Perception is 9/10's of the problem

I have been thinking about perception lately. In cjane's blog she talks about some of the negative comments she received, and literally hundreds of people rushed to let her know how they felt that this is not the correct perception. I agree with them that she is not at all like the negativity portrayed about her. I tend to be extremely hard on myself and notice every tiny thing wrong with me. Lately it has been about my face mostly. When we relocated to AZ, my face kind of freaked out at the climate change and it has been a battle to find a solution. A wonderful friend of mine finally convinced me to try the products she swears by and it has been a blessing. Slowly my skin is healing and I am enjoying watching the transformation. Once I pointed out to my husband the changes and he said that he never noticed the bad things that I seem to see. Again perception. After that I happened to read something that said to stop pointing out the bad things about ourselves to our husbands as they don't see what we see. I took that to heart and have worked on not pointing out bad things about myself.

This morning I got a big lesson on perception. I was brushing Cara's hair as I always do with her facing away from me so I could get all the snarls out. Then she turned around so I could put "prettys" in her hair (our code name for barrettes, rubber bands, clips, etc.). I had her look down so I could part her hair and then said "Okay look at my face". She said "I love to look at your beautiful face Mommy". Then Allan called from the bathroom, "what did she say?". Cara repeated it to him and he promptly said "She is right, your face is pretty beautiful". Sometimes God uses the smallest messengers to let us know what we are missing. My children don't care if I have blemishes because they know that I love them and do everything I can to show it. So to them I am beautiful no matter what. That is the love showing through and that is what they focus on.

So I think if we all worked a little harder on looking at the love of those around us, maybe our perception would be much clearer.