When you look in a mirror what do you see? All of us see something. We all stand in front of the mirror and stare into that reflective smooth surface and see something…or someone, don’t we?I was reminded the other day of the importance of how I see myself. My 9 month old daughter Mercy was in the bathroom with me and without my noticing she was starring at me as I applied a soft coat of mascara to my eyelashes. As I watched myself she watched me. I felt like her little eyes were piercing my heart and exposing some of the lies within. I realized that as she watches me she will discover what I believe about myself,by how I interact wit the woman in the mirror. This will give her a framework from which to operate in one day, when she growns up. Like a mime she will study me and slowly and carefully mirror her identity on on mine. I sensed weighty cloak of conviction on my shoulders, it was like a warning, like the feeling you get when a there is a fire drill in school and although you shrug it off the sense that this could be very important one day remains.  So my eyes met with the woman in the mirror and I smiled, mostly so my daughter would see my interaction but deep inside of me I was confronting me fears. I would guess that many of us are cruel than kind to the person we see in the mirror. Each morning we wake up, step into their presence and begin our daily verbal abuse session. We say things like, we are not good enough, tall enough, thin enough, beautiful enough, we discredit our eyes, our hair, our height, our skin, our clothes…we tell ourselves that we are ugly, stupid, fake, annoying, worthless. Does any of that sound familiar to anyone out there? Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? I mean don’t we get enough abuse in a day as it is? Like the world we live in is not cruel enough, we need to add more hurtful words, like the icing on the top of the cake. I am reminded of a book my Sandra Wilson called Hurt People Hurt People. I remember when I was first introduced to this concept of why people hurt others and on the contrary why people love others. We give away what we have recieved. If we have been loved much we love, if we have been hurt we hurt others. So then with that knowledge lets go back and re examine the person in the mirror.  Are you hurting them or loving them? Because, although they may seem like nobody special to you, they are someone, someone that God created, in his very image, and they are valuable in His eyes. We all need to remember that there are little eyes watching us, whether we realize it or not.  There is a generation that is watching, looking with hungry eyes to find those who are true to their identity, who see themselves in the light of eternity. This generation needs our affirmation and love, but how can we give it if we have not recieved it. So here is my challenge. Walk into the bathroom, stare into the mirror, allow your eyes to lock with theirs, smile at that person and say; “the Father says you are beautuiful, and I am choosing to believe that His words are true!”