I finally got around to changing something that had discouraged me for years. We had put a rather cheap, full-length mirror on the back of our bedroom door some years ago. The funny thing about this mirror was that it was almost like a funhouse mirror. The farther away you stood from it, the shorter and wider you looked. Some of my friends jokingly called it “the Hobbit mirror,” because when you stood across the room, it almost made you look like a Hobbit.
It was something I had gotten used to over the years. I would try on some article of clothing, stand in front of the mirror, and think to myself, I really don’t look as bad as that makes me look. But as time went on, the mirror began to affect me. I would take a look and tell myself I looked awful.
So this morning I tried on a beautiful dress and stood in front of the mirror, and it was the last straw. The Hobbit mirror told me it looked terrible and I simply refused to believe it. I got a screwdriver and removed a few screws and took down the mirror and moved a mirror from another bedroom to put in its place.
My new mirror doesn’t do miracles. It simply tells it like it is. It doesn’t make me look tall and lanky, but it gives me its honest opinion of myself and is so much healthier for me. I can get a realistic appraisal of how I look and I don’t have to constantly decide if it is telling me the truth or not.
This whole issue with the Hobbit mirror made me think—how many Hobbit mirrors do I have in my life? How many things have I hung onto that don’t give me honest opinions? Are there people who refuse to see me as I really am and try to reflect something different back at me? Are there possessions or pictures that aren’t an accurate reflection of who I am? Am I truly portraying the person God created me to be? Am I taking an honest look at things in my life or am I allowing them to be distorted? Am I being influenced by things stretched out of proportion?
The only way to see things as they really are is to have a reflection that is honest and straightforward. The only way to find that reflection is to look intently for the truth in the Word of God, then change what needs to be changed, without exaggerating minor flaws or stretching things out of proportion.