Going Mirror-Less: "The Experiment" (Pt 2)

I've been doing a class with the girls for a few months now about body image and self-worth.  It has been interesting to say the least.  One week in particular the girls picked photos out of magazines for three purposes: (1) Pick a photo that makes you feel good about yourself.  (2) Pick a photo that makes you feel bad about yourself.  (3) Pick a photo that is using sexual imagery to sell something non-sexual.  When it came time to share their photos, it went something like this:  

When choosing a photo that made the girls feel good about themselves, they picked a photo of someone and made fun of that person.  I was silently shocked - I honestly did not see this coming.  I thought they would pick photos of girls that revealed natural beauty, or girls they related to, etc.  Instead, they chose photos of incredibly beautiful girls, or sultry women, or fashionistas, then SHREDDED them.  Shamelessly, the girls bragged on, "This photo makes me feel good about myself, because, look at her nose!  It is so big!  And seriously, her ears stick out so far - and that hair is just nappy!"  My girls, who are usually quite thoughtful and insightful in classes like these, thought they were soooo funny and laughed it up as one after another bashed the girls in their photos.

Wow...

I just sat silently and let the girls take their turns slamming model after model, all in an effort to "feel good about themselves."  Only two girls out of 19 actually chose photos that made them feel good for reasons like, "She looks like she is being herself, and I appreciate that."  When the girls finished sharing, I posed a question:  "Did anyone notice that when you talked about photos that made you feel good about yourself, all you really did was find as many faults as possible with the girls in that photo (and then exaggerate them)?  Why does it seem that in order for us to feel good about ourselves, we have to find faults in everyone else?  Why do we think that someone else's beauty has to be a challenge to our own?"  The room went silent and heads dropped.  They realized this isn't just something they do to magazine photos - it is something they do to each other at a great cost.

Over the next few weeks, conversation rolled over into past experiences and perspective.  I love teaching the girls about perspective.  The first time I came back from Africa, I was so irritated when the girls complained about food that I took a photo of a precious little girl eating her meal at a Children's Cup care-point in Swaziland and posted it on the bulletin board in the dining room with a note underneath that read: "Not happy with your meal?  Complain to her."  (It was awesome:)

The girls know that if I start talking Africa, they're about to be in for it.  Some of my best challenges for the girls come from lessons learned with kids in Swaziland.  As we discussed perspective and body image, I remembered how profoundly impacted I was on my first trip to Africa when there were little to no mirrors to be found anywhere.  So I decided to cover every mirror in the TC house - bedrooms, hallways, bathrooms, everywhere - and have the girls write Scripture or words of encouragement over them.  

We called it "The Mirror Experiment."  The challenge would be for one week, to live a mirror-less life.  It was interesting to see their reactions: "What about when I go on pass?!"  "What about youth group?"  "Can I use my compact to put on my make-up?"  I did not give the girls many instructions other than to cover the mirrors and pay attention throughout the week to how often they unconsciously turned to check their appearance, even when unnecessary.  It was fun to see the words of truth and love the girls penned on those coverings; every time they went to look in a mirror, instead they found Scripture or reminders that, "I am more than my reflection."

When the time came to pull the covers off, I asked the girls what they thought of this experiment.  One girl who is obsessed with having the perfect part in her hair admitted to using picture frames on the wall to try to check and make sure it was straight.  Others confessed that they checked their make-up in the toaster at breakfast.  Someone even said she would look at her reflection in her friend's sunglasses, but admitted she felt like she was sort of "cheating" every time.  There were loads of silly reactions like these, and I could relate - been there, done that, girls - you'll find no judgment here :)  After all the fun of it, some valuable statements came out.  One of the most profound was common to all: "I hated having to ask other people if I looked ok all the time."  Hmmm... 

We asked ourselves:

If I hated having to ask other people if I looked ok through this experiment, then why do I do that all the time in real life?

Why are we constantly allowing other people to define us?  

Why do I let magazines, society, culture, friends, frenemies and the like be the mirror in which I measure myself?  

We realized that it's true - we are constantly looking outside of ourselves to decide who we are.  We look to others to tell us if we are good enough, smart enough, pretty enough; we rely on compliments or trash-talk to decide what is good or bad about ourselves.  But it doesn't have to be this way.

