Failures of the Dressing Room

Any woman who has ever tried on clothes in a dressing room knows that the harsh lighting often inspires us to buy less clothes than more clothes. There is something about that flourescent glow that makes you want to run and hide...or run to the nearest treadmill and keep running. When will stores learn that we need soft, flattering light if they want us to pay $50 for a sweater that we don't really need? Sometimes, we end up buying the sweater to make ourselves feel better, but more often than not, we end up leaving the store empty-handed and dejected. Failures of the dressing room.

Does anyone else out there ever feel like God turns on his harsh, dressing room-like light and makes you look in the mirror to see what your heart actually looks like? Because I know I've felt that way lately. Rather than walk away without my new, selfish sweater in hand and work on the flaws He shows me, I've been happily buying into the lie and convincing myself that it fits.

But God, I've been here before. I learned my lesson-I swear! Why can't I keep wearing this method of prayer? Why can't I expect it will fit just because it did a year ago?

"Wait for the LORD. Be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD." I repeat it like a mantra, and yet I can't seem to get it through my thick skull. I always want to do when I need to just wait. I think that I am doing something helpful and in God's will; in reality, I'm fooling myself. Checking off my to-do list does nothing towards getting me closer to the woman God wants me to be. Pouting and crying that things aren't quite progressing like I thought they should be just makes me a selfish whiner.

So, it's time for me to take another step into the dressing room and let God reveal my flaws-not to make me feel like a failure, but to remind me of His grace and where He wants to take me in the next year. Anybody with me?