You are Mine

I went to a women's retreat with my mom yesterday; the topic was Baptism. It was a good time for me; I met some new people and saw an old and dear friend I haven't seen in way too long. It was a reflective time of personal contemplation and inner seeking.

I've been having a lot of issues in the past few years with hating my body... it's a broken body that doesn't work and fights against itself. It constantly causes me pain in one area or another. In my mind, it's an ugly body that forces me to restrict my lifestyle and activities in ways I don't like. PCOS has wreaked havoc in my life and Infertility may be the biggest but is only one side effect of this wretched disease.

We were given some scripture passages to ponder... Isaiah 43:1, Isaiah 49:15-16, 1 Corinthians 3:16, Galatians 4:6, and Isaiah 11:2. They were all written down on a sheet of a paper for us so I had them right in front of me. My mind kept wandering to just a few of the phrases so I wrote them out in the sequence my mind kept going to them... a mash-up of the first 3 scriptures I mentioned. It's probably the clearest the Lord has ever spoken to me.

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
You are not your own. You are Mine.
I love you and I will never forget you.

I am His. This broken and ugly body I despise is His. I know we hear since birth we are made in His image and He doesn't make garbage and blah, blah, blah... But all my reading and prayer over the past couple of years keeps coming back to this message... or the aura of this message. He finally got fed up with me and gave it to me straight: "Your body is a temple. You are not your own; You are Mine."

Everything I am is what I'm meant to be. It's time to start accepting it... and loving it as He does.

Take, O take me as I am;
Summon out what I shall be;
Set Your seal upon my heart
And live in me.
(John L. Bell, Ostinato Refrain)

My baptism - Me in the center with my parents, godparents, the priest and my dad's sister and her daughter (baptized at the same time)