We wondered... what would my life look like if I stopped allowing everyone else to be the mirror by which I view myself?  What if I found a different mirror?  What if I chose to be a reflection of something else?  Something more... authentic.  Something more... "me."  We talked about Peter in the Bible - how it was only after he discovered the truth about who God is that he discovered the truth about himself, and that maybe this is true also with us.  We talked about the idea that we were created, formed, fashioned on purpose, by a God who loves beauty - a God who creates and says things like, "Mmm, that's good.  That's really good."

We decided to try something.  We decided to let Christ become the mirror by which we view ourselves.  We decided that when we look in those uncovered mirrors again, we would appreciate the GIFT of being able to decide for ourselves what is "good enough."  We agreed to remember when we look in those mirrors again, "Today, I am not at the mercy of someone else to tell me if I am beautiful.  Today, I get to decide how I look.  And today I agree with my Maker:  'It is good.'"

Going Mirror-Less: Pt 1

The first time I went to Africa, I was amazed at the noticeable lack of mirrors.  We stayed in a house with an Englishman married to a Swazi woman.  We were in what you could call the "suburbs" of Mbabane, yet even in this somewhat westernized home-life, there was not a single mirror to be found -  not in the bedrooms, not in the bathrooms, not even in the hallway by the main door so you could check yourself on your way out!  What were the Swazis thinking?!  

My first trip to Africa taught me to get crafty about personal hygiene.  Now honestly, we had it pretty easy in Swaziland.  (Mozambique was a WHOLE other story, but honestly...way cooler experience, too :)  Back in Swaziland, though, I had electricity at the house in Mbabane, so of course I put it to good use.  I blow-dryed and straightened my hair as usual, only with the exception that I was mirror-less.  I figured out that if I woke up at just the right time in the morning, the sun would be hitting my wall making a perfect square of light through the window; therefore, if I stood at just the right angle, I could use my own shadow on the wall as a form of a mirror.........

Um.... obsessive-much?

Here I am - in AFRICA of all places - and I'm still obsessing about getting my hair straight and shiny enough.  Really, Tara...I don't think anyone cares.  After three weeks in the land of no mirrors, I began to realize how often I would unconsciously turn to check my appearance, only to remember there were no mirrors.


It was only when I was completely unable to constantly look at myself that I realized how much I actually do.  

It's not on purpose; and maybe it's not an "all-girls" thing, but it's certainly an "a lot-of-girls (and-maybe-some-guys-too)" thing... maybe it's even an "American" thing.  It's like a knee-jerk reaction: if there's a mirror around, we look in it.  We're told constantly to be perfect, look perfect, sound perfect, walk perfect, dress perfect - perfect, perfect, perfect.  As a recovering perfectionist, this is exceptionally challenging for me.  Nothing I ever do is good enough in my own eyes, so for me to ever breathe a sigh of relief and choose to say "It is good enough" is quite an accomplishment.  (Even better when I finally take off the "enough" and just rest at, "It is good"...but that's another blog for another day).

It's quite relieving actually.

After that first week of mirror-envy, thankfully God grabbed a hold of my heart and reminded me that I am more than my reflection.  These people didn't care what I looked like.  They didn't care if my make-up was on or off, and they certainly didn't care if my hair was pretty or messy.  They cared that I came to them; they cared that I loved them... they cared that I brought stickers :)

I enjoyed the next few weeks of our trip, mirror-less.  There was this sort of relief in not being able to set my eyes on me all the time.  I realized that on a whole other level, God was stirring me to live a mirror-less life - a life that was not about cultivating perfect reflections of myself, but rather, redemptive reflections of Christ - with or without my make-up on.  

Every time I go to Africa, I realize I am being shaped into a better me.  I am being shaped into a more accurate reflection of who Jesus is, because I am reminded that He is the Savior, not me.  I'm not a doctor, a nurse or some brilliant genius who will discover the key to resolving poverty, hunger or the AIDs pandemic.  All I really have to give is a smile, a voice, some arms to hug kids with (and, it should be stated, I can play a mean game of hot potato with a trash bag), but I never feel more beautiful than when I find the dirt of Africa caked beneath my feet.  

In the mirror-less land, I was reminded that beauty is more about the love we give away than the image we give off.  Beauty is found in a heart that shines Christ, in eyes that see as He sees and hands that reach out in compassion to "the least of these."  I found in those "least" of these, the living beauty of Jesus, right here among us.  

Among many other things, I learned in Africa the gift of living a mirror-less life.  My students hate it when I go to Africa... Pt 2 will tell you why - "The Mirror Experiment" :)

The Seven Year Chat

I was watching a movie this week that began and ended with a man talking about how rushed life can be.  We hurry, hurry, hurry...  We have seen the time-frames in which others live, and we expect that ours should follow suit.  When our lives begin to look different, or take longer, than the "usual," we think we must be doing something wrong.  

