I Changed the Mirror

So, I have not posted on here in over five months and the last post I created had a lot to do with me growing as a person. Well, I am still growing and some days it is pretty painful. I am not the person I want to be on a lot of different levels. I still hope for better outcomes from myself daily and I beat myself more than I should when I do not meet my own expectations. Today, however is not one of the those days. My mom asked me to find a picture for her from my sister's wedding from over fifteen years ago. It was a trip down memory lane that I did not really want to take but I am so glad I did. I had to dust off some old CD-ROMs in the back of my office cabinets to find the picture but I found the picture of her in less than ten minutes. I was going to put the discs away and I decided to dig around and see what else I could find. Younger people may not believe this but you can take selfies without a cellphone and I did back in the day. There was a time in my life when I took a lot of selfies but not because I liked the way I looked. They were taken in hopes that someone else would see me. You see as I was going through the photos I realized how much I did not like myself. I did not like myself  because I determined my "face value" by how others treated me. I wanted to loved by certain people and they were never going to love me the way I deserved and needed to be loved. And I immaturely thought that meant I was not enough. That I was not worthy enough and it had something to do with my physical self. That belief really messed with my psyche. Well, I can now say that I know I  was wrong. My value is not determined by how others see me, it is determined in how I treat myself and more importantly in how I treat others. You are probably wondering if I just discovered this today and I promise I did not. It really hit me today as I was looking at the selfies I had taken so many years ago. If someone had told me back then that I was beautiful I would have laughed. I would have said thank you and the monologue in my head would have said they were lying, you are not even close to beautiful or worthy. Does that mean that I no longer see myself as ugly and unworthy these days? Oh, no. But I give myself grace on those days. I remember that the outside is what the world sees but the inside is what God knows.  I added a collage of the pictures I found. I look at them now and see someone how really wanted to be beautiful to herself more than anything but thought that meant it had to come from outside but the whole time the mirror was inside . . . so I changed the mirror. If you are feeling ugly, unloved, or unworthy because others do not see your value  . . . change the mirror.