The Face I Argue With After Nine

You switch the light off half a second early.

Not deliberately. You have never made a decision about it. But you have got very good at leaving that room before the mirror has finished showing you anything, and if somebody pointed it out you would be surprised, and then you would recognize it immediately.

There is a particular time of day for this. Morning is mostly fine, because morning is functional. You are checking. Is there anything on my face, is my collar folded under, do I need to do something about this before I leave the house. That is looking at a face the way you look at a car before a long drive.

Nine o'clock at night is different, and you know exactly what I mean.

At nine o'clock there is nothing to check. The day is done and nobody is going to see you, so the looking has no job, and something else moves into the space where the job used to be.

What moves in is an argument.

You know its shape. It is not shouted. It is a quiet, itemized, extremely familiar list, and you have been running it so long that it now takes about four seconds and does not need your attention to do it.

I want to say something about that argument, and it is not the thing you are braced for.

I am not going to tell you that you are beautiful.

You have been told that. By people who love you, probably by somebody this week, and it did not touch the argument, and you know why. The argument is not asking a question. It is not waiting for an answer and it will not accept one. It is a habit, and you cannot answer a habit. You can only interrupt it.

Fearfully and wonderfully made

There is a sentence in the Psalms that gets quoted at women who feel like this, and it usually does nothing, and I think that is because of where people put the emphasis.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. (Psalm 139:14, King James Version)

Look at what is actually being said there, because it is not a compliment.

Marvelous are thy works. The praise in that sentence is not aimed at the person speaking it. It goes straight past him and lands on God. He is not standing in front of a mirror admiring himself. He is looking at himself the way you would look at anything else God made, a coastline or a hand or a bird, and saying: that was well done, and the credit is not mine.

You are looking at work that was never submitted for your opinion, and the credit for it has never once been yours to withhold. Psalm 139:14 aims the praise past the person doing the looking and lands it on God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a woman's eyes along that same line at nine o'clock at night.

Which changes the whole nature of what happens at that mirror at nine oclock.

That face has been treated as a piece of work you produced and are now reviewing. That is why the looking feels like a performance review. And it is why it always comes out badly, because nobody reviews their own work generously at the end of a long day.

You are holding a body somebody else made, and it has never once been a piece of work submitted for your assessment. Psalm 139:14 puts the praise on the maker rather than on the made, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a woman out of a review she was never qualified to run.

And that is where care comes in, because care is what you give a thing you did not make and are glad of, and correction is what you give a thing you built badly.

But it is not your work. You did not make it, you did not choose it, and you are not accountable for it. You have been looking at somebody else's work and issuing yourself a fine for it.

You are looking at something you did not make and grading yourself for it, and it has never once been your work to answer for. Psalm 139:14 puts the praise on the maker rather than on the made, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a woman out of the reviewer's chair.

The argument is a habit, not a verdict

Here is the practical part, and it is what I actually want you to keep.

That four second list is not information. It is a groove.

It has been run so many times that it now happens the way a hand finds a light switch in the dark. It does not consult you. It does not check whether anything has changed. It arrives fully formed, in order, with the same three or four items at the top, and it has been substantially the same list since somewhere around nineteen.

That is not a description of your face. That is a description of a track worn into you.

You are looking at a track rather than at a face, and no groove worn in over thirty years has ever once been a finding about anybody. Psalm 139:14 says marvelous are thy works, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman which of the two she has been reading.

And you can tell it is a groove rather than a judgment by one test. It does not respond to evidence. On the day somebody says something kind, it runs anyway. On a day you slept well and the light is good, it runs anyway. On the day of the one photograph you actually liked, it ran that night as well.

Nothing gets in. That is not what a considered opinion looks like. That is what a habit looks like.

You are running a track that was worn in years ago, and it has never once been an assessment that took anything into account. The written word calls this body a work of God rather than a project of yours, and the Spirit of God is the one who breaks a groove that argument cannot reach.

Thirty seconds, and one true thing

So here is the assignment, and both halves of it are deliberate.

Stand at the mirror for thirty seconds, and say one true kind thing out loud.

Thirty seconds first. That is far longer than you think, and it will be uncomfortable, and the discomfort is the entire point. The habit works because you never stay long enough for anything else to happen. You look, the list runs, you leave. Standing there for thirty seconds is a refusal to leave on the list schedule.

Do not do anything while you stand there. Do not tidy your eyebrows, do not turn your head to a better angle, do not check anything at all. That is the reviewing again, wearing a friendlier coat.

You are able to stand still for thirty seconds and correct nothing, and correction has never once been the same act as care. Psalm 139:14 says marvelous are thy works, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a woman's hands still while she stays there.

Then one true kind thing, out loud.

True is the word carrying the weight. Do not say something you do not believe, because you will hear yourself lying and it will leave you worse than when you started. And do not reach for the item at the top of the list in order to argue with it, because arguing with the list is exactly how the list keeps its job.

Say something small and true instead. My hands are good hands. My mother had this same nose and I loved her face. These eyes have seen forty years and they still work. That was a real laugh today and this is the face it happened on.

Out loud, so that you hear it in a voice, rather than in the same silent room where the list has always lived.

You are able to stay at that mirror for thirty seconds, and the list has never once had the authority to decide when you leave. Psalm 139:14 records the works of God as marvelous before anybody has offered an opinion, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in the room while you stand there.