The Man in the Mirror
I'm Starting With The Man In The MirrorI'm Asking Him To Change His WaysAnd No Message Could Have Been Any ClearerIf You Wanna Make The World A Better PlaceTake A Look At Yourself And Then Make A Change
Lyrics by Glen Ballard, Siedah Garrett & Michael Jackson
Nobody's perfect, right? I mean, we all know that. Especially about ourselves. Though, we probably like to admit it about ourselves the least. It's much easier to point out the faults of someone, anyone, else other than ourselves. So often we expend great energy and significant amounts of time trying to hide just how imperfect we are. But every now and then our defenses break down. Someone recognizes the cracks in our facade and picks away at it until we are forced to face ourselves and admit that contrary to the lie we've been attempting to feed ourselves and everyone else, we don't have it all together... not in the least.
I had one of those moments this past week. It wasn't fun. i've been a person that has struggled with self-hatred ever since my adolescence. It's compounded by my faith because I know it flies in the face of how God views me, and that's one of the things I hate the most. But I digress... because of this struggle, I hate self-examination. I mean the real thing. I think I'm decently self-aware about faults and all. But if I think I'm putting up a good front for the world at large, then I tend to go along with it as well.
When I am forced into periods of true self-examination, I don't always like what I see. In fact, I rarely like what I see if for no other reason then the negative is normally much more evident than the positive. That's at least how it is for me. So, like I said, I had one of those moments this past week, and it sucks.
Especially when I consider that there has been sin that I've just been ignoring because it seemed easier to do so than to actually try to do anything about it. I'm not going to get into specifics here. It involves my relationships with too many people that probably don't want me airing all our dirty laundry for the greater cyber-world at large. So, I won't.
However, because being cryptic leaves room for your own interpretation let me say that the sin I'm talking about involves... pride, arrogance, vanity, malice, vengeance, lack of reconciliation, apathy, and probably some others I haven't identified yet.
Now, when faced with yourself and your own shortcomings... you're left with a choice. You can either throw up your hands and say, "that's just the way I am. It's the way God wired me. There's not really anything I can do about it. If you don't want to accept it, that's you're problem. In fact, you shouldn't be so judgmental in the first place. How 'bout I take some time and point out everything wrong about you? Does that sound like fun?" Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Or...
You can face it and try to change. I'm going to go for this option, though I've certainly gone the other way far too many times. So, if you're ever sitting around thinking about me (as I'm sure you do all the time) and you're the praying type, I'd appreciate one or two on my behalf.
Thanks.