Maybe we are.

Maybe we're not.

About seven years ago I felt like my whole life was falling apart.  A series of events came into place that destroyed everything that for so long made me feel safe and loved.  After so many years of seemingly making it through life yet unscathed, it happened: I became "that girl" with trust issues.  I became that girl who questions everything she has ever believed.  I became that girl who is constantly wondering if people are going to walk out on her; constantly fearing that things will go bad, because clearly, "I am just not enough."

All of this, I "managed" of course, like a spiritual superhero (or so I thought).  I became that girl with trust issues...who masks her trust issues.  I became that girl who questions everything she has ever believed...but refuses to admit it.  I became that girl who is constantly wondering if people are going to walk out on her...but doesn't know how to just say: "I'm afraid you're going to walk out on me."  The rhythm of "I'm just not enough.  I'm just not enough.  I'm just not enough," would have drowned my voice forever, until...I wrote.

I'm no extraordinary writer.  I read extraordinary writers - I am not one of them.  But I can think, and I can type, so when I didn't know how to talk about it, I started writing about it.  That first day of releasing through writing was like I had been holding my breath for a year and finally let myself exhale.  In writing, I finally let myself admit it:  I'm afraid.  I'm heart-broken.  I'm disappointed.  I'm worried.  I'm losing hope.  I'm losing my faith.  I'm losing my love.  Those painful confessions surprised me though.  They didn't linger long at the bottom: they whimpered back a prayerful plea: "I'm down here, but I want to get up.  Help me get up again."  

Somehow in the writing, I started speaking back to myself things I knew that I believed, regardless of how I felt.  I started telling myself about God's relentless love; about His ability to make good out of the destructive chaos of my life; about His longing to let me know Him, let me find Him and let me become more like Him even in this.

Seven years later, I'm still writing - not this blog, but that actual journal; the continuous conversation unleashed from that original entry, the initial cry of, "Help me."  I never started writing with the intention of writing a book.  Several hundred pages later, I realize I may have one on my hands.  I'm not sure what I'll do with it.  I share a whole lot of things, but I'm not sure I'll share this.  I don't care a whole lot about where it goes or what comes of it.  I care that we had this conversation, Jesus and me.  I care that when I didn't know how to talk to anyone else, He helped me talk to Him.  He made it safe.  He made it simple. I cried and He let me.  I complained and He let me.  I accused Him...and He let me.  I told Him I was sorry, and He was still there.  I told Him I still love Him, and He said, "I still love you, too."

I see so many books published, songs written, projects out these days, and I am drastically hesitant to be yet another among the many.  I don't know what I'll do with what I've written; I just know that I needed to write it.  Someone recently asked me what I will do when I finish this "book," and all I could say back was, "Breathe."  When I started writing, I felt like I couldn't breathe anymore; now that I'm nearing the end, I find that somewhere in this wrestling, I've found restoration, and I can breathe again.  

We get so project oriented.  That's a great thing.  But maybe in all of our anticipation to "be somebody" or "do something great," we entirely miss the point.  Maybe amid the book publishing, song-writing, and project-releasing, God would love to just breathe with us.  Maybe He'd like to be included; not as an "angle" or an afterthought, but as the original thought, the chief intention, and the finishing touch.  

Some of my favorite moments with friends have been those times when we've talked for hours, not even realizing it.  We'll look at a clock and say things like, "Oh my gosh, it's 2AM!  I didn't even realize.  I had better get to bed."  I guess all I'm really finding at the "wrapping it up" phase of writing, is this favorite moment where Jesus and I look each other in the eye, smile "our smile," and say, "Wow, that was a really long talk.  But it was good, yeah?"  "Yeah...it was good."  

God created in time and process, yet so often we rush.  We rush to the finish line; we want to be first, best, "most likely to succeed."  But when HE created, He really just talked and breathed.  He said things and He breathed things - good things.  Sometimes I feel embarrassed to admit that it has taken me seven years to finish one writing project (and really I'm still not done).  But I decided not to write unless we (He and I together) really had something to say.  In the long run, I'm finding that was worth waiting for.  We've had a conversation, and it has been good.  I'm almost sad to say we're nearly done.

So Lord, I suppose now the question is... what else would You like to talk about? 

