Tag: mirror

It’s Not My Problem

I was scrolling through Instagram one day on my phone as one often does within intermittent periods of the day when I stopped and saw the most horrifying sight of a girl with skin stretched and shedding of her body due to a condition that she was born with at birth. Her parents, unable to take care of her for reasons not determined, they left her at a nearby orphanage.

One day, when she was maybe four years old, another child came in to visit the orphanage with her parents and started hugging her, asking her parents if they could take her home. The child’s mother happened to be a doctor – so with the ability to take care of a child with this condition, they adopted her.

One day, when they were out and about, a group of people saw her deformity and spit on her and called her names. Her now mother, was very upset. “Doesn’t that bother you?” she asked the little girl but she simply replied…

“No, it doesn’t bother me. Why should it? After all, it’s their problem, not mine.”

It hit home and even weeks after reading this story, I still have those words etched in my brain. “It’s their problem, not mine…”

You know when people treat you badly, and you let that resentment and bitterness set in, you live regretfully because you wonder “what is it that I could do?” but you need to realize that how people treat you is not in your control, you only have control over how you react and how you let it effect you.

When we look in the mirror, maybe we don’t see outward deformities like the little girl in this story, but we see something inside that makes us hate ourselves and live in comparison to others. Why am I not more like that girl? Why was I not enough for that one person? Why was I told these horrible things and they get to just move on and be happy?

Hurt people hurt people as they say. But Jesus takes that hurt and gives us the strength to move forward.

But it’s important to remember that how someone treats you is not your problem, and if you actually do have a “problem”, if they can’t treat you with love when they address it, then are they really loving you in a Christ-like way? Again, your reaction is the only thing you can control.

Remember that next time someone treats you as insignificant or makes you feel unworthy or is just trying to one-up you for no reasons only to make themselves feel better…

Remember the little girl who lived courageously above.

Remember that they got the problems and you don’t have to bear their burdens.

 

Home Isn’t A Place

Touching down in the middle of a corn field is kind of peculiar sight, but if your in Iowa…it’s normal.

Home. I felt my heart ease into a strange rhythm of familiarity. So strange how easy it is go back to “normal” after being away for so many months and literally having been out of the country and back.

Home isn’t a place, it’s where your heart is tide too. My family. My friends. They are pieces of my heart running around. Now that my two best friends no longer live in Iowa, it’s more sad to go back, but my family is still there.

Iowa is just full of corn, but if you lived here your entire life you would find more to do than just starring at a cornfield across the road from your house. People who ask me what ones does in Iowa; I wouldn’t know. If your used to being bored, you find ways to entertain yourself.

My friends and I  jokingly dubbed ourselves the Queens of our small town…little did we know that a year later, neither of us would be around to reign over our metaphorical subjects.

As heartbreaking as it may seem…there is a happiness about it. A happiness that we can say later on in life as we all have careers and six digit salaries “remember when we all were poor and worked at the Cheese House together that entire summer?” or “Remember the late night runs to Village Inn?” and all the other crazy road trips and laughing until we couldn’t breathe.

I miss those days.

I don’t want to relive my life though. It would be nice to stop in once in a while. It would be nice to meet up at the corner near my house to drive into the city. It would be nice to get up early for church and eat at our favorite diner. It would be nice some days to hear Dad shuffling around upstairs on a Saturday morning. It would be nice to always find someone to hug in the house, especially Mom.

Those were the days.

But these are the days now.

Sitting in my office, I’ll suddenly have this out of body experience of wondering “Why am I here? Where do I belong?”

Thinking back on the last 10 years of my life. Back when I was 13 and constantly feeling a push to go forward. Now I just want to step back.

All of a sudden all the things I have accomplished and gone through in life will melt into these series of flashbacks. As epic as it sounds…

It makes me sad, nostalgic and lonely.

Lonely for the people who were there along the way; sad at the goodbyes to the people who came and went so suddenly, and then missing the ones that are still by my side though they are a thousand miles away.

Home isn’t a place…and yet it’s a place we are constantly longing for.

But until we get to Heaven, the longing will never cease. Can you imagine, being in a room full of faces you love and cherish? We get a taste of that every once in a while, but it brings tears to my eyes when I think how Heaven will never have loneliness, heartbreak or regrets. It will be full of those people who pointed you to Christ with how they loved you.

We see in a mirror dimly now, but when we get to Heaven, we will be fully known. We will see Christ face to face. That separation will no longer pine at us.

But today I will sit in my office and go through the motions of today, and constantly seek to do what God is calling me to be. Though my questions will sometimes raise to “why am I here? What am I doing?”, God has this amazing story for my life, and though I can only see through it dimly, and sometimes not at all when it is darkened with my confusion, grief and loneliness; I’ll trust His plans are far better than my own.