House Cleaning Can be Dangerous

Cleaning the house can be dangerous.  Perhaps that’s why we shouldn’t do it.  This week while cleaning the living room, I leaned down to pick up a dog dish which had slid under the lamp table and I bumped my face, right under my eye.  I said to myself  “ouch! I’m glad it didn’t bump my eye”, then continued cleaning.  Suddenly, my right eye caught sight of something growing right out of my face.  What was happening to me?  I ran to the mirror, “oh no”.  My face was swelling up.  I felt like one of those boxers who just got hit in the eye.  I ran to the refrigerator and got some ice, threw it in a zip lock baggie, and pressed it on my eye.  There I was laying on the couch when hubby comes waltzing in the front door.  “What happened to you?”, he said.  When he took a look at it, he knew, “your going to have a shiner all right”.  I said, “A shiner?”

As a trainer, everyone in class will wonder if I’m having domestic issues, perhaps an abusive husband.  No sooner than I get to work, people are looking at me in the elevator, then look away.  Many saw my black eye, but were afraid to ask.  I told the folks in the IT department and my bible study; surely the “truth” would spread from there.  Although the swelling has gone down, the colors have changed from black, to blue, to green.  I really have to watch what I wear, so it doesn’t emphasize the eye.  I pack on the makeup in the morning but by the end of the day, I’ve somehow wiped it off, and my “shiner” is right there. 

I went to the skin doctor this week for a check-up (by the way, no skin cancer), and he looked intently at my shiner and said, “hmm, it looks like the blood has actually gone over to the other eye a little”.  Great!  Now I have two black eyes.  He assured me it would be absorbed in the skin in about a week. 

I had to remind myself many platitudes: that beauty isn’t everything, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, beauty is only skin deep, it’s what’s inside that counts, don't’ judge a book by it’s cover, and so on. 

God has a different definition of beauty and am reminded of His character when the Lord said to Samuel, (when he was looking for who would be king), "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart."  1 Samuel 16:7

After catching a glimpse of my face in the mirror, black eye and all, I’m glad God looks at my heart.  I’m also reminded that God is the great healer.  He can take something broken and mend it stronger than before.  He can take a bruised face, a bruised life and make it new again. 

As we intersect with people with broken spirits and bruised lives, remember that God sees them differently than we do, that we should start seeing people through God’s lens.