What about you?  Is there some area in your life where you are rushing God to the punch-line, when really He'd just like to talk and breathe with you?  

Let it happen.  

It is good.

Either / Or's

I think people severely misunderstand who I am. 

A while back a friend was talking about my life in the house w/ at-risk teenage girls, then asked me, "So what exactly do you do in your free time?"  Taken back, I retorted, "What exactly do you do in your free time?" - i.e., unless you're going to strip clubs or snorting coke, I probably like to do much of the same things you like to do in your free time.  Just to clarify: I like going to concerts (all kinds), sports events (all kinds), movies (all kinds); theme parks, theater, restaurants, coffee shops, camping, hiking, beaching, boating, jet-skiing, traveling, reading books, writing, singing, listening to music, driving fast and getting away with it, laughing, talking, shopping, just hanging out... 

Yeah, I love working with hurting teens.  I love going as often as possible to love on children in Africa.  I love talking about Jesus, and helping other people find out the truth about who He is.  But, I also like going to a sports bar and watching football games.  I like going to shoot guns that don't belong to me at a firing range.  I like doing all kinds of new things and old things, exciting things and ordinary things; I like being with people I've known forever and people I am just getting to know for the first time.  Surprise!... I like to do all kinds of things with all kinds of people, and they're not all church-related.

This turned into an extended conversation about how (as I was told) people get a certain impression of me because I talk or sing in front of church sometimes, I occasionally lead a small group, and (oddest of all) I live with a house full of girls going through the process of recovery.  At one point in this conversation, I finally responded by saying: "Yes, I am spending my life on something profound, meaningful and redemptive, because I want to and I love it - but that doesn't mean I'm not a person with the same longings or desires as any other person.  Hellooo...I'm not a nun!" 

Fast forward to tonight, when a totally cool couple told me, "We were talking about you, and we decided you are the only person we know personally that we would call a modern-day saint or nun."  Uhhhh... Really guys, I'm trying to shed that whole "nun" image, but I don't know how to help you all with this.  They actually meant it as a compliment, and I sincerely appreciated their kind words, but I have to be honest - there is a part of me that cringes when people say things like this:

It's the part of me that wonders - God, is this really what You're asking of me?

I'm pretty sure it's not (fingers crossed).  I really do not think God is asking me to be a nun.  I absolutely do NOT think I have the "gift" of singleness (Please God, no!).  And I know better than anyone that I am the furthest thing from a "saint."  But for whatever reason, no matter how hard I try to show people that yes, I am normal - there always seems to be some kind of disconnect.  Those who get to know me well enough know that I am just a person; that I'm just a girl who loves Jesus and loves people in her own unique way, and I still live and enjoy life to the fullest. (Unfortunately, I can also still be a total jerk, inappropriate, rude and hurtful). 

But apparently there are also those who don't understand that those people who spend their lives on the redemption story, they don't all have to be so 'elite.'  We probably don't have to consider them all "saints" or "nuns" or whatever else you want to call it.  Maybe...just maybe, they are right here among us - ordinary guys and girls, moms, dads, kids, teens, whatever... maybe those "saints" are not all people doing "extraordinary" things.  Maybe they are doing things that are ordinary - or maybe, things that should be ordinary.  Maybe it should be normal for each of us to be living out extraordinary obedience and love in our own unique, passionate ways. 

Maybe those people we put on pedestals are just normal people finding uinque ways to live in obedience to what God has asked of them - and maybe, just maybe - that doesn't have to be so rare. 

Maybe God is bigger than "Either / Or's."  Maybe He is fully capable of taking all the bits and pieces of our lives and fitting them together in ways we never saw coming.  Maybe we belittle Him when we start our sentences with "But..." 

But I don't know how this will all work, God.

But I don't have the money to make this happen.

But I can't do this and that...

But how...

"But Tara, you'll never meet 'someone' if you're living in a house full of teenage girls..." 

(Someone actually told me this.  Fyi: that was lame, "someone.")

The truth is, if it comes down to "Either / Or," then I choose Jesus every time.  I choose Him first, because I love Him first.  All else is bonus.  Is that easy?  No.  Does it come naturally?  No.  If God made me choose Him alone over every other desire of my heart, I would do so with tears of grief sneaking down my cheeks: but I would do it.  I would do it, not because I don't desire anything else, but because I desire Him most. 

But why should I restrain a creative God?  Why steal the brush from His hand?  Perhaps He is painting with colors unique.  Perhaps He is mixing a color, "my own."  Perhaps He is blending and mixing, creating not "Either / Or" but, "...and..."

