little self-absorbed peacocks, strutting around, showing off to the world. But, real talk here - what are we looking at? I mean, we don't ALWAYS like looking at ourselves, do we? Have you ever caught a glimpse of your reflection and thought, "Is that really what I look like??"
Well, that happened to me. Happens all the time, but let me tell you something...this time, it was different. This time I wasn't looking in a mirror. I was looking at a lake.
One sunny day, a few months ago now, I decided to head to our little park for some exercise. Honestly, I just wanted to avoid running up all the huge hills in my neighborhood...so I guess I was technically just being lazy, but whatever. Anyway, after my decently long run, I was feeling how long it had been since the last time I ran...so I opted to sit on the dock and rest for a bit. My body was tired, but apparently my mind was just warming up. So as I sat there staring into the water, I did that thing that we all tend to do at the most inconvenient of times: I started thinking about life.
I had just recently been through what I like to call "the wringer." I was feeling emotionally drained after putting an end to a potentially very toxic relationship...and I was wondering what the purpose of all of it was. When I left that situation, I tried to do it in the best possible way - to leave things better than I found them. But, no matter how much I tried to do the right thing, it just seemed to get taken the wrong way anyhow. That made me sad, and it had been completely consuming my thought life and my emotions for a while. I couldn't get it out of my head. At that point, there was still a lot of hurt in my heart, so I started talking to God, and I couldn't help my tears.
As per usual...the conversation started with a lot of questions. You know the ones... "Why did You let this happen, God?" "Am I missing something here?" "What on earth do I do with all this?" "I thought I was doing what You wanted me to...am I just a failure??" Yeah. The typical questions. The ones that allow us to throw ourselves our very own pity party in front of God, pretending to be ready to hear what He has to say about it...even though we definitely aren't. But, He gets it, and He knew I just had to get all that off my chest.
So, after the initial outburst of emotion, I just sat there and listened for a while. I was all alone on that dock, so the only sounds to be heard were the little splashes from tiny waves hitting the dock, and the occasional motorboat passing by.
As I looked down into the lake, I suddenly noticed my reflection. It was dark and choppy, like the water. It moved and flitted as the sunlight hit it in different places, and when the waves rolled toward me, it became even more distorted. As I examined my reflection, I picked up my conversation with God. This time, I wasn't questioning Him, I was questioning me. I asked God, "Is that what I really look like?"
Instead of answering my question, it seemed that God was asking me a question of His own: "What are you looking at?"
Well, that's straightforward enough. I was looking at a lake. Specifically, my reflection in a lake. Easy. Not the response I was expecting, but my conversations with God don't tend to go where I think they should. I took it for what it was, and decided I'd had enough of an emotional breakdown for one day. Better head home.
But when I stood up to leave, I noticed my reflection again...though from this angle, it was nothing more than a shadow. When I moved, it moved. It was still dark and vague, but now it was even farther away. There was no detail in it; nothing to define it as "me." I leaned on the railing of the dock and looked at it for a bit. While I was watching this weird version of myself bob around in the water, it suddenly disappeared. I looked up and saw that a cloud had rolled over the sun...and my reflection was gone. It wasn't until that moment that it hit me. I realized what God was really asking.
What was I looking at? Sure, I was looking at my reflection in the lake. But, to take it a step further, I could say I was looking at my life.
I was reflecting on all that had brought me to the 45 minutes I spent sitting on that dock. My choices. My heartache. My desire for things to be better than they were in that moment. In the midst of that reflecting, however, all I could see was me and the difficult situation I found myself in. It was all about me and how I was feeling. Staring at my current hurts was depressing, and I had been doing that to myself for weeks! See, I wasn't just reflecting on my life and my hurt and my problems. I was dwelling on them; and, that was the real problem.
There is a big difference between reflecting and dwelling. Reflecting suggests looking at something briefly. Dwelling is another word for "a place you live." You could call someone's house their "dwelling." These are two totally different ideas.
Now, both are very necessary as we navigate through all the craziness life throws at us, but we have to be careful to only use each one as it was intended. Otherwise, we end up unable to see what we're looking at.
Reflections are good, and they have a purpose, but they don’t last. Like I said, mirrors are great. We need them. But, mirrors were made so you could look into them before you move on to someplace else. Mirrors were never meant to always be in front of you. If you're always got a mirror in front of your face, you can't see where you're going. All you'd be able to see is you and everything behind you. (Not so helpful when walking forward...haha!)
Besides, mirrors are only useful if you can see. You gotta turn on a light if you want to be able to see a clear and accurate reflection of yourself. Otherwise, you end up squinting and straining your eyes for no reason at all. And any of you beauty gurus out there know that it matters where your light comes from if you want to look your best. Soft, natural sunlight from a window is going to make you look different than the harsh beams of your LED desk lamp. You know what I'm sayin'?
But, bottom line: when we want to look at ourselves, seeing our reflection is only possible when there is light. When we want to look at our lives and our hearts, seeing a true reflection of them is only possible with The Light. Without the Light, you cannot see anything. You won't be able to know what you're really looking at.
The truth is, God wants and enables us to look back on our pasts - to reflect on them and glean what we are to learn about ourselves, and about Him, from those experiences.
HOWEVER, He does not intend to let us stay parked in front of the mirror. We can't set up camp and decide to live there, constantly staring at things we were only supposed to see for a time.
We were meant to DWELL with God, not to dwell with our regrets from past mistakes or the pain of past hurts. Our souls long to dwell with Him because He created us to dwell with Him forever.
Psalm 84
"How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Heaven’s Armies. I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God."
Reflect on your past, sure…and in doing so, allow God to fix your vision with His truth (hindsight is 20/20, after all). But, don’t bring your tent.
Look back, don't go back. You don't live there anymore. You are moving on to someplace else. Someplace better. Where you were doesn't determine where you will go, and the only one who knows where you will go is God. He never dwells on our pasts, He points us to our futures and walks with us along the way. So dwell with Him. Then, no matter where you go there will always be enough Light to see...not only what you're looking at, but what God sees when He looks at you. And that, friend, is a reflection worth dwelling on.
1 Corinthians 13:12-13 (NLT) "Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely."