mirror mirror…

I want… I’ve stopped counting those words.

It’s been a week of continuous inputs, most beginning with our favorite word… I.  Complete mental saturation of all words relating to I, Me, Myself.

I want…

That doesn’t work for me… 

what about what I need…

myself, myself, myself…

Until myself is exhausted.  The glaring repetition of these “self” words have shot straight into my core.  How can others be so selfish?  Children, spouses, friends, strangers… I shake my head (and sometimes my fist)… how selfish!  That is when God convicts…

what about me?

Of course I am not selfish… everything I do is for someone else… I am only thinking of others… my kids, my husband…  The anger and frustration ~ two heads of a wild serpent…

why do I get so angry?

Then, the reflection.  The eye turns on itself and this strain of self focus… turns pink.  Yes, it is no coincidence that I now have pink eye.  I don’t remember ever getting pink eye… and, by the way, my husband has pink eye, too.  Two together… too much self focus…

The flaws of the soul sometimes manifest themselves physically.  The anxiety brings the visible creases on the brow ~ those creases we desperately try to mask… the anger carves itself between the eyes ~ that deep cut between the brows… a “mommy wrinkle”… the wrinkle seen in a stern rebuke of a willful child.

The joys of the soul, also evident on our faces… smiling eyes, we slander with the title “crow’s feet”… laugh lines burrow deep next to mother lips… deepening every year with the wisdom of the joy that grows before our eyes.

This pink eye… a flag of self focus.  I am just like them.  Me me me…

What was the time before mirrors?  Did Adam and Eve search for any pool of water?  Seek a reflection in each other’s eyes?  Search… just for a brief glimpse of self?

Are we not called to look outward?  Not… inward.  Self reflection’s purpose to bring growth, refinement, maturity… not selfishness.

I am guilty of that which I judge… the plank in my eye.

God gently points the mirror at me…

see yourself

I am called to look outward… to place the focus on all of them…

The drops clear my eyes… soothing drops clear the pink… clear the soul…

clear eyes to see the reflection in others… not of myself… but, of God.

Philippians 2:3

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.