The Rooms That Don't Match the Mirror: Parts of Another Age or Gender
You catch your reflection and, for one disorienting second, it is the wrong face — too old, too young, the wrong shape entirely for who just came to the front. A part steps forward who is eleven, or seventy, or a boy though your body has never been a boy's, and the mirror simply cannot keep up with who is actually standing here. This can be one of the loneliest kinds of dissonance a survivor carries: not a costume, not confusion, but a true and separate someone, wearing a body that was never quite built to fit them.
None of this needs to be explained away or tidied into a single tidy self. The house was never meant to hold only one resident of only one age and only one shape. It was built, out of desperate necessity, to hold whoever needed shelter — a frightened boy, an ancient and weary grandmother, a girl exactly the age she was on the worst day of her life — each one real, each one welcome, regardless of what the mirror shows.
You do not have to match your own reflection to belong inside your own life. Every room in this house, of every age and shape, has always been rightfully yours.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations. — Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV)
He knew every room of this house before the house was even built. Not one resident inside it, whatever face or age they wear, has ever once surprised Him, or been unwelcome at His table.
Rest Here.
