When it comes to turning off lights and shutting cabinet doors, my husband would confirm that I have some room for improvement when it comes to habits. Although I should probably start with cabinet doors, I find developing mental habits much more attractive. One of the habits I’m trying to form is leaving myself behind so that I can think more about my God. A few weeks ago, I heard the quote, “For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.”
I’ve been trying that as a habit lately, so if I outfit check when I walk by the mirror, I turn and repeat ten things I know to be true about my God. I’m finding the habit of redirection away from myself is doing something good for my heart.
I’m not a “mirrors are bad” person or an “obsessive mirrors” person, but I would want to be thinking more about my God than I am about myself. My daughter is five and she doesn’t give much thought to her looks, but she is starting to notice things about her body and herself. She isn’t attaching value to them yet as “good and bad,” “likes and dislikes,” but I am seeing her start to notice herself.
When she got dressed a couple of days ago, she said something about how she liked the way one pair of shorts fit over another. I repeated my usual, “Well that is how our God made you and He doesn’t mess up,” and shared my new trick, “When I look at myself in the mirror, I am trying to say ten things about our God.” Samantha looked in the mirror and said, “God is big, God is powerful, God is amazing,” and went skipping out of her room. It was as if she was leaving her thoughts of herself next to her dresser and skipping away with her God.
That posture is how I want to live…a life filled with thoughts about my God, rather than meaningless thoughts about myself, and when I think less about myself, it leaves me more space for Him and the things that will last.
This is the free life, holding loosely and living freely as the one who God made us to be…and God doesn’t mess up.
