Mirrors are often our biggest enemies

​How often do you look in the mirror without wishing you were looking at someone else? How often do you even approach the mirror with the intention of seeing all that is good there and not all that needs fixed?

The truth is, many of us go to that mirror not aiming to see something we love, but rather to figure out the best way to make what's there more lovable to someone else.

So much of what we buy and so much of how we look after ourselves is motivated by having the best chance to look in that mirror and feel like this is the day - this is the day the world is going to love that person in the mirror.

On my long drive home from Tennessee the other night, I ended up on the phone with a buddy of mine. We've been friends for many years. His is a friendship I've treasured.

We chit chatted for an hour or so - talked about running and some of the fun surface level happenings in life that we always have fun talking about, they make it easy to laugh - that make it easy to feel loved.

We were getting ready to hang up when out of the blue this buddy asked a heavier question about life. It wasn't as fun and it wasn't as easy to laugh at. It was a question that made me draw closer to the real me than the me who stares back at me from the mirror.

Frankly, it was a question that almost 10 out of 10 times I'll find a way to laugh my way right out of ever having to answer.

But I answered. And for the next hour we talked about hard stuff in life. For the next hour there weren't many laughs. Maybe there was even a tear or two. For the next hour I talked about a guy in the mirror that even at times the mirror rejects.

Through the entire conversation, though, as it went on in time and dug deeper into my soul, all I felt was growing acceptance. There wasn't an ounce of rejection.

In his devotional this morning, Goff says, "what all of us want are those few authentic relationships - and we'll trade who we really are for who we think we need to be."

When I hung up the phone with my friend, I felt for a moment like I'd struck gold. There was peace, you know, in having that moment of knowing that parts of me I've worked to exhaustion to protect were parts of me another human being not only accepted, but embraced. They were parts that to my surprise didn't scare the mirror away, but instead had the mirror say come a little closer.

I personally believe we are designed to have these people in our lives, every day, as a reminder that is how God sees us in every mirror we look in. These people are God's way of saying, I know you don't always believe me - because, well, you can't always see and hear me - but maybe you'll believe this person I've had fill in for me.

I think mirrors are more often than not enemies in our life. We spend way too much time with them being told who we need to become in order to be loved.

Throw your mirrors away. All of them.

But if you have someone who sees who you are, who sees all the things you think need fixed but they think are things that simply need heard, spend some time there instead of in front of the mirror.

And when you walk away from them feeling like you've struck gold, be reminded that God feels like he struck gold every moment he's with you.

Be additionally reminded and comforted by knowing there is never a moment that God is not with you.