Shelly was getting ready for church one Sunday. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she was curling her hair.  and bent down to wash her face. She had to look perfect for God, and her friends at church. Perfection was important to her in every aspect of her life. She had to do everything right, especially as a Christian. Even though the church’s message was of love and grace, somehow, she felt she had to earn that love and grace.

As she looked up from the sink, something odd caught her eye that scared her. A glowing light was expanding in the center of the mirror. Fearfully she reached out to touch the mirror then looking back behind her to see if something could be causing that glow. When she turned back around the glow had changed and her reflection changed. Suddenly, she had very short hair and was wearing a t-shirt that had a skull with roses around it, and frayed jeans with holes in the knees. She jumped backwards and was terrified. It was her face when she was a teenager. She blinked hard again, willing it away, and trying to see her real reflection. She was consumed with anger because she had completely shut down who she was as a teenager, and that false belief she was gay and now it was as if the past was haunting her. “Make it go away, Shelly!” she said out loud to herself.

“I am here, and you can’t get rid of me anymore!” the reflection shouted.

She threw her hairbrush at the mirror, but the face looking back at her didn’t disappear. “I am going crazy!” she panicked. She started pacing the bathroom back and forth repeating to herself, “I am not seeing this.” She gained some new strength saying, “I am going to be late for church. I am just going to ignore this. I can’t worry about what I look like and need to focus.”

“Fuck church!” the reflection shouted, “You are so brainwashed with all that religious crap, but you can’t deny that part of you doesn’t buy it all, because that is why you have me!”

“You are not a part of me! You are a rebellious teenager that I grew out of. You are not me anymore!” she said, “Why am I even talking to you? This is insane.”  She walked away from the mirror but heard a voice inside her head that sounded like the same voice in the mirror.

 “You can’t escape me, so you might as well talk to me,” the voice said, “I don’t want to go to church. God hates me and I hate him, and because I am a part of you, God hates you, too.”

Shelly sat on the bed and sighed. “You were a rebellious, perverted, shameful teenager, and I can’t accept you are a part of me anymore.”

Suddenly, both heard a third voice, younger. “I remember God’s presence all around me at the river in Tuolumne Meadows. I felt the presence of God without all the rules. It was simple. I loved God and he loved me, and that was all that mattered. You forgot all about that when you went back to normal life, but I have always been here. Do you remember that?” the voice asked. The opposing selves paused. “Do you remember?” she asked again. “You don’t have to be perfect for God and you don’t have hate God either. You can have balance between you both. You can remember what I feel.”

All three of Shelly’s identities paused and were remembering being at the river. It was true, Shelly has never felt the presence of God as much as she felt in that place. The angry identity began to soften, and the religious identity was gaining self-acceptance, and the whole began to see a new perspective. Shelly went back to the mirror to see her reflection again. This time she saw her real face, as well as the other two faces, one on each side of her. They reached out to each other and held hands.