Whose glasses are you wearing?

I was recently talking with my daughter about how she sees herself. Being eleven, beginning stages of puberty are hitting and girl drama never seems to be at an end. She was feeling kind of down and frustrated. She was dealing with the "enoughs". You know, "I'm not cute enough", "I'm not smart enough", "I'm not liked enough", etc. etc. etc. While talking with her I realized something. How many of us still deal with the "Enoughs" every day of our lives? The actual statements may change, but I bet most of us still deal with them. Those thoughts are definitely still there.

As we were talking an interesting thought struck me. I think many of us walk around wearing the glasses of someone else's perception. We pick up the glasses and look in the mirror and see ourselves as we perceive someone else sees us. We see the image of how we think our boss sees us, or how that co-worker that just doesn't like us sees us, or that mean girl who constantly puts us down sees us, or the bully on the playground sees us, or how we think a friend or family member who just doesn't get us sees us. These glasses give a distorted, perverted, almost 'fun-house' mirror image of ourselves. Where everything is out of proportion and nothing looks quite right. We walk around all day with these glasses on, thinking and stewing and fixating and telling ourselves, "This must be how I am".

The problem is, these glasses create lies. This is not how God sees us at all. These are not His glasses. He wants us to take off these glasses that create hurtful thoughts, lies, put-downs, untruths, and exaggerations. God didn't make these glasses and it isn't how He views us or created us at all! He wants each of us to every day see ourselves how HE sees us. He created us, He designed us, He knows us. We need to put on the glasses through which GOD sees us. Glasses where we see ourselves as fearfully and wonderfully made, perfect, bought with a price, and white as snow, glasses.

This scripture is one of my favorites and one I read to my children often. I want them to KNOW how their Father in Heaven sees them and let that seal their identity.

You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts,[a]God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

Psalm 139:1-18

So, whose glasses are you wearing? If you don't see yourself as the One who created you sees you, please take off those distorted glasses and put on the glasses made by your Heavenly Father. And once HIS glasses are on, take a good look at the awesome person He created!