“Fat-Suit”

I feel like I am wearing a “fat-suit”. I don’t know if it is actual fat or leftover chemo fluids or both, but I don’t like it at all. It’s as if I have about a 2 inch-thick coating on the outside of my body. I just know my real body is hiding underneath it somewhere. I just can’t seem to get to it.  I hope and pray that if I exercise and eat right, that top layer will go away and reveal the real me (my body didn’t seem to respond too well to sitting around in a hospital bed and eating whatever I wanted… for 6 months).

This is a good way to describe how I see my spiritual life as well. That the outside layer, the messed-up me, is not the real me.

I don’t think God desires that I be a different me, I think he wants me to be the me He created me to be. And He knows I am “in there somewhere”. With His help, my “fat-suit” is being slowly deflated. The outside layer is being stripped away, little by little, to reveal the best parts of me.

This happens as I do the equivilent of “exercising and eating right”. When I do things like humbly ask him to remove my shortcomings, look to HIM rather than others for my self-worth, spend time in prayer and meditation, forgive and extend grace, and reach out to serve and help others, I assist in this process. So, instead of wishing I were like someone else or striving to be like them, I can put my energy into joining God on His quest: getting to the real me that is trapped inside this “fat-suit” made of all that is not intended for me.