What is your question? What have you asked yourself out loud, or in musing?
When you look into your mirror. Who do you see? Amusingly, the mirror has become such an indispensable part of our lives. And if not the first thing, what is one of the first things you look at first thing in the morning? The mirror! Right?
Over the past 5 years of my depression, I reached a point of such low self-worth, that I shied away from myself. I didn’t think the person staring back at me was worth sharing eye-contact with. A fog of ‘fear’ had clouded my eyes. I had actually figured out how to locate something wrong, with everything aboutme. I shied away from sitting too close to anyone because I didn’t want them to notice everything that I thought was weird about me. I didn’t want them to see the lost look in my eyes, or see the defects I found in …to cut it short and say…’ all’ of me!
And as though that stack of insecurity wasn’t enough, I happened to get myself one of those countertop magnifying mirrors that comes with an inbuilt light. If you’re not familiar with these mirrors. It has two sides. One works like a regular mirror and the other side a magnifying mirror, that ‘magnifies’ every tiny pore on your face! Now that one haunted me for weeks!!!
My mirror also brought me face to face with ‘me.’ And I did NOT want to live with ‘me.’ I did not want to live this way. There was a stirring in my heart. Something stirring my mind. A stirring that left me questioning my very being.
I also came face to face with the creator of the reflection in the mirror. I was angry with Him for what I was going through. Didn’t He see the fear, the suffering, the many sleepless tormenting nights?
The encounter with the mirror is real. And so is our battle with depression. But the mirror cannot win. It should not. Because, you and I are bigger than our battle with depression. We were created for a purpose and that is all the enemy wants to destroy.
For me, one of the most powerful tools I used was verbalizing my way out of the depression. What I verbalized was the Word – an effective oratory tool. Let the Word be your mirror.
“..because we continued to behold in the Word of God, as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into His very own image…” (II Corinthians 3:18, AMPC).
If you cannot gather the strength to speak it, write it down. That’s what I did. I would tape scripture written on note cards to the mirror. So that on days when I woke up to see the worst in myself, I had a promise to turn my eyes to, instead of the despair in my eyes. I used note cards because I happened to have some extra. But you can always write yours down on decorative paper and embellish it. Or maybe just sticky notes. Or even simply lipstick your mirror. Whatever you fancy!
Also, when the enemy kept echoing lies in my ears, and plugging my ears didn’t drown it out, I started to plug my ears with the word of God. I would have sermons or the audio Bible playing constantly in my ears, especially during the night. Depression hits hard in the night watch and I fought months of sleeplessness. So, if he wasn’t going to let me sleep, I figured I’d drown him out with the Word. Thank God for technology and headphones!
