2 Mirrors

Yesterday I had a 'day'.  One in which I found myself in one of those funky mirror houses...you know the kind that you can go through at the fair.  One mirror will show you all scrunched up and 2 feet tall...while the next mirror shows you tall and lean.  Okay so its my analogy for the day...I wasn't really in the mirror house...but hang in there with me....

Yesterday I was cranky, tired, overwhelmed, being pulled in a million different directions...and on top of it all I felt like my head was going to explode.  Seriously going outside right now in this wind and pollen infested climate is really startin' to do this girlie in.  So I truly limit my time out there!

So it gets to be around 5pm and I am in the kitchen...and I am not quite sure why this is, but 5pm and the kitchen can always...and I am serious here...bring out some uglies in me.  Yikes!  The uglies were a flying out. 

I was angry.

I was frustrated.

I was grumbling.

I was jealous.

I was pouting.

I was complaining.

Oh and I had excuses for each ugly coming out...

I am tired.

I am too busy.

I am a girl whose head is going to explode with this pollen allergy induced sinus pressure!

Lets just say the Engineer and the boys...stayed pretty clear of the kitchen vicinity.  Oh and its as if every corner of the kitchen had a mirror...so when I turned...I could see the ugly.  It was a bunch of ugly scenes.

Have you ever been right where you are supposed to be and it's not very comfortable?

After clearly seeing my ugly...I was in survival mode and ready to just make it to bed time. 

So we get the boys in bed and I can clearly hear God saying...'time for you to do your Bible study'. 

What?  I am in NO frame of mind to be doing any Bible studying...I am ready to be putting my head on my pillow and looking forward to a new day!  Out of some Jesus inspired obedience I grab my Bible, and my Bible study book I am currently doing...titled...Me, Myself and Lies  by Jennifer Rothschild and head out to the family room to sit in my over sized comfy chair with my quilt.  I open my Bible study book...I am on week five (friends it has taken me MUCH longer than five weeks to get here...this book is HARD...like serious life changing HARD...don't take my word for it...get the Bible study and do it yourself to find out!)...anyway...I open to:

Week Five Day 3: Grumbles In The Thought Closet

Seriously...this had been my thought closet all day!  It was upon reading that title that I knew Jesus and I were about to have a talk!

I get to this paragraph:

"Complaining always reveals a lack of humility and plenty of self-centeredness.  Complaining doesn't flow from a thought closet where God is central.  Our grumbles show our self-focus..."

In a matter of a few seconds I was sitting there looking at myself in the mirror...and it was NOT pretty, it was rather ugly.

And in the next few seconds I hear Jesus whisper...

"Nichole I wanted you to see all that ugly tonight and remind you I can't sit next to that."

As uncomfortable as it was to look in that mirror and see the ugly..its where I needed to be.


Don't fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don't act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like. James 1:22-23 (MSG)



Ugly is not looking like Jesus.


For Jesus to be fully residing in my heart He needs to clean house!



Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I'll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You'll be living proof that I didn't go to all this work for nothing. Philippians 2:14-15 (MSG)

When Jesus is fully residing in my heart, what comes out of me will be pretty.

Thankful for a Jesus who loves me so much to not allow be to be ugly.  But in all His grace to show me His mirror and to encourage me to allow Him to make me pretty!

Choosing to look into His mirror!



Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 (NASB)