Day XXVIII: Crooked Toes, Painful Prodding and Promised Joy

I looked in the mirror on Friday.

I was at the physio, because apparently I have shin splints caused by crooked big toes which are making my knees hurt when I run, and she made me look at my reflection to see what my knees do when I perform one-legged squats (after I figured out how to do a one-legged squat, it was evident that my knees bend slightly outwards). I wasn't aware of this before she pointed it out, nor did I know they weren't meant to bend that way (FYI I didn't look at myself above my knees in the mirror, so the challenge has not failed. I was also pleased to discover my mirror fast hasn't had an effect on my knee-hotness).

The physio gave me two options:

Numero uno - Not bother doing anything. Ignoring the problem isn't going to kill me, it just means running will always be a struggle.

Two - Go to the physio on a weekly basis to fix the shin splints by undergoing various forms of prodding(ouch!), get orthotics for the inside of my shoes to straighten my toes out, and eventually be able to run again.

Running is something I enjoy greatly, so the first option would pose a bit of a problem. Opting for the latter, though more painful and costly now, means I will run again.

I was shown in the mirror what needed to be changed, told how to change, and now the choice to change or not is my own to make! Changing is not the easy route, it's not the cheap route, but it's the route that'll allow me to run again!

Changing is central to living the life God wants us to live. We're called to change ourselves, and then join the fight to bring change to the world (Stay tuned: I'll talk about changing the world in an entry coming up!).

A common problem people have with Christianity lies within the "rules" the bible sets out. Dos and Don'ts and everything in between can overwhelm the reader, and failing to meet them leaves one basking in a pool of guilt. This is not the intention. The bible is more than just a mirror reflecting our bad sides. Its intention is precisely that of the physio: to show us our flaws, give us instruction on how to correct them, and provide us with more support than we will ever need to set them in place. It is not going to happen over night, or in one go, it's going to take sacrifice and patience and stumbles and pick ups and let downs and baby steps and tears and pain and sweat. In Luke 9, Jesus tells us to pick up our crosses and follow him. Daily. When Jesus picked up the cross he was killed on, he was battered and bruised and torn up all over. He picked up a massive tree-sized object and lugged it up a mountain. And he lugged it up a mountain all the while aware he was carrying the thing he was going to be nailed to for hours until he died.

Telling us to pick up our crosses daily in no way implies the ride/hike up the mountain is going to be an easy one. Quite the opposite, there's a daily challenge to face, a challenge not necessarily oozing excitement.

There is hope though. Not the airy-fairy kind of hope we play around with when we talk about the weather in Northern Ireland. The kind of hope the bible uses. A strong and confident expectation, a CERTAINTY that what God has promised will occur. There's a treatment with 100% recovery guaranteed. There's a freedom guaranteed. And that's the reflection God has planned for your mirror.

Question is, do you want to run?

Day XXII: Another uneventful entry

I am experiencing quite a dilemma (fun fact: dilemma and enema are the only two words that rhyme with my name, neither of which have terribly fun definitions).
I have 5 blog entries lined up, each of which is incomplete, each of which I'm undecided on, each of which could be merged with another of which. Truth: I'm feeling a bit uninspired. So uninspired in fact, that I'm not entirely convinced what I'm writing right now is important enough to blog about, but I figured you could do with an update on my challenge.
I'm still plodding along with it; only a week to go now! Today I went for an "unbrushed" look, a daring enough look when I can see the mane to tame it, so I struggled a bit more than I usually would with not being able to check the face out. Key lesson so far: learning that learning is not something you can necessarily see in the every day.
Now, to ensure you don't completely give up on this blog, here're a couple extras for you:

1. This prayer is doing me a world of good these days:

"Oh God, I have tasted Thy Goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing, I thirst to be made thirsty still. Show me Thy glory. I pray Thee, so that I might know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, 'Rise up, my fair one, and come away'. Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long" - A.W. Tozer

2. This video is stunning

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Day IX: I haven't given up!

I've had a spot this week. I rarely get spots. It is located in between my eyebrows, eliciting countless semi-racist Indian jokes from my so-called friends. Because I've banned myself from mirrors, I couldn't check it out at all. This annoyed me a bit.
Otherwise, the urge to look in the mirror has been virtually absent. The number of times I automatically search for a mirror drops with every day that passes. And though still conscious about how I look, the thoughts about my physique are not as harsh and damaging as they were.
I know that's not a lot of information to give you about the progress of the challenge, but it is after all a progress, which by definition implies my world isn't going to flip over night (even though I often wish it would).

