Mirrors on the Lake by Gianna Soderstrom
I have a lake house. Actually, it’s a small apartment in a lodge, at a summer camp. A Christian summer camp, where my husband works. Every year in May we move up to Staff Housing Number Seven, with its three-quarter-sized fridge and a kitchen that’s also the living room. The lake is over a quarter mile’s walk away and not visible from the house. Our actual view is a marshy little hollow and a mountain beyond that’s half-charred from an old forest fire. But my point stands that when I’m particularly stressed, or overwhelmed with parenting in the crowded space of a kitchen with a couch in it, I go down to the lake and follow the narrow trail around the lake edge.
On windy days the water is rough and broken, like a shifting mosaic of indigo. On rainy days the water is everywhere, below and above and gray beyond measure. On still days, the water settles into a mirror, a piercing ungraspable image of the green, green trees and the blue, blue sky. The world in parallel, sky above and sky below and pines in a double-pointed diadem.
This is the lake in the evening, settled and still after the passing of afternoon wind and worry. The light falls away behind the hills and the stream trickles quietly into one end of the lake and rolls away again from the other. I finish my circuit of the lake and hike back up the hill towards home, stilled and quieted again by the water that held the sky. I hold the image close like the lake cradled the hills and for a moment I know even without fully understanding that the water is more truly itself as it reflects the world on its surface.
The calm water is almost enough to carry me through the bedtime routine for two small and definitely-not-sleepy people. I have had patience and it has all been doled out, to the boy who wouldn’t put his shoes on, to the girl who threw her breakfast on the floor. When somebody ran outside the moment I declared naptime, or when I said no and a fit was thrown in response. I see in these babes of mine a reflection of myself - the time I didn’t want to wash the dishes yet again, or when I snapped because somebody wouldn’t go upstairs for bedtime. The wind and worry that disrupted the water are now disrupting me, seeming to scatter any peace and stillness I’d hoped to reflect into the evening.
In the beginning, the earth was without form and void, and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. Have you ever felt this? I sit down to write words where there were no words and I find my mind hovering blankly over an empty sheet of paper. I write, delete, and write again. When I finish I close my computer. I was creative for a moment, it was enough. I give myself a passing grade and continue with the rest of my day.
Some days no words are written, or worse, I close my computer convinced the words I got out were anything but good. Some days the interruptions come thick and fast and the cursor is left blinking steadily forever at the very top of the page. I come back later to find an unnamed document with no words and I wonder what stories I had to tell and why I could not tell them. Mostly, I label these as failures, take a moment to wallow in misery, question myself as a writer, and move on.
There are not very many mirror surfaces in my home, and even the ones I have are smudged. I am many things as a wife and mother, and a cleaner of mirrors is rarely one of those things. I’m a chauffeur, a laundress, a housekeeper, and a chef for two critics of the School of Chicken Nuggets, you understand how it goes. The cleaning of mirrors finds itself deferred, again and again, accruing tiny fingerprints and smudges in the while.
If our creativity is the reflection, the image of God in us, then most days I feel more like the smudged bathroom mirror than the glassy surface of the lake in the evening. As hard as I may try to sit down and write, I can only wrestle out words and sentences intermittently, through interruptions and snack breaks, in between reading books and playing outside and trying to make a pan of baked oatmeal for the week. Eventually, I return to the land of practicality; the everyday repetitive sweeping of floors and making of dinner, and tucking of little people into bed.
But creativity was never meant to be a mere success or failure. The image of God is not something we achieve, it is something we remember. The calling to join in the vast and unending creative work is not contained in what is usually called “artistic pursuits”, it is in everything. Sweeping the floor after lunch recreates a pleasant space for us to read or write or color. Picking up the living room invites order out of chaos. Making dinner again and again and then at the far end of a long day, yet again is like cultivating the trees of Eden into abundance. It is by joining the work of God in everything I do that I become more than just a ripple of water but a mirror, making every surrounding beauty greater by reflection.
It was Kaya McCluskey who said that even as the light of heaven lives in each of us, we can only see it in each other. None of us can see our own faces. We need each other, we need the world outside of ourselves. We need mirrors.
I have walked around the lake at camp hundreds of times, brushing up against banks of wild roses and tiny white star lilies, packing down the already packed narrow trail. I always achingly thought that beauty was “out there”, that being made in the image of God was something vague that we were, and also something we did by acting, loving our neighbors, and going to church. I never imagined it to be something inescapably vocational, a reflection, a mirroring that flashes and shines through everything; from sweeping the floor and wiping the table to separating the lights from the darks on laundry day. From opening a new blank document and staring out the window, hunting for a sentence to seeding wildflowers in the dusty ground, even picking up the living room again and again and again every night just so that we can wake up to some beauty in the morning.
Like the still water of the lake that is more itself by holding the flickering image of the sky above it and the trees around it, I become more myself when I sweep up the crumbs on the floor with the radiance of a God who created order out of chaos and breathed life into the dirt—when I remember that the smudges on the mirror do not appear when I am uncreative, but when I forget that everything is creative. There is peace in the knowledge that the image of God is not just creating but sweeping, cooking, and planting. That to be a mirror is not just to be patient with my children or serve in my church but to walk around the lake in the cool of the day, admiring the star lilies and the wild June roses. Putting the weight of imaging God into one small act or hour in my day is the wind and worry that disrupts the mirror surface with waves. But a vocation? To image God in everything I am and do—that is strangely possible.
At the end of the day, I walk down the hill towards the lake and follow the narrow trail around its edge. The afternoon wind and worry have passed. I brush up against the banks of wildflowers and I know that the beauty is not just out there, it is here, saturating the hours. The water becomes more deeply itself by reflecting the blue dome of the sky and I see myself there as in a mirror. I am made more deeply human by reflecting on the creative nature of God in every moment of my day.
Gianna is a mountain dweller, but also at heart a Minnesota lakes girl. She is the giver of goldfish crackers and piggy back rides to the two littles; owner of too many blue striped shirts. Adventure-hearted, but also a connoisseur of cozy, hot-chocolate evenings. Amateur wildflower naturalist, picker of wild raspberries. Writer, dreamer, wife to Grant, mama to two delightful little humans. And more than the sum of her parts; just like you. She writes on Instagram and everywhere else to bring hope out of our ordinary moments.