In Your Image

I don’t usually explain my contemplative poetry and just let it speak for itself.  However, today’s poetry feels like it needs a few words. I wrote this about a week after I had an elective surgery as a way of processing my thoughts and feelings surrounding the surgery and its results. I never intended to post it publicly, but as weeks have moved on I have felt the nudging of the Holy Spirit to put these words out there, I do not yet know why.  

It feels very scary being vulnerable and open about this particular thought process. But if I tell those I minister to that there can be strength in vulnerability and it’s ok to be scared when opening our thoughts and feelings to others, then I must also practice what I preach. So here I am opening my inner most thoughts about this to you.

In Your Image

God, I am created in your image.

Fearfully and wonderfully made.

So what does it mean that I have chosen to change that image?

You know – the physical one.

The body that is mine.

The body that has that one part

that in it’s abundance created physical pain.

God, I am created in your image

And your image I believe is not one that

You want to cause pain.

You want this image to be one

I can love and live life in.

And so I chose to find healing in reducing

the body part that gave pain.

To find healing in a better proportioned body.

But that also means letting go of an image.

The image of my body

I have seen in the mirror for over 30 years.

There is grief in this letting go.

As I grieve I also embrace –

Embrace the new body

that represents the possibility

of living without pain.

I embrace that I am made in your image.

And that my choice to change my physical image

does not change that.

Because perhaps what you are really talking about

when saying I am created in your image -

is my heart.

It is in my love for the other.

my compassion for all living things.

my desire to be in communion with you

That makes me created in your image.

And in the comfort of that thought,

maybe now I can settle into

the me I now see in the mirror

and see that my new body,

is also

Created In Your Image.

AMEN.