Mirror Vision
Mirror Vision
I was recently gifted a tree. It was a random, spur of the moment gift, just-because.
I had been talking to a friend at church, an expert in gardening and plants, about how I was looking for a tree for our front yard. We’ve lived here 5 years now and life has been a special kind of busy. The time has been filled with the birth of our fourth baby, promotions, night shifts, knee surgeries, spinal surgeries, broken legs, changing church homes, homeschool, football seasons and basically a whole lot of life crammed into a short amount of time. Not to mention we were doing all of this life partly during the pandemic. It’s been a lot to say the least.
It’s either because things have only just slowed down into a new season of life or the times have hardened and strengthened me in order to get on with it, but I’ve been able to look outward lately towards changes I’d like to make to our home and our life with the authority I have as “woman of the house”.
I’ve only just now had the time and motivation to think about planting trees and planning a garden, painting the walls, and replacing the carpets, planning when and how to build a back porch because what is a house without porch sitting?
My oldest son helps our gardening friend most weeks doing some heavy work around her place. It’s a good way for a giant, 16 year old offensive lineman to help. Last week he came home from helping with a new tree and the expertise from the expert to plant it properly.
I am immensely thankful for this gift. I know it seems simple and the little tree doesn’t look like much yet, it means more to me than I can actually describe. It was a generous and thoughtful gift, to start. It was a tree that was practical and made sense for the area in which it would be planted. It’s a sturdy and hardy variety that should also give beautiful shade in the summer and lovely, fiery red-orange foliage in the Fall. Moreover, someone kind and loving thought of me and took the opportunity to pick up the tree when she saw it was available. Hopefully, the tree will grow and be a wonderful part of our home. Birds will land and sing on it’s branches and the days and years will see it’s growth and value.
So, yes. It seems a simple, silly thing to be so overjoyed about but I just can’t help it. It aligns with just about every good thing we have going on right now and I’m truly grateful to God. If you look at it out of context, any landscaper could’ve slapped a tree in my yard and called it done, no big deal. But that’s not what happened.
Context is important. This struck me as something that needed sharing because, the other day, I tried to invite another homeschool momma to church.
At least, I attempted to invite her. I never know what to say. My desire to share how wonderful my church family is and how they help me grow in my relationship with God is strong, but I am awkward and I usually say too much. I get hyper, and chatty and probably pushy. I imagine I put people off at times. This time in particular, I told this other mom that she and her kids should join us at church, I was met with what looked like offense and an inner panic. Her response was, “I’m just really working on myself right now.” Her response was clear, though not in so many words. Her response was, “no.”
As I went along with my day I proceeded to chew on all the minute details of the short conversation. Running it over and over in my head, I could’ve been awkward and messed up a genuine invitation to enjoy Christ’s church, my family, and a sadness came over me.
How sad.
I’ve heard a similar response from others when asked about church, though they all have their own reasons and pasts and “church hurt.” One consistent response is akin to “working on myself” and that is “I’m trying to find myself.”
How sad.
When we are working on ourselves or trying to find ourselves and strictly looking in a mirror to do so, what context do we lose? Everything is literally backwards when we have mirror vision and only look at ourselves, our perspective, our feelings. None of it will ever make sense outside the context of our Creator.
If we seek to find ourselves, or even our place in this life, our first stop should be a conversation with God. He has a plan for us. He created us and will use us for that plan.
Wife-ing and Mom-ing is hard. This I know full well. The intricate details of everyday life and meeting the needs of those around us grind into us and make us question everything we thought we knew about ourselves. So, I understand feeling unsteady, unstable as we try to do the most important jobs in our lives. I understand the desire to feel bolstered and supported by some firm foundational knowledge of who we are. I have fortunately been blessed with people who encourage me to look to God for that.
We will never find our purpose, nor a definition of who we are without God and even though some of us don’t ‘people’ very well in a church, we still need those people and they still need us.
Without Christ’s body, the church, without God’s word, our foundation is sand. There is no firmness, and it shifts. That’s scriptural, y'all. I beg you to study it in the Bible and see what you think.
We are like that little tree. We are special in the context of who God made us to be and His plan for us. Mirror vision, when we simply look to ourselves as our own God, for all the answers, will skew everything. Everything will be backwards and twisted, a reflection of some good but not the whole picture and will ripple outward into life that way.
My little tree will be loved, and I will give it the best chance I can to flourish. I hope to encourage others to look for context when things are difficult. I pray I will get better at inviting people into Christ’s Church.
Look to God for who we are in Him. This is the only way in which there is lasting peace.
