As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the real person.
– Proverbs 27:19 NLT
Real person. Hard to come by. Difficult to know.
A reflection doesn’t lie. It’s incapable of fibbing or twisting the truth. The crystal blue water reflects the cotton candy sunset. The still lake holds the face of the glowing moon. The mirror tells the smile of the girl. The blemish exposed. The forehead wrinkles cracking like old lines in a sidewalk. She holds the mirror, searching for a better angle. How can my reflection tell a better story? She wonders. Can I somehow force the eyes of the mirror to see something different? Impossible. It’s true. Reflections don’t know how to lie. Maybe they were never taught how.
She goes through life, ignoring the mirror while becoming laser focused on the photograph. An image of herself that can easily be filtered, cropped and touched up to near-perfection. A mirage of how she longs to look. Her social media feed begins to fill with altered images, each hiding the funny creases that surround her smile and disguising the pudge of skin that poke from under her arm. The picture knows how to lie, and lie it does.
As she happily scrolls through her photos, noticing the likes and the comments, she begins to forget that the images told a fib…until, the mirror finds her reflection once again. It catches her after she rubs away her crispy mascara or slowly lifts her head from the sink, foamy toothpaste dripping down the corners of her mouth like vampire’s blood. The mirror makes eye contact, reminding her of the truth. I see you, it says.
If the heart reflects the real person, is there a photoshop for the heart? A way to mold it into just the right portions of tender, love, truth and purity? Can some program change a tattered heart into something righteous? Certainly, there must be a way.
She shakes her head, dismissing the thought of matters of the heart. If she’s presented well on the outside, then what should it matter? But matter, it does. As she shuffles through her marriage, raises three kids and walks down the halls of a stuffy corporate office, she feels her heart wiggle inside. It’s there, feeling the constraints of being so ignored. Don’t I matter? It cries. She hums louder, ignoring the pleas.
She keeps her marriage intact just enough to avoid a divorce. After all, a divorce would be the only outward sign that the relationship had failed. Anything else can remain hidden in a dark room. She raises her children to mind their manners, make good grades and contribute to society. That’s the goal, or so she thought. At work, she nods and smiles and listens to the boss until she explodes at home, spewing bitterness onto every wall.
Whether she gives the heart permission to speak or not, it tends to do as it pleases, for it cannot be tamed by a pressed-on smile or perfectly crafted laugh. Eventually, the real person will be taken where the compass of the heart leads.
After 50 years of marriage, three children out of the home and a job that never landed in the corner office, she wonders. Maybe the heart was, in fact, worth minding. Maybe the heart was what really mattered all along. If her heart reflects her real person, had she gone through life never knowing who she was or what purpose she held? She breathes in the reality, feeling the beat in her chest with each exhale.
It may be true that a real person is hard to find, even when living right there inside herself.
