Mirror

“For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” -1 Samuel 16:7


I have known some beautiful people, not inwardly- no. Physically, bodily gorgeous, exotic, alluring people, men and women. Even in personality, the Type-A outgoing, energetic-charismatic-catalyst type of people that light up rooms as though taking stage in a sold out show. In fact, that’s a pretty good description, maybe I’d be better in saying, “I’ve known some beautiful performers.” And I have done everything to model myself after them.


In fact, it’s not unfair to say half the women I’ve dated made their living on stage. And there’s a few excellent songs like Turn the Page that tell about the life of a performer after the lights have faded or who we are on the road between shows but this isn’t really an essay about that. In fact this is about being as far away from the stage as possible. This is about crouching down, hidden in the shadows of anything that’ll take the attention away from you so we don’t have to feel like we’re performing at all.


This is about turning our faces away; even away from ourselves. In the bible it’s written in James, “For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.” –James 1:24 Because once we’ve seen our true selves, we don’t want to remember what we saw. We can’t live with what we saw.


I once heard a morbid fortune cookie style saying that said, “The world around you is a reflection of the person within you.” I don’t know if that’s true but I’ve often thought of that when I’ve found myself surrounded by people I don’t like.


During one particularly bad summer in my past, I had made a habit of getting good and drunk at home before going to dive bars to pick fights with anyone who’d fight back. On one of these nights, a friend had come along thinking we were just going to let loose and have fun (not knowing my recent ulterior hobby). By the 3rd bar I was being launched out of my friend yelling as he picked me up from the sidewalk said, “How long are you going to keep fighting with everyone?” To which in passing clarity I said, “Until someone beats me up.” “What!?! Why!?” he said. And I remember mumbling, “So I can look as bad outside as I feel inside.”


You see it wasn’t right that my heart had been through all the miserable times of the last year and my face still came out looking unscathed. It wasn’t right that I could still dress myself, go outside and walk vertically like everyone else. I wanted ambulances. I wanted panic. I wanted everyone to look at me with horror, shock, and pity. I had bean inwardly beaten unconscious and left for dead. Now I wanted that to happen physically so someone would finally take notice and rush to help me.


Has anyone else ever felt that?


It gets worse though because for years in my unhealed scars of that summer, I’ve actually beaten others into feeling that same way. Sadists call it self-pity. Realists call it tough-love. But it’s more than that, its shame. In fact, it’s more than just shame because it’s a shame that begins with guilt.


We who have been ripped naked and raped continually by years of addiction, or self-abuse or depression or just sin in an aimlessly violent world... when we are finally given a day of rest or the hope of freedom or even just an hour of peace are suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. Because the sun has finally risen from the longest night only to cast a little light on how our lives are destroyed. Everything is in pieces. Everything is lost.


In my two decades of drugs and alcohol I had lost, sold, traded and given away every small ounce of dignity I ever had claim to. I had failed every white eyed, childhood expectation I had ever set. I had slowly manipulated every disintegrating hope ever put on me by my family, my friends, my bosses, everyone. And that’s just the beginning of the level of guilt that came with sobriety.


Then the shame. Living in shame is like a sort of after-suicide existence. Because you’ve already killed yourself, there’s nothing left but that fact that you given up and quit living. So now what? You drift in shame like a facedown corpse that’s now worth nothing. What’s left of your body is just a cracked shell, empty.


In the last part of my drug and drinking days while fighting from bar to bar I had also started pouring zippo fluid on my bathroom mirror and watching as my face burned. I wasn’t sure about a God or heaven but I was certain of hell and knew I was at the gate. It was a long way from the applause and adoration of life on a stage.


That’s why the idea of a Christ centered redemption is so important to me now. The new ideas for me to learn and follow like when T.S Elliot says, “You don’t have a Soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”


Then I find scripture’s like the one I started this essay with; that God doesn’t look at the mess we’ve made of our lives. That God pushes all the ashes of that arson aside to clearly see the heart within us and says, “Yes, I can put my own spirit into that.” That’s good news for someone like me.


Not that God will repair the damage I’ve caused or heal this torn down body but that none of the remaining pieces of the whole ever even mattered. It was all just a temporary vessel for my soul. And even in the fragility of my own heart, through Christ my soul is strengthened. That’s very good news for us all.


“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” -2 Corinthians 4:16