a new kind of counting
Mirrors lie, Amor Towles wrote in A Gentleman in Moscow. I had to grab a pen and write the quote in my journal because it rang true, because I had heard those lies for most of my life. I remember it now, away from home, as I walk through a glassy, windowed hallway and catch a glimpse of my own reflection. Because I can be brutally unkind to myself, I sigh with disgust over the sloppy sketch of me in an oversized t-shirt and jeans; me, with my feet aching in tennis shoes (my feet lately disdain wearing shoes at all for any length of time); me, with my imperfections so clearly on display. For the last hour, I have doubted that this skin, these bones, this face could amount to the wonderful creation God declares them to be. I have made foolish, jealous, surface-level comparisons with other women and found myself wanting.
You would think that at my age I had made peace with myself, and on some days, on better days, I finally have. But in truth sometimes I still live like a vagabond, camping close to a jagged wall made of years of painful criticisms, my own and not my own. Other children built the bones of that wall years and years ago, set its planks and banged the nails, introducing me to the idea that just looking at me inspired meanness. I remember hearing, from behind the closed door of a bathroom stall, that the color of my favorite shirt had suddenly become the color of everything ugly just because I wore it. They gave me the impression that being visible to them at all meant I took up too much space, and there are days, even now, when I see a photo of myself and realize I still believe this to be true. Ugh, too much, that’s the lie; that my forehead looks too wide, my chin too square; just the bones of me, “big bones,” the adults used to say, take up too much space here. On my bad days I realize, almost with surprise, that I still harbor some childish wish for invisibility, for the ability to shrink so small I gather no notice. I want to hide.
After so many years, I know that jagged wall is made of lies. I know that God has been carefully and purposefully dismantling it for quite some time. He works gently, patiently, strengthening me for healing. I know that the desire to disappear comes from nowhere good, that perfectionism and unkindness, even directed towards myself, are never virtuous. I know that when I look at my reflection now, passing down the hallway, what I really see is my own inadequacy stripped bear of the gospel truth, robbed of love and mercy and grace. I know, but I wind up wandering again even before I realize I’ve left.
I am loved, that’s the truth I tell myself now, looking away from the windows.
God loves me, this I know; He relentlessly pursues me. God’s grace is the wellness of my soul, His presence the living water always quenching. I think of one of my favorite hymns, humming it a few steps as I go:
Oh, to grace, how great a debtor/Daily I’m constrained to be/Let Thy goodness like a fetter/Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Robert Robinson
He never leaves me alone, even when I wander. And Kevin—he loves this me with this body, right now. I think deliberately of the way my husband lifts his eyebrows and smiles when I walk in a room. Sometimes when he does that I stop and hug him; I whisper thank you in his ear because he loves me—all of me–as I am. I think of my kids, how when I get home, my beautiful Zoe will find me in the kitchen washing dishes and curl into me, how she’ll say Mama, just that, and mean everything. It’ll be these arms she wants hugging her. I think of Riley, how she’ll follow me through the house asking questions for fifteen minutes after I walk in the door, how when I finally stop and ask if she needs anything she’ll blink, she’ll say, I just haven’t seen you for a while, as though seeing me—this face–makes her feel safe. I think of Adam, how he’ll talk to me even though he has words for no one else, how he’ll reach for my ears—these ears—because hugs hurt but he still wants to touch me. I smile, because I’ve only just begun. I will run out of hallway before I finish conjuring other people’s faces. One-by-one, person-by-person, I count up love; it’s a whole new list of gifts—my family, spiritual, physical, biological, and given. God puts the lonely in families, scripture says, and I can testify; I have more family than there are mirrors in this hall.
When I reach the end of the hall, I realize that with every step I have actually become more real, more whole, as though when I entered this hallway I had begun to disappear, reduced to a sloppy sketch, a barely visible reflection, and now Love, the living breathing truth, fills in the lines. Love redraws me; Love makes me beautiful. I take a deep breath, smiling because I suddenly realize God has given me this too, this counting-up, has just set it in my heart so quietly, so gently, I never knew. It is a gift full of countless others, carefully wrapped and wrapping me, placed here just to draw me safely home.
And when that celestial chime sounds, perhaps a mirror will suddenly serve its truer purpose—revealing to a man not who he imagines himself to be, but who he has become.
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
