Le Challenge Begins...

I just flipped my bedroom mirror around, hung some decorations on it to make it look like a more exciting plank of wood, threw a towel over the bathroom mirror (thanks for the permission, housemates), and removed facebook from my easylink tabs on my browser. Here it goes, a month without two central aspects of my life. Right now, it feels like it's going to be a breeze. Doubt I'll feel the same way when I'm getting ready in the morning. Seriously excited about the learning curves about to be thrown my way!

The Big, and the Frustrating Bible

Lots of things I read in the bible frustrate me, reading it itself frustrates me. It frustrates me that my mind wanders when I read it. It frustrates me that I find it boring at times. It frustrates me that I don't remember what I've read. And the fact that all that frustrates me, frustrates me.
And then when I actually do read and understand it, there is a lot in it that I don't want to do. Some of it offends me. I find it restricting. Some of it doesn't fit in with what I want.
Let's take sinning. Sometimes, I wish the bible said it was alright for me to have sex before marriage. I mean, it would save a lot of awkward conversations, a lot of trouble. It would be easier to relate to my friends. I would be able to have some fun along with the rest of them. I could let loose a little.
And then there's the golden rule. Where it says to love our neighbours. Not just the ones who run up and down the stairs on the other side of my wall at all hours of the night, but everyone. Every rapist, every criminal, every big issue seller, every backstabbing person in my surroundings, every strong accented Belfaster. Everyone. Now sometimes, I think my life would be easier if I bent that rule and held a couple exceptions, a couple grudges. Not only them, but we're to love God too. A God who doesn't put an end to slavery and hunger and cancer. A God who is all powerful, all knowing, but lets me bask in my own doubt and doesn't just come knocking at my door, greeting me with a hug, saying "hey, let's spend actual time together!".
Why bother?
Let's get some perspective. I'm 2 centimeters taller than the average woman, but I'm actually rather small. Put me in a field, go a few hundred (thousand?) meters up into the air, and you won't be able to see me. Take a look onto our galaxy from one of the other ones, cause there are loads more we don't know about, and there won't even be a view of our earth. We're small. Compared to God, we're ridiculously small.
And he's big. Immeasurably big. He's so big, we can't exaggerate how big He is. To try and exaggerate Him would be an insult to how big He is. We're small, He's big.
So then, naturally (not!), we pick and choose bits of the bible we like. Francis Chan puts it like this: if you say there cannot be a God because you suffer, we suffer, then you're right. There isn't a God that fits the mold you want Him to fit. He's independent of you, and far greater too! So if you take certain aspects of who God claims to be, and refute others, then you're being your own God. You're not letting God be God. If a five year old decides she likes her dad's rule about being able to stay up an hour later on weekends, and is happy to obey that one, but thinks his ideas about not being allowed to walk on her own to school are preposterous, then tough! Her dad isn't going to step back and let her have her way because she doesn't agree with his philosophy. If he did, he wouldn't be acting as a parent. As a loving wiser being with her best interests in mind, he has a more accurate idea of what's good for her, regardless of what she thinks.
We hate this. In the world we live in today, intellectually minded, with an obsession with logic and being "open", the idea of putting what we think aside and surrendering ourselves to what God wants is so offensive. But ponder this: does the fact it's offensive make it wrong? Is it God who's wrong, or is it our cultural incline? Is it a God who is beyond time, ever constant, never changing, who is mistaken, or a trend that has only really been popular for a century, that will probably evolve into something new before 2076? Is it about what God thinks, or about what you think? How much more enriched would our lives be if we communicated our frustrations to God, told him what our problems with Him were, gave them over to him, and obeyed him anyway, trusting and knowing that we'll benefit from it?
He's big, we're small. But like the five year old's dad, He wants what's best for us. We may not agree, we may not want to, but He knows what's best for us. God is FOR us. Our small minds can't handle His bigness, hence the frustrations creeping in. Which is why we need His help to understand Him. Pouring out our frustrations to Him is what He wants us to do with them. We don't need to worry about the small things, we've got the big with us. So we can be big, and do big, we've just got to give up the small.

Um, what do I look like?

I've decided to have a different resolution for every month of 2012, make it more interesting than one thing for the whole year doomed to be broken in the first week. This January I've gone without two "necessities", diet coke and Boojum burritos. For February though, I wanted to raise the bar, do something a bit more challenging.
I've given up a fair few things in the past several years, and they've always revolved around my diet in some way. Partially because I love food so much, but mainly because I wanted to combine my resolution with toning up, looking good, with feeling better about my outward self. It never worked. I never felt better. So this time, I want my resolution to be about getting to the root of my insecurities, shedding my worldly identity and focusing on my heavenly one. Since my previous blog entry, I have been pondering ways I can learn to love myself more. Love myself the way God loves me. Unconditionally. My insecurities too often get in the way, but they don't get in God's way. I want him to teach me how I can get over and beyond them. So I'm kicking two of the things that stir up lies about myself for 29 days; facebook, and mirrors.

I've hesitated a fair bit about this, the idea of not being able to see what I look like, not being able to look my "best" for others and for myself is daunting, but all my reasons for not going for it are precisely why I think it's important I do it!
I check myself out in the mirror more often than I'd like to admit. It hit me a few weeks ago that I spend more time in front of the mirror getting ready on a daily basis than with God. After I got over the ridiculousness of this fact, the fact that it can't be good for me, I decided to do something about it. Mirrors reflect how YOU see yourself, not how others see you. The funny/ironic/somewhat sad thing about spending excessive amounts of time ensuring you look good enough for the eyes of others in front of the mirror, is that the end result isn't actually how they see you. They see you through their eyes, not yours. On top of this, you aren't the you you see in the mirror. The mirror you is just a reflection of what you look like when you stand in a specific way, pout in your favourite way, grimace in a particular way. You are so much more complex, intricate, elaborate, wonderful than that reflection. So if the person you think of yourself as being is in accordance with who you see in the mirror, it's bound to be incomplete. If you spend more time working on your mirror image than figuring out God's image of you, then you're bound to feel insecure and obsess over your looks.
Facebook, beyond being a sweet, entertaining, useful way to keep in touch and network with folk around the world, has become somewhere I show the parts of myself I want others to see, and somewhere I compare my whole self to the parts of others they want the world to see. There's something not quite healthy about that. And if I'm going to give up mirrors, it makes a lot of sense to simultaneously give up my virtual mirror. The mirror reflection of myself and my "reflection" I can share with others by updating my profile and commenting on others'.
For a month I want to loose the mirror focus, my superficial self, and replace it with one that actually matters. My identity is too tied up in what I look like, and it's getting in the way of my identity in Christ. I know it's not going change my life to the point where I'm not going to have a care about what others think, but I hope it'll be a step further in not letting my thoughts about what their thoughts are define me! It won't be an easy task. I rely on facebook to keep me occupied, to keep in touch with people. And my reflection isn't something that's going to be easy to get away from. I'm bound to catch a glimpse of it every once in a while, but I'm going to commit to not focusing on the image I see, to getting out of the habit of taking a sneaky glance when I walk past a shop window, to tame my hair with the help of my shadow. This woman is doing it for an entire year. AND she got married this year! Here's to getting through the shortest of the months!