If you are social media savvy and have heard of Instagram then perhaps you also know that you can put filters on the pictures you take before you share them with people. This has made a whole bunch of average to terrible picture snappers look like they know what they are doing. The filters Instagram offers cover a multitude of flaws, soften the sharp edges, and sharpen the too soft places. I know filters for cameras have been around for a really long time but they have never been as accessible as they are now to the average person. Now we all have the capability to reach for Ansel Adams heights thanks to filters! (Yes, I am being sarcastic.) I confess I filter the majority of my pictures and if I don't, I feel the responsibility to let everyone else know that the picture is awesome all on its own with no assistance. That's where #nofilterneeded comes into play. I recently posted a couple of pictures of myself, which is rare to begin with. I have zero desire to take part in the selfie craze. But I did and I was struck with what I felt needed to be filtered and what didn't.
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| Here I am in the Summer of 1978. I was four years old. #nofilterneeded |
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| Here I am in the Summer of 2014. I am (almost) 40 years old. I filtered the heck out of this picture, I think I used every single filter there was. |
Throughout the years I put filters in place but they worked in reverse. Instead of filtering out the gunk they seemed to have filtered out the good. Life seems to have had a way in filtering out the potential I have within me and leaving me feeling defeated, tired, worn, and shamed. The gunk stayed in while the treasure flowed out. In 1978 I was too young to know defeat, but by 2014 it's an almost daily battle to not feel it.
I put the filters in place to protect myself, to shield myself from people and hurtful circumstances but the filters were faulty. They seemed to have worked in reverse and by the time I realized they were broken and I needed to change them out I had years of gunk built up inside of me to clean out. And some of the gunk had been there for so long that it had burrowed into my heart and set up like concrete. It was going to take some serious sweat equity to get cleaned up. What happens over the course of years doesn't get cleaned up in a couple of days, and my 30's were spent cleaning up the gunk. Yes, it has taken an entire decade. And then some. Not all the gunk is cleaned out. I'm still chipping away at the hardened muck of years gone by.
Evidence of this is the two pictures above. In my (humble) opinion I am one of the cutest 4 year olds ever, *grin*, but at some point my eyes stopped seeing cute when they glanced at me in the mirror. Over the years my eyes changed, my perception of self changed and today I shy away from too much time in the mirror or being looked at. It's one of the many reasons I have zero desire to join in on the selfie craze. I tell my redheads all the time that their eyes see differently than anyone else who looks at them. I suppose if that is true for them, it is also true for me. So my eyes have faulty filters still. In a decade that hasn't changed. So I still have to keep chipping away at the gunk.
When I entered my 30's it is like an alarm sounded in my life. Warning: Filters need to be changed immediately. So I put the sweat equity in and began the process of changing them out for new ones that worked how they were supposed to - gunk out, good in. Turns out I needed a filter overhaul. My mind needed a new filter, my mouth needed one too! And my heart. Well, the filter on my heart was the most faulty of all. And as I worked on my heart the other areas that needed a filter were easier to clean up. So it's true, life starts in the heart and what is contained there flows out to the rest of us.
As I clean out the gunk and put the right kind of filter in place I have to be diligent to keep up on the maintenance. In our refrigerator we have a water dispenser and it gives us filtered water. But in order to keep getting filtered water we have to change out the filter 4 times a year. Why? Because a filter catches the gunk and stops it from contaminating. Same thing for our furnace, although we have to change the furnace filter monthly because of all the stuff floating around in our air. So I have to be diligent in maintaining the filters on my heart, my mind, my mouth, etc and for the same reasons. There's a lot of gunk floating around the air that my inner life breathes and ingests and I need the right kind of filter to catch those things and keep me from contamination. And that has to be maintained by me. Nobody else is going to take care of my filters, I'm the only one who can do that. Oh sure, other people have tried to maintain my filters for me but that never works out very well. They don't know my inner person the way the One who created me does and the way the One who created me calls me to maintenance. So I still have some sweat equity to put in but maintenance requires much less energy than cleaning up years of gunk.
While writing I stopped and took a selfie. I, like when I was 4, have no make up on today and my curls aren't as noticeable because I put a headband on wet hair this morning. My eyes look at the picture and send the message to my heart, "Many filters needed." SIGH. Thank goodness for the promise that what has been started in me will be completed, because I am a long ways off from being completed in that area of my life. But my Creator is patient and kind and because of him I know now what kind of filters to apply to my life.
What about you? What faulty filters do you need to change out and replace with new, ones that actually work for you and not against you?
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