Maybe God is creative.  Maybe He takes ridiculously different shapes and matches them together in perfect precision.  Maybe He enjoys the challenge. 

Maybe He's inviting us to enjoy it, too.

The Problem of Pain (I-Ch.3): The Intolerable Compliment

Restraining myself from typing the whole book here, I will instead jot some favorite quotes... well, let's call them "favorite, favorite, favorite quotes," because I have basically highlighted 3/4 of this book so far.  So this is me, trying desperately to be selective (a task basically impossible in regards to Lewis).  Here goes:

"When pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all."

"You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense... Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God."

"The Divine 'goodness' differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel.  But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning."

"What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?'  We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in Heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.'"

"My conception of love needs correction... Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness... There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it... Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.  As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons are punished... If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness.  And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt.  He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, inexorable sense."

"We are, not metaphorically, but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character.  Here again we come up against what I have called the 'intolerable compliment.'"

"It is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love, but for less."

"When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested,' because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love.  You asked for a loving God: you have one."

"God of mere miracle has made Himself able so to hunger and created in Himself that which we can satisfy.  If He requires us, the requirement is of His own choosing.  If the immutable heart can be grieved by the puppets of its own making, it is Divine Omnipotence, no other, that has so subjected it, freely, and in a humility that passes understanding."

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.  But God wills our good, and our good is to love Him...and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces.  If we do not, that only shows that what we are trying to love is not yet God - though it may be the nearest approximation to God which our thought and fantasy can attain."

"We are bidden to 'put on Christ,' to become like God.  That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.  Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little."

This Is Why I Don't Write Music

I have never in my life been more fully aware of the foul state of my own soul.  The ugly, dark, hateful wreak of sin would taint my every thought, my every desire, my every motive if I would be so inclined, and unfortunately... I am very often, so very often, "so inclined."  

God help me:  "I am poor and needy, yet He thinks of me."  

If I will ever be able to write music (here now, I'd say, doubtful), such songs will never be written - they will be wrung - wrung from my spirit like a rag twisted dry.  They will be drawn out of me, dripping one cry after another from a broken soul, pleading, "Redeem!"

This is why I don't write music.  

I love...LOVE...worship.  I love singing worship songs, I love leading worship, I love humming to God's heart through music and lyrics.  But when I sit down to write,  I find myself scribbling things like, "God help me, sometimes I feel like I hate You.  Forgive me.  Please don't leave..."  

Try singing that on a Sunday morning.

I might have to accept that I will just never be a songwriter.  The songs of my soul can be gruesome, and they probably wouldn't go over so well with the happy crowds.  

But...

But God...

What is it about Him that makes me still want to sing even when I have no song?  How am I constantly humming because of Him when I have no tune?  How do I find Him smiling when I'm hurling questions like, "Are You even here at all?"  

After all of this, how do I hear Him still singing back: "I love you, too."  

Oh this restless love, unbearable grace.  If I could hide my heart from You, I'd run.  But You see each secret, hidden space.  You hear my whimpers of dying faith.  You wait - You patiently, patiently wait.  I'm not alone.  You're here...  

Still here...

You embarrass me with mercy, but I'm not too proud to take it.  My head hangs low; I can't look, only reach - You lift me til we're eye-to-eye.  I see...

I'm letting You be You, even though I'm still me.  Don't stop loving me.  I need You to keep loving me.  I want to love You, too.  More than me, I want to love just You.  Humiliated by compassion, this shame gets lost in Light.  Your unrelenting presence, my Faithful Love, tonight...

Good night & love, sweet Savior of mine...  

She Sings

It has been over 16 months with my favorite atheist, and I never thought I would see the day.  I NEVER thought I would see this day.  I wish I could share the loads of notes, conversations, meltdowns, pick-ups, breakdowns, pep-talks, clean-ups, body checks, kleenex boxes, and the "Me toos" of depression, hopelessness, despair and recovery.  I wish I could tell you how she hated God (who she also did not believe in); how she hated people, Christians, life and existence.  I wish I could tell you about every speck of redemptive light that patiently split the dark over the past year.  

But it is not my story to tell.  

My heart is bursting with songs of redemption, yet they are not mine to sing.  They are hers, and I will gladly let her sing them.  I will let her sing them, because...I never thought I would see the day...she is singing them.  

She is singing.  

My favorite atheist is an atheist no more.

She is singing the love of Jesus.

And I have the best seat in the house.