In the summer following my high school graduation, I went to church camp in Durango, CO. The packing list included the regulars: clothes for a week, a sweater, a swimsuit, toiletries, a towel, etc. They even told us what not to bring: firearms, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco products.
I brought all the good items and omitted all the bad ones. But I also brought a few things that weren’t on the list: a blow dryer, an iron, and a small ironing board. You read that right, an ironing board to church camp.
At the time, I worked at Abercrombie and spent every dollar earned on their clothing, which may have been their entire marketing strategy. Needless to say, I brought a lot of overpriced and over-starched shirts with me to camp that year.
I spent about as much time in front of the mirror that week as I did ironing my shirts, which amounted to far more time than I used reading my Bible. In my estimation, I was God’s gift to the ladies staying the week at Fort Lewis College.
As I looked into the mirror, I couldn’t help but smile. I felt good; my freshly pressed shirt fit nicely, the collar was taut (not popped), and my sideburns were coming in nicely; I was up to about 20 whiskers on each side!
Fast forward a few years, and I no longer recognize that person. First, I avoid shirts that attract wrinkles; or ones that have collars. Second, my whiskers turned into a decent beard! Beyond that, the kid beaming with unearned confidence is mostly gone, praise the Lord!
If that was one problem, I’ve encountered a new one: now I don’t want to look in the mirror. My new problem isn’t as much about what I see – though it’s easy enough to disparage my thinning hair and rounding face – it’s about who I see.
When I force my eyes to meet their reflection, it’s not my eyes I see. It’s my shame: what I’ve done and who I’ve become. It’s what these eyes have seen, these ears have heard, these hands have done. There are decades of regret behind those eyes.
It’s the feeling of 20+ years of sexual struggles.
When I was five, someone close to me sexually abused me. When I was eleven, someone else close showed me pornography for the first time. A year later, when I was twelve, a doctor sexually abused me during a sports physical. All of that took a toll, which led to increased shame.
Somewhere along the line, I learned that people don’t want the real you. They want the sanitized, presentable version. After passing enough people in the hallway who ask, “How are you?” only to walk away as you answer, it conditions you to keep things to yourself. People don’t want to know. Heck, I don’t want to know how I am most days. Then, when you give an honest answer, they look at you awkwardly, and we all agree not to go there again.
Looking in the mirror, I see decades of shame and buried emotions.
A quick aside – nearly 15 years ago, as I drove home late at night with my truck window open, cold air blowing over me, and Lifehouse’s Everything playing loudly, I cried out to God to help me feel; to feel anything. I couldn’t tell you the last time I cried. I so badly wanted to feel something, anything. I had suppressed so much I could no longer take it. Yet the tears wouldn’t come. To this day, my children speak of how odd it is they never see their dad cry.
For most of my life, I have convinced myself that if people knew the true me – with all my darkest thoughts exposed – they would want nothing to do with me. Meanwhile, the enemy has convinced me the best way to protect myself is never to let anyone see. So, I began my marriage with a suitcase full of secrets: debt, pornography addiction, and accounts of abuse. Surely, if my wife discovered these things, she would run for the hills. And, if the people at church knew, they would send me packing. So, I kept it all hidden. For a time.
One by one, my secrets slowly broke free. Each time, with failed attempts to lessen the seriousness of it all. The more I fought it, the more I saw bits of the façade of the life I had built crumble to the ground. As control over my life fled, I was drawn deeper into the lure of my sin. But the secrets wouldn’t stop exposing themselves. God would no longer let me get away with it.
Now, more than ever, I couldn’t look in the mirror. Not only was I the broken man I always knew myself to be, but now those closest to me also knew it. I had all but died.
Yet, along this time, I had experienced something incredible in my wife and others. They weren’t surprised by my sin. They weren’t running away from me. They weren’t even mad. Yes, they were hurt and concerned about my sin’s toll on them, others, and even myself. But they saw past that to who I really was. They were able to say things about me that I had never truly believed, not even in the days of wispy sideburns and overly starched shirts. As it turns out, they saw me at my worst but refused to run off. My fears of abandonment slowly went away like the waters of the low tide.
They spoke the truth of who I was in Christ: a forgiven, loved, cherished son of God. Yes, I had strayed and, in my sin, hurt others, but God wasn’t done with me. And to my astonishment, they weren’t done with me either.
It’s still a struggle to break free from that shame, to hear echoes of those inner voices that spew hate and lies. It’s still hard not to see how I’ve become an agent of pain to those closest to me, and I need to be aware of that. Yet, there’s freedom in knowing I can now lift my eyes to see a reflection of God’s goodness rather than be met with contempt. I now hear God’s voice speaking grace and forgiveness over me.
Thank the Lord I’m no longer the stringy teen who loves his reflection. And I thank God I’m less the contemptuous husband and father who averts his eyes than I was in recent years. By God’s grace, he will continue leading me to hear his voice and see what he sees: his beloved son who can overcome all things by his power. Amen.
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