God's Goggles

     I have had enough experiences in my life that damage to my self-esteem was inevitable. I didn't know that what I was hearing was someone else's opinion of me and, as I said in my previous post from a year ago, not my story. In the last year I HAVE changed my story. Sure, there are times when I slip back into my old "junk" and feel crappy, old, ugly, and fat, but recently I have begun to listen to my heart instead of the old authors of my life.
     I was driving back to Utah from Washington State last week after spending ten days at "home." (Now I currently don't feel like I have an actual home so I use that term loosely. It's the place where I grew up and where some of my family and friends live, but it is not somewhere that I feel is home anymore.)  When you are driving alone down that long, lonely, boring tour of Eastern Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah, you have tons of time to think. My heart was hurting over some recent changes in my life (another blog, another time) and I was feeling very emotional. I had spent about four days out in the middle of the Olympic Peninsula camping with my brother, his wife, and one of his daughters, with nary a link to the cell phone distractions of Facebook, game apps, or emails (there was definitely a lot of reading being done). This leaves you with THINKING. Sometimes thinking can be bad. Overthinking is definitely bad. But this was the type of thinking I needed to do. I needed to cleanse my heart and my head.
     So, as I was driving I came upon a little theory in my head that I felt I needed to share with you, dear reader. The bad part about long drives alone is that when you come up with amazing things that need to be written, you cannot just start writing. You either pull off the side of the road and take a typing break, or you hold it in your head and hope you remember it when you can finally release it.  I didn't bother to take that writing break so I'm hoping right now that I remember everything that I thought of on that long, enlightening drive.
     We have a tendency to see ourselves with World Goggles. Magazines, television, commercials, movies, videos,  Facebook, etc fill our heads with stuff that tells us how we need to think, feel, breathe, eat, drive, and especially look. World Goggles. For years that was how I saw myself. I would look through my World Goggles and think I was fat, blobby, ugly, bad-skinned, short-haired, thunder-thighed, un-sexy, unappealing, unattractive, old, etc. Everything that World Goggles told me I shouldn't be but MUST be because I didn't look like the models or actresses I constantly saw before me and I wasn't being asked out on dates by the guys I thought SHOULD be asking me out.
    Then I started praying. Okay, I've prayed before but I mean I changed my prayer. I asked that I could see myself as Heavenly Father saw me. Tall order.  I know he loves me and I know he sees me as the gorgeous, heavenly being I really am, but I didn't see her. Not when I looked in the mirror. I had no reason to see other than what I saw thru my World Goggles.
    And then I saw her one day. In the mirror. I hadn't done anything differently with my hair, my makeup, or my clothes. Yes, I had lost about ten pounds but it didn't matter. I still saw her. I saw a glimpse of what Heavenly Father saw. I know it is just a glimpse but it was all that I needed. So I would see this beautiful happy being in the mirror every day and rush to take a picture. I wanted to capture that moment so everyone else could see it. And then I would look at the picture I took and think, "That's not what I saw in the mirror. That's a HORRIBLE picture. I look tired and wrinkly and TIRED," and I would delete the picture, try a few more times, delete a few more pictures, then give up. "Must be the lighting," I would say.
     Then I figured it out. It was not a lighting issue or a bad camera or my imagination. The camera cannot capture the true soul I saw in the mirror. Once in awhile I can take an awesome selfie (those are the ones I put on Facebook or Instagram - gotta save 'em when you see them!) but most of the selfies I take, I delete. This one made the cut:

     This is my true self. My soul. Happy, beautiful, confident, calm, honest, loyal, peaceful, energetic, creative, funny, loving, spunky, a little bit crazy, most the time loud, spastic, and kind. Me. The one above is my favorite picture of me because this is the woman I see in my head. Quite frequently (almost daily) she appears in my mirror. Sometimes she shows up in my camera.
     I have started seeing myself through God's Goggles.

     I do not have long hair, I am not a blonde, I do not have a large chest, I am not even particularly thin, my skin is not flawless, my teeth are not perfect, (and shoot, I bruise easily!), and I will never look like those women seen through World Goggles. Sadly, most of the men I have encountered in my life are looking for World Goggle girl. Guys,  I will never, EVER be her.
     BUT neither am I my curves, my hair, my skin, my teeth, or the car I drive. I AM ME. As I told one of my dear friends, "We are not a body with a soul. We are a soul with a body."  Now I view myself through God's Goggles and I see who I truly am. Lately I have found more pictures where I am smiling as though I know who I am.

     And, by the way, makeup does not make me beautiful. It merely enhances the beauty I already have. Remember, dear readers, even makeup cannot cover up a woman who is beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside. Of course, the chances of me posting a picture of myself without makeup is slim to none. I was raised to never leave your house without it placed carefully on your face. Some things you cannot un-habit. BUT, if I ever see her in the mirror before I put the makeup on, I'll try and capture her in my camera and I'll definitely share her with you first.