Just Write: You Don't Define Me

Today, a friend told me she had shared part of my story with her daughter and her daughter said, "really?  how can she struggle with that?  she's always so happy and she has such cute kids."  It made me think, if, from the outside, I look all put together and like the picture perfect mom and wife, what does that mom struggle with who seems to have it all? 

Because the truth is we all struggle.  But, I have found that women are very good at hiding it.  We put on a happy face, pretend nothing is wrong, so that, from the outside, we do look like we have it all together.  We're afraid to say what we really feel, because we wonder what that friend or that mom who seems to have it all together will think of me...if they really knew. 

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy.  Instead of seeing the good that He has made in me, I see my mess, the times I say the wrong thing, the times I yell or scream and let my anger get the better of me, the times I turn the other way instead of following the path God has for me, the times I hurt a friend or buried my own hurt for so long that I made a mess of what could have been a sweet friendship. 

I know where I have been and sometimes I am still afraid that I will go back there.  I have known myself at my worst and sometimes I forget that it doesn't define me, that His blood has separated me from my sins as far as the east is from the west. 

I love this song by Barlow Girl:

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, Have I got it?
'Cause Mirror you've always told me who I am
I'm finding it's not easy to be perfect
So sorry you won't define me
Sorry you don't own me

Who are you to tell me
That I'm less than what I should be?
Who are you? Who are you?
I don't need to listen
To the list of things I should do
I won't try, I won't try

Oh, how I know these words.  My mirror tells me "you are not good enough.  you will never measure up.  you will never be that mom.  you will never be that wife.  you might as well give up, because you will just continue to make a mess."  But God wants me to say...

Mirror I am seeing a new reflection
I'm looking into the eyes of He who made me
And to Him I have beauty beyond compare
I know He defines me

You don't define me, you don't define me

As God has brought me to a place of healing and victory, He has slowly been helping me see the me that He sees and love.  He gently whispers to my heart "you are beautiful.  you are loved.  you are exactly who I made you to be."  He is the One who makes beauty out of my mess, the One who can use even me for His glory, the One who has a good and perfect plan just for me.