Don't we all need God's grace to work on our image of ourselves? "Oh...If only I wasn't so.. thin ... fat ...round in the belly... thick-thighed.. crooked smiled...blah blah..." Do we ever get over that fight with the mirror, and our concept of what we could/should be?
I thought I'd share two living room revelations today. Probably only educational but maybe useful even for our common battle with image and how much God loves His creation...
Today's word is Alopeca.
To do my treatments, They stick a temperature sensor on my scalp just to make sure that the temperature rise is very minimal, and not baking me to a crisp with the hour of targeted microwaving to my brain. So Eli shaves a tiny part of my head so the sticky paper sticks to scalp.. Yesterday it was a good day to reshave (a close shave...ha ha ha). Anyway.. After he finished shaving, I noticed a silly amount of curls of hair .. (Ahem...Eli? Maybe that circle of small shave spot got a mite too big???) But no. Welcome again to the details of a creepy living room... Flush and erase are still fine options here... just sayin'.
When I was checking out this treatment, one of the things I liked was the less intense impact of the treatments...One in Five chance of losing some hair..."OK, I think... I'll probably do OK in this one area... Vanity intact"... But no. The man's shave was minimal... Still "comb over-able..." It was me... Losing tufts of curls... Um...Lots of tufts. As we sat outside in the breeze yesterday, waiting for a movie time (True Grit!), I lined many birds nests with wafts and tufts of soft curly hair, just blowing softly away from my scalp onto the gentle wind... the image of it was kind of sweet, romantic and pathetic, all at the same time...
Once a few weeks ago (!), I had driven down to Sacramento for meetings with my students... I walked into the restaurant where I'd schedule my meetings, and there was obviously a woman undergoing some kind of cancer treatment. Bald and not hiding it. Just bald. A couple hours later, another lady walked in. Bald as a cue stick. Not ashamed.. not combing over, wigging, or a scarf. Just bald. My first thought was, "How bold... no apologies.. just ...out there..." I admired those women. When these tufts started blowing on the breeze, I wondered about that. I do believe that I can learn to love God's plan and provision for even this.. everyday... Will I be as bold, in your face, as those two women ?? Hmmm. I don't know...
Eli now gives me these shots of vitamins. Some are subcutaneous, and some are deeper, like intramuscular.
As he was giving me the intramuscular shot, he noticed that it is hard to find muscle to squeeze for the injection site. There just isn't a lot of muscle to squeeze. Really ??? Did it just "melt" ? Muscle that's been there (albeit, hiding among quantities of fat) can't just up and disappear in a week or two, can it ??? Um... Can it ??? Apparently it can.. Wow. Didn't know.
So, I am back to our original question...Did God do a good job when He made me ? Is His view of my image and my view the same ? Should it be?
Once, a long time ago, I made Raggedy Ann's for each of my children and nieces and nephews for Christmas.... Huge undertaking... I stitched every face... every cute nose.. Were they all identical ? No ! Of course not ! Each face was unique to me, and so very precious... I think I learned a little about God's love for how He made each of us that year. Unique and very precious to Him. I think now I am learning it on a new level this time. No matter... hair, or not... muscle, fat or not, He still thinks I'm beautiful and unique. Precious and lovely... just right...
No comments:
Post a Comment