My little girl’s eyes look back at mine. “Mommy, can you come snuggle with me?” My six year old asked me one day last week, and it was so dear to me, partly because it’s become a little more rare for her to show that side of herself. Sometimes moments between us are pure love like that, and then of course, because life is broken, sometimes it’s a little more complicated.
These girls of mine are finding their way, trying to learn. Longing to be valued. Longing to be beautiful, to know they’re treasured, even when they get it wrong. Just like me. Sometimes when I look in their eyes, I can see reflected the little girl in me. And still, sometimes I am the one longing to be treasured in their eyes.
The child in me can still seek. That growing girl of me who wanted to be done seeking, she wanted to put away the longing. Because sometimes it can feel like growing up to quit showing that side of yourself. But maybe the story through the child can teach a greater gift.
Inside the heart of me, the little girl can still breathe it. She is there locked up in her tower. She’s the once-upon-a-time hoping that inside her lives the princess, for she feels more like the beast. She’s reaching for the mirror-enchanted longing for a clue.
How to even know if the mirror tells the truth or not.
She’s been told where to find the truth. One place to look where she can find “a dim reflection.” Yet, she longs to see more clearly. She’s been told where not to look for her reflection. She knows. But still, the mirrors are there in rows upon rows. Endless places to search out a brighter view of her own reflection.
In secret, she holds up the mirrors of all the people, to see her reflection in their eyes. In secret, she finds the one mirror she most longs to be beautiful in. Mostly, she’s not completely sure why.
Maybe we all have a kind of mirror we want to cling to.
I’ve carried my mirror deep in the secret of my heart. I’ve stayed long in my tower just staring at the mirror. Trying to find myself beautiful, scared that I am not.
There’s something there in a mirror. Something that brings us to put them there on the walls of our homes. We have a need to see ourselves, after all. It’s not all vain.
There’s something in these reflections that draw our attention so. The little girl in me she hopes that maybe there’s something inside her that’s beautiful, something that’s worth getting her down from the tower that can feel so haunted.
And the mirrors tell stories. Why do all the mirrors end up telling a broken tale?
When she looks too hard in these mirrors, she doesn’t see herself beautiful. When she looks too hard for beauty there, she ends up losing sight of beauty altogether. All the lines go blurry and every beautiful thing goes fuzzy.
I have looked long in the mirror until I saw myself a villain. And when you see yourself a villain, it’s easy to lose your way. It’s easy to forget there’s any worth in you, any worth in the mirror, any beauty in the world.
But the tower of mirrors has secrets to tell. Something still bids her know that beauty is here somewhere. That the reflections in these mirrors, distorted as they are, are trying to paint her a portrait, trying to sing her a song. The song keeps bidding to not give up.
As soon as she thinks she can never understand, as soon as she rests from trying to figure it all out, the song grows more clear. Finally, she sits and listens.
In it’s quiet hum, the song-gentle comes to invite her. Come rest in the promise.
You are not the villain. The mirror you carry in your heart is not the villain.
And the longer you rest from trying to see yourself in these mirrors, the longer you listen to the poem they speak, more clear is the portrait the tower of mirrors is trying to paint you.
The rows of mirrors in this tower, all of them are broken. And all the while you were trying to see yourself in them, sometimes they were even trying to see themselves in you. Broken mirrors looking for their own reflection too.
There through the rest from all this searching, she finds the truth. The only portrait she could find of herself here was distorted all along, but it was trying to show her what is true. She herself is broken.
And finally she can see the portrait clear. She is a broken mirror too. She is a mirror too.
As if it’s her purpose.
While she had been trying to find herself beautiful, her truest purpose all along, was to reflect beauty. How could she forget? This is what she was made for.
Yet, despite the intricate artistry she was made with, despite the careful forming of the curves on her handle and the grooves in her frame, the marks of an Artist who carefully created her for a beautiful purpose, her purpose is still to be a mirror. And her mirror is broken.
What in the world do you do with an old, broken mirror?
What use could anyone have for an old, broken mirror?
She puddles in the floor of her tower, surrounded by the broken reflections of her. Again she sees them there, monstrous reflections of a thing made for beauty, yet broken and useless. They dance around her, seeming to taunt… And you thought you were beautiful.
Losing hope she looks once more in that dim reflection, that old place they said was Truth. And there she finds a light that she didn’t notice before. She turns to face full on to that one place to find it’s truth. And when the light shines full on her broken, fractured parts, it works a magic right there through her, the broken mirror.
Right through the place that she was certain made her useless, the light reflected from her cracks shines out a brilliance of light and color that she had never dreamed. All the while she was trying to find herself beautiful, the Truth, the Light just longed for her to be the broken mirror. It was there, content with being the broken mirror turned to the Light, that she found the beauty she had longed for all along. She still felt the seeking ache, but now it had a purpose. It found it’s place.
And the tower of mirrors that once felt like a curse, it now felt more like a part of the gift. For those mirrors she had tried to see herself in, the mirror she’d carried in the secret of her heart, they were each part of the story. They helped her find her broken place. And it was in her broken place that Beauty found her.
It’s when His Light shines through all the cracks in her broken mirror, that she can look around and see it. He uses these mirrors to shine His brilliant light and it was through that very light of mirrors turned toward Him, that she could see the Light of Truth.
Every last mirror she’d ever tried to see herself in, has a cracked place to shine out His brilliance in another new Light. Each mirror with cracks of their very own, each wanting beauty all the same. Still, mirrors are searching their tower, same as she. And we’ll keep on, broken mirrors turned to the Light. Though, we’re broken, though we’re cracked, we trust in the Song.
He’ll shine out His glory till the last mirror hears and the story finds it’s whole, perfect Song.
My little girls eyes look back at mine. There are cracks here between us still that can hurt, but the cracks hold a purpose. He sings out His Song. And the ache of these cracks are little and light, compared to the glory the Light’s bringing in.
And in the meanwhile, God, thank you for cracks that give us a place in your kingdom of Light.
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