May the Lord lift up his face..

Good evening God,
can we talk frankly for a moment? I need to be honest about something that's really bothering me..
it's my face, or rather,  the fact that the face I see in the mirror these days isn't a face that I recognise as mine, and that's something that really is beginning to bug me. What's disturbing me is how quickly other people have grown used to this face - as though it is mine, as though this is who I am now...

I've never been particularly interested in my face before now, I've only put make-up on once or twice in my entire life, and as for my hair, well I've been as happy to cut it myself to get it out of my eyes as I have been to pay someone else to do it for me. So I think I can truthfully say, my problem is not based on vanity or or any need to look a million dollars (who wants to look that green and grubby!)
I'm not concerned about looking 'pretty', I just want to look like me, to me, again.

Please don't misunderstand. I am truly grateful for the miracle of life. I do know how amazing it is to still be here after surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. I am well aware of how petty this must sound to some people! I am alive, so what if it means that I don't look like I used to, surely that's a small price to pay isn't it?

Yes..

and no.

There is something about the image of ourselves that we carry around inside our heads which is intensely personal and definitive: It doesn't just shape how we see ourselves, it affects how we relate to others on a very deep and spiritual level. It took courage to wear a wig when I lost my hair through chemotherapy, but it actually takes more grit and determination to simply face the world each day looking like a stranger to myself. The insecurity it generates is quite astonishing.

The bottom line is that I can't rely on this face to communicate all the love and compassion I have for the people I meet: I don't know how well, if at all, this face is able to reflect the light of your love, the gift of your grace, and the joy of your presence.  I don't know how to lift up this face..

Did you?

I mean, did you, when you took human flesh, know how to look out at the world through a face that was not able to express all that you wanted it too, all that you needed to say, all that you truly felt inside? Did your face as Jesus, feel strange to you, alien to you, less than who you really were? Did you feel you were able to sustain relationships, form new ones, communicate love, grace, hope and joy just as you wanted to?

or was this why graven images are forbidden, is that why they can seem so empty, so undesirable?

I am grateful for the fact that deep inside, I know who I am.
That for most of each day, I am able to forget that I do not look like me to me, and so am able to simply be me..
I am grateful too for that amazing prayer, and for the promise it offers to people like myself who may, or may not, recover the outward image of themselves in this lifetime and so have to trust that they reflect your face instead:

The LORD bless you

and keep you;

the LORD make his face shine upon you

and be gracious to you;

the LORD turn his face toward you

and give you peace.”’

Thanks for the rant