Mirrors and Clothes (pronounced cloth-es)

I had a strange experience today. I was in Astoria with Kelsey (roommate and fellow intern), had just finished the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had (not kidding) and I had to pee (naturally). While washing my hands I happened to look at the mirror. I looked at the mirror, the image in the mirror, and I smiled. The image in the mirror was a beautiful woman; she had a kind face with soft green eyes. She wore black glasses with artistic pink accents and just a few spots of bedazzlement. Her hair was a feisty short cut, blonde but almost light brown. Her nose spotted with freckles, her mouth curved in an alive and open smile. I looked in the mirror and I smiled because I love the woman who was in the mirror.

Why is this is a strange experience? Why did I pause today and see myself when I see myself in the mirror every day of my life? Why today of all days? I don’t know. Today I actually saw myself, though. I paused and I saw me.

The past week has been full of new people and tasks and challenges. I have felt uncomfortable and somewhat awkward. In that space of being I didn’t notice me, I noticed everyone else and wondered if I was performing correctly or being friendly enough. I wondered how everyone else was doing and if I was being the right way to get along well with him or her. I didn’t see me. When I looked in the mirror I didn’t really look. I popped a few zits, I plucked some stray hairs, but I was seeing flaws to take care of so people wouldn’t find me weird or awkward or find it painfully obvious that I was homeschooled. I was trying to fit in, to be cool, to be normal… whatever that is.

Today I saw me. I saw that I am lovely and full of life. What a beautiful thing it is to pause and see the woman in the mirror and love her.

In Uganda we didn’t have mirrors. The most I saw of my face was my nose or the top of my head; just a piece here and there but never my whole self. There was one trip we took and the rooms we stayed in had body length mirrors. I stood in front of the mirror for several minutes then, just remembering what I looked like. It’s funny I forgot after just a couple months. It isn’t that I didn’t know what I looked like anymore; I just lost the awareness of my appearance for a time. I didn’t care because I never saw it. In Uganda, however, I felt more beautiful and graceful than I have ever felt. A big deal for me because I often feel clumsy and awkward, or simply not put together because I have never wanted to care about that. I want to care about other things.

Yet I do care. I care a great deal. The rebel in me refuses too show that, but deep down I care about my appearance and I often feel less than others because I don’t want to actually show that I care. In my mind, caring about ones appearance is a waste of time. Except that the other part of believes it isn’t.

I was looking at photos of Uganda, and photos of Kelsey’s trip to Honduras, thinking about the clothes people were wearing. I love the clothes people wear when they travel to do missions projects or go on camping trips. What I love is that suddenly the competition to fit in with clothing is gone. People wear their grubbiest clothes, or what the culture they visit expects them to wear, because they don’t care. The competition to fit in and appear put together, beautiful, "normal," is gone.

In the pictures of us going rafting on the Nile there is one of Hanna in a brown shirt with words on it, I don’t think I ever read those words. I don’t think I ever read her shirt. I read everyone’s shirt in the US, and I remember the words, or recognize them at least. I never read Hanna’s shirt. Her face, however, I had seen over and over because I have looked at that picture before. Her face was as familiar as my own sister’s face. In her face is the same aliveness and beauty I found in my own today.

When people travel like that they don’t worry about their appearance. No makeup, no blow-drying or straightening hair, sometimes not even shaving. A person is stripped down to the basics of their body. They simply are a body and a soul. The beauty in that is something I cannot capture in words from my language, and I am not sure any other language could. The beauty of person just as they are, well, it reduces me to speechlessness. For a person who uses words to understand life and understand herself, being silenced by beauty is more powerful than volumes of descriptions.

Today, my own beauty silenced me. I did a double take and paused and saw me and was speechless. It was as though I were back in Uganda, seeing myself in the mirror after two months of not seeing myself, and finding myself stunning.

What a mysterious and surprising place to find myself; caught in the spell of my own beauty.