When the World Tells You Who You Should Be

The picture in the mirror

Tonight you woke up and walked to the bathroom. You looked at yourself in the mirror for ten minutes. I don't know what you were searching for in that reflection, but I saw your face when you came back to bed. The eyes of someone who feels like a stranger in his own body.

I'm holding the fifth picture from the album. You at fourteen years old, hidden behind the Martins' shed. You're not playing hide and seek. You're hiding yourself. From the older kids who call you "nerd." From the girls who giggle when you walk by. From a world that seems to have already decided who you are without even knowing you.

"Do you see this moment, little one?" I whisper while wiping away the tears that still streak your cheeks in sleep. "This is the day you'll discover the difference between who the world says you are and who God knows you are."

And you'll discover that the second version is the only one that really matters.

The picture comes alive and I relive what will be one of the darkest seasons of your adolescence. I see you getting up every morning looking at yourself in the mirror with the eyes of someone asking: "What's wrong with me?"

Classmates who ignore you because you prefer books to football. Girls who treat you like you're invisible because you don't have the athlete's build or the rebel's confidence. Teachers who see you only as "the good kid" without understanding that behind that goodness is a soul screaming: "Look at me! I'm more than what you see!"

And you, you'll start to believe them. You'll start thinking that maybe they're right. That you really are too weird, too quiet, too different to deserve a place in this world.

You'll start hiding.

Just like Gideon did two thousand years ago. Gideon who was hiding in the winepress to thresh wheat, because he was afraid the enemies would see him. Gideon who considered himself "the least" in the poorest family of the most insignificant tribe in Israel.

Gideon who saw himself as a nobody.

Until the day Someone looked at him with different eyes.

The angel of the Lord found him while he was hiding and the first thing he said wasn't, "Why are you hiding?" The first thing was: "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!" (Judges 6:12, NIV)

Imagine Gideon's face. "Mighty warrior? Did you see clearly? It's me, the one who's hiding! The one who's afraid of his own shadow!"

But God never makes mistakes when He looks at someone.

Gideon saw himself as a coward. God saw a warrior. Gideon saw himself as the smallest. God saw a leader. Gideon saw himself as a failure. God saw a champion in training.

And when Gideon objected: "My clan is the weakest! I am the least!" God didn't change His mind. Instead, He said something that will change everything for you too, little one:

"Go in the strength you have... Am I not sending you?" (Judges 6:14, NIV)

This strength you have. Not the one you wish you had. Not the one others expect from you. The one you have. The one you are. That special strength that only you possess and that the world needs to see.

Little one, when you're fourteen years old and hiding behind that shed, when it seems like everyone else got the instruction manual for adolescence and you're the only one who doesn't know how to use it, remember Gideon.

Remember that the God of the universe doesn't look at you with your classmates' eyes. He doesn't see you with the eyes of the girls who ignore you. He doesn't judge you by this world's standards that measure everything with wrong rulers.

He looks at you and sees "a mighty warrior."

"I am with you" doesn't just mean "I keep you company". It means "I see in you what no one else can see." It means "I've put inside you a unique strength that the world is waiting to discover".

That day, when you come out of the shed with red eyes but straight shoulders, when you decide to stop hiding and start being simply yourself, you'll discover something incredible.

You'll discover that your "weirdness" was actually uniqueness. That your sensitivity was a superpower. That your difference was exactly what this gray and uniform world was waiting for.

And like Gideon, who with only three hundred men defeated an army of thousands, you'll discover that being few, being small, being different isn't a weakness. It's God's strategy.

Because God never chooses the perfect ones. He chooses the imperfect and makes them extraordinary. He doesn't choose the strong. He chooses the fragile and shows His strength through them.

He doesn't choose the ones the world applauds. He chooses the ones the world ignores and transforms them into lights that cannot be extinguished.

That evening, when you come home after spending the afternoon not hidden anymore, but sitting on the park bench with a book, happy to be simply yourself, I'll look into your eyes and see something new there.

I'll see someone who has stopped apologizing for existing and has started celebrating being alive.

Someone who has heard for the first time God's voice whispering: "Mighty warrior. That's who you are. That's who you've always been."

Sleep, little hidden warrior.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about that time when you'll be eighteen years old and have to say the most important "yes" of your life.

--Mama who knows that God sees giants where the world sees defeated