After tears wet my pillow last night I decided some things have to change.

They just do.

It's like the wicked stepmother, the one who stared into a mirror asking about the fairest of them all and seeing only herself, purple lips and black widows-peak, squinted eyes and wickedness. How could she look at that day after day after day and still believe it when the mirror said she was the fairest of them all?

Ugliness is not becoming no matter how you look at it. Its nature is to be unbecoming.

It's not that I've been convinced that I'm the fairest of them all, it's that I loathe what I see when I hold that mirror to my face. It shows me my heart, my nature, my deep disappointment in God and others, it shows me all the ugliness that I pretend isn't there when I walk away from that mirror.

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. But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God - the free life! - even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

I calculate the times when the reflection has mattered less to me, when widow's peaks and pallid skin are not so noticeable, when the thing that draws me even to myself is the Imago Dei: the image of God. I am His and He is mine. I was created in His image and He is perfection without me. I am only a reflection of Him and imperfect even with Him. I think about the times when I feel that truth, not just know it.

And the truth is that the delight doesn't come from the reflection, the knowledge that the Fairest One of All is staring back at me. The delight comes from the action, the not forgetting, the constant reminder that I am regardless of how I feel. That He made me in His image, but with imperfections. That He made me to long for Him, but always be found empty. That He made me to hope, but to be familiar with disappointment. That He made me to see, really see, but sometimes forget.

But that He made me His.