Mirror, Mirror

So just how do you become the woman you want to be?

So many years of my life I looked in the mirror and I did not like what I saw. No, not physically but deep inside. I was weak minded I thought. Prone to always wanting to please everyone around me. I hated confrontation. I was given to bouts of low self-esteem and honestly, I felt swayed by other women’s images that I wished I could emulate. That’s because I really didn’t have a clue of who I was or why I was.

I didn’t have any cheerleaders or mentors in my life as a young person, so I was really winging it most of the time. My life always seemed like a series of events happening around me that I had no real input on. Sometimes life felt like waves upon waves of overwhelming situations that I had to continually swim above. It was a long process for me allowing God to peel back layers of wrong thinking and inherent confusion before I could see my way to understanding that his thoughts toward me were good all the time.

It was a process. I now look at other accomplished women and can admire their giftings, but I don’t want to be them. And truthfully, I couldn’t if I tried. So why not be me and learn to move within the space that he has created for me to influence.

I am called to speak the truth to power. I am called to share wisdom and revelation with love. I am called as a mother to this generation to remind his children of who they are in light of God. I am called to cut through the world’s definition of how we should look and behave to feel special or loved and bring us back to the truth of how the creator sees us. And to realize just how beautiful and fulfilling this life can be in every area if we just trust God and his word, simply because it is so!

Once I came to Christ, I really had to wrestle with who I was in light of why God made me. I spent the early years of my walk asking God to be able to see myself the way he saw me. It was a process, but he showed me. And he did it at a pace that was best for me. It was as if a great search light had finally been turned off in my life.

Here are some things I learned over time:

1. Each one of us is gifted with something that God wants us to use for his glory. Some women are extremely beautiful on the outside like Ester and that is their gift. And God can use that when its placed in his hands.
2. Some women are smart and intellectually more aware than others. God can use that in so many ways to have them accomplish great things in life.
3. Other women have deep wisdom and great strength to stand up to issues and be world-changers. We have seen and heard about women like that throughout history.
4. Some women are born mothers. And women that have God-given mothering spirits may or may not even have their own natural children. But they are still called to mother generations or nations. I have that gift.

I learned over time to stop hijacking identities from other people be it celebrities or preachers or airbrushed images or manufactured lives from films, music or magazines or whatever.

I hear women constantly talking about being their authentic self but that can only come from God. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. There is nothing more authentic than the one who made us.

I have learned that if God said I was fearfully and wonderfully made that was enough. I have learned that God never makes mistakes and we were created purposefully. No matter our shape our size or our color. Before we were formed in our mother’s womb, he knew us. How incredible is that?!

He said that he has numbered every hair on my head. So, of course, he knows it’s auburn, curly and slightly unruly and that is ok with him. I found out that to really be loved I had to be willing to be ok with myself first. And I had to want to operate in my gifts and not to covet someone else’s.

I am not the most beautiful girl in any room by any means, but I am whip smart and extremely intuitive and I have been blessed with deep wisdom and insight into human nature. And while blinding beauty is great to have, I have learned to appreciate and love the gifts that I have been given. Not to mention I found an incredible man just right for me who thought that smarts, wit, and insight were most attractive to him. And together we are a powerful weapon in God’s hands.

So, who are you really? Or do you know? I have to say from personal experience it can be very tiring to try to portray giftings that are not actually there.

I have come to understand that we are all unique with a special assignment placed on each of our individual lives. The reason we were born and the reason we have the gifts we have been given. If we could put aside the trying to be everything else and focus on him and what he has called us to, we would all stand out and be acknowledged and attract the right kind of attention in our God-given spaces of expertise.

We have both his peace and his power operating when we learn to look in the mirror of our spirit and love what he shows us.