September 2025 On the Side: A Wilderness of Mirrors

Photo by Janos Szudi via UnSplash

by Laura McLean Thomas

I love a good mystery. Growing up I read Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and then moved on to Hercule Poirot and Nero Wolfe.  The other night I was watching a murder mystery show with my husband when the lead detective described something she called “A Wilderness of Mirrors”.  She explained that it is when your adversary uses lies, rumors, and misinformation to distort your understanding of the truth.  That idea immediately struck me as true on many levels.  
 
We are often caught in a place where we don’t know what to believe.  From AI photos, videos, and stories to people trying to make a name for themselves by lying, editing, and falsifying information, we don’t know what to believe anymore.  
 
On a personal level, our Adversary is trying to distort the truth of our own identity.  We are bombarded with others’ ideas who we need to be, what we need to accomplish, what we need to look like, what we need to do… the list goes on and on.  With so many viewpoints and perspectives demanding our attention it is hard to see ourselves clearly.  It is like walking through a not-so-“fun” house hall of mirrors, and everywhere we look our reflection is distorted.  
 
As a result, we start to believe that we must become these things to be accepted and loved.  Our insecurities are exploited to sell everything from cosmetics to surgery, self-help books and more. We can become obsessed with shaping ourselves into someone else’s image of who and what we need to be.
 
But we were already made in someone’s image:

So God created human beings in his own image.
    In the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27

 We were already beautifully designed:

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
    and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
Psalm 139:13

 We were already created with a purpose:

For we are God’s masterpiece.
 He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, 
so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
Ephesians 2:10

 
We are already accepted and loved:

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners…So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.
Romans 5:8,11

God created you for the life you live. Your strengths, even your weaknesses, are not accidents. You are unique.  You can’t be compared to other people because they are not you.
 
Likewise, your life cannot be compared to anyone else’s.  Being married to a physician or dentist has different challenges than other marriages.  Just as being married to a Marine, or a long-distance truck driver has distinct challenges.  One is not better than the other- they’re just different.  When God created you, He knew your future already.  He knew you were the right woman for this job.  With His help (and godly encouragement along the way!) you can have a marriage that thrives despite the stress, long hours, and seemingly constant changes to the schedule.  
 
We cannot try to fit ourselves into the image of other people, nor our marriage into some kind of mold.  Instead, we must block out all the voices of “this is what we/it should be” and focus on what God has created us and our marriages for.  There is a higher purpose and calling, which includes both our day-to-day routine and things beyond our ability to see right now.  It is a purpose that God designed us for specifically, and one we fulfill by walking with Him daily.  Let His be the voice we listen to.  Let Him be the only mirror we look into.  Spending time with Him in prayer and reading His word will allow us to see ourselves clearly, because there’s no mystery about how He loves us. 
 
Sweet sisters, in the words of Paul:

“…I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:17b-19

Laura McLean Thomas lives in the Palm Desert, CA with her three kids (ages 14-22) and her hard-working Interventional Pulmonologist husband.  Along with mystery novels, Laura also enjoys Bible study, women’s ministry, and painting.  Having left the field of architecture many years ago she now focuses on building up women in the Lord.  
  
“Wilderness of Mirrors”: McDonald & Dodds, season 1, episode 2