Shame On Skin.

I always thought I was a cute baby.  Little bald head with big brown eyes and easy, happy smile.  Soft, "olive skin," as my dad would say, with chubby little legs and natural bronze arms.  My mom would dress me up with little eyelet dresses and shoulder straps held together with bows.  Matching plush socks and tied proper shoes.  This image of my first years is proudly dotted; without restraint I swell and smile at my adorable baby-toddler self.

Recently though, comments have made that for the first time in my thirty years, result in shame.  About bald babies, or "less than cute" babies, or toddlers that don't quite meet the standard of the perceiver.  And I can't help but feel a sense of guilt for the hairless baby I was, though my parents never made me feel this way.  They laughed and bought with pink and beamed with pride at simply who I was: me.  Their child.  Their beloved.  Their "very good" just as God created me to be.

In such contrast, I can't help but lean back into Genesis 3.  I think about how words, verses, and feelings of pride are now juxtaposed with shame, and see the resemblance of the scripture pattern in Genesis 1 and 3.. In Genesis 1, God created humankind in his image, as his crown of creation.  His greatest!  Beyond the Grand Canyon, beyond Pagsanjan Falls, beyond the Alps.  Me!  Human!  The greatest majesty of his creation.  And the only part of his six day journey that he labeled not only as "good" but "very good!"  Oh what wonder!  What elation!  What joy! In his creation!  In me, as me!

Then Genesis 3 comes along, and Satan in all his sin-greatness slides through the beautiful joy and glory bursting, and raptures the words God, the holy one, the perfect one, spoke.  And Satan taints them, so humankind no longer is visualized, accepted, or rejoiced in as "good" but instead is punctured with sin.  In the Garden, humankind went from skin as their splendor, to skin as their shame, hidden and hurting behind make-shift coverings underneath masks of leaves and trees, with sin as a perpetual shield from full openness and relationship with God.

God's voice marveled and said it was good. Satan's voice mocked and said it was shamed.

Oh how our skin has spoken shame ever since!  How we ostracized based on color, remark based on tone.  How we compare in regard to its flaws, and flinch in regard to its measuring.  How we speak against its crackleing, and judge it according to texture.

And we hide!  We hide behind our coverings -- clothes, comments, cramped inadequacy pounded within.

As I walk around now, with skin bearing seven months of new life beneath, these revelations speak strongly in new meaning.  The sin pattern finds me hiding my flaws beyond blacks or embarrassed at growth -- my holy, blessed, God-endowed growth, but nonetheless embarrassed as sin has stolen the joy from me.  Comments of others lend no help and hinder, only draw attention to if I measure "right" in their eyes -- too big, too small, hardly showing, showing enough; then scaling a size due to height and width and bones structured thirty years before.  The assessment of my skin is spoken, though demoralizing, and only shame and anxiety and hiding result.  Surely not the words and truths that God had spoken, still stamping: "It is very good."

Then I think of my precious, beautiful, