Last Sunday in the Castle of Mirrors

As I drove home from work today I realized that this is my last Sunday here. Here in this place that has been home for the last 10 months. My little Castle of Mirrors. Here where I have sought and learned from God in amazing moments of solitude and silence. For the last two months I haven’t been asking when or how; instead who it is I am becoming. It has been a paradigm shift but one long overdue. With the realization sadness set in for a moment. Part of me has been stuck in that moment all day.

This place has changed so much for me. Well, the place hasn’t actually had so much to do with the changes but it’s certainly had a lot to do with making me see them. There are mirrors on all the closet doors here. At first I saw myself in them all the time. Frankly, when I first moved in it would creep me out to see myself in all the closets. Soon I began to walk past my reflection without a glance. It didn’t take long to figure out I didn’t want to look for seeing something I didn’t want to deal with. What I saw weren’t typical body image issues that women tend to struggle with – though I’m not entirely immune to those – I’ve been struggling with things while living here that I’ll term ­spiritual image issues. I couldn’t or wouldn’t see the truth of my reflection in Christ. The mirrors in this place, especially the ones in my bathroom to which my closet is adjacent, showed me truth about myself that I had been blind to for too long. It was there that God began to allow me to see His true reflection in my life. That, in part because for the first time period in my life I began to truly care for myself, He was ready to reveal Himself to me in new ways. I learned to invest in me. To learn – for me – what it means to live the plans that God has for me. To shine as His servant when I left my mirrored castle of reflective love.

This place is going to be hard to leave because of the reflections of God I’ve seen here. In myself. Honestly before I moved here I never thought I would see, much less believe, the things I do now about myself. There are multiple factors (and also lots of people) involved in that process, but I know that the formation of it all began with the mirrors in this house. The ones that let me see, maybe accurately for the first time, the reflection of Christ that I’ve chosen to be.

While I’ve been working hard on the inside and on the outside to get some stuff sorted out in the last several months I’ve learned an invaluable lesson. I cannot do enough. Ever. The hardest part of the required of all of the changes came at the beginning. The difficulties were in complete surrender. My surrender was a long time in coming; mostly because I never believed God could use me. But I’ll always remember the day like a photograph of a best friend. I finally let go completely and laid it all down, the only thing I have left to do is daily begin with that same choice. Will I give my day over to the One who has asked me to be His? Will I honor him with my firsts and lasts of the day? Will I choose to be joyful during and through all the confusing circumstances?

So I’ve been stuck in the moment of my last Sunday here all day. And it comes to a close soon. Not much can be done about the confusing circumstance of the passage of time. I didn’t choose that. If granted the power I might choose to undo some of the circumstances that mandated my change in location; I have no such grant. Instead it is with an anticipatory heart I choose to embrace what awaits. I’ve grown to love this place, just like some of the other places I’ve had to love and leave, but I am again moving. It seems that’s just what I do. I am done questioning. I’m now accepting and learning and watching. I am I’m seeing newly. Especially the fact that there is more purpose to these apparently random life-shifts and random moves that happen for me than I like to believe at the onset. This is my last Sunday here in my Castle of Mirrors and I, stuck in a very long moment of sadness, rejoice in today.