Day II: My crappy self-portrait

So, this whole mirror fast is full of lessons, apparently. This morning, I was jogging along the river. It was one of those crisp, bright mornings, where the sun shone bright, frozen puddles needed to be avoided, and ducks wandered the path in front, refusing to step foot in the cold cold water. During my 3rd mile, I noticed I was casting two shadows ahead of me; one from the sun, the other from the sun's reflection on the water. They were sat on top of one another, following my every move. The shadow cast by the sun was below the other, and was darker, more defined and showed my entire body, head to toe. The one cast by the reflection was above it, and was hazier, flickered, and only revealed me from my shoulders up. I thought it was pretty sweet, and kept on running. When the image cropped back into my head later today, I realised it painted an accurate picture of me.

When I look at myself, when I think about myself, I don't see the whole of me. When I look in the mirror, I see what I look like at the moment I look in the mirror. As soon as I remove myself from the mirror, I no longer know what I look like, I have only what I saw in the mirror to go by, and won't know what I look like until I next look in a mirror. My image of myself flickers. I only see moments of who I outwardly am throughout the day. Honestly, this outward part of me is the part of me I spend most time working on and thinking about, but it's only a part of me. There's a whole bigger part of me inside. And this part, I can't fully understand. I am a complex human being, acting in ways I often don't get, with capabilities beyond my knowledge. If I did fully know me, my actions would never surprise me. I would be able to predict exactly how I would react to everything that comes my way. Like the shadow cast by the river, the picture I paint is incomplete. And more often than not, I can't bring myself to love this incomplete me.
When God looks at me, thinks about me, He sees all of me, inside and out. He sees my personality, my past, my thoughts, my limitations, my potential, my face, my stomach, my hair, and all the bits of me I don't even know are part of me. His view is complete. He created me, he's bound to know how I work! He sees all of me, and LOVES me all the same.
Yet I ignore what He thinks of me, and I put my perspective, largely determined by other people's perspectives, above His. The perspective I pursue in the mirror, in other people's opinions, is an incomplete version painted by imperfect me! The only way to love me is to drop all other paintings and pursue the masterpiece image drawn up by a perfect God, who probably finished it and framed it, and has it hung up straight!

I'll end this one with a challenge: tell God you don't want to know what you, or anyone else on this earth, thinks about you, but you want to see you from His point of view. Every day. Every time you feel inadequate. Every time your insecurities creep up. Tell Him. He wants to hear it, and I'm fairly sure He'll know what to do with your crappy self-portrait.

Actually, I'll end with this: "For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago" Ephesians 2:10

Day I: I have 2 mirror radars

My first taster of life without mirrors has been insightful. I woke up, did my hair and put some makeup on from the warm comfort of my bed (perk number 1: not having to get up for the mirror), got dressed (went for an outfit I had tried out before - no daring wardrobe moves today!), ate breakfast, and set out of the house for possibly the first time ever without even a glance at what I looked like.
The walk into town was an interesting one. You know how people say that when someone goes blind, their other senses compensate for the loss and become heightened? Well that's kinda what happened. Because a part of me was set on not looking at myself, another part of me immediately became aware of every window, puddle and shinny car surface I could check myself out in.
As soon as Charlotte appeared, the radar switched itself off. I was well aware that I didn't know what I looked like, having Charlotte check I didn't have mascara up my forehead, but the distraction of interacting with someone took my mind's focus off mirrors, and this happened throughout the day.
I went to my cleaning job soon after, and the house I clean would give the house of mirrors a run for its money. The sinks are mirrors I have to polish, as are the dressers and bed side tables. There are grand mirrors hung about the place, and where mirrors aren't, big windows are. Despite all these, I found it relatively easy to focus on the dirt on the reflective surfaces, and not on what they were reflecting. When I thought about not looking, I resisted. When my conscious radar was on, I didn't look. It was when I got distracted that the challenge became real.
I saw myself once while cleaning in the master bedroom, once at Gemma's house that evening in her kitchen window, and once in my taxi driver's rear view mirror. I would be talking, or daydreaming, and that's when I would automatically look at myself, see myself, startle myself, and quickly look away, all in about a trillionth of a second. I'm surprised at this. The subconscious radar is the one that's going to be an issue. I thought the difficulty would be an inner wrestling match with myself, me fighting with me to stop me from looking. This problem may still arise, I have another 28 days to go, but for now the issue is getting myself out of the habit of subconscious glancing, a habit which seemingly expresses the sizeable concern I have with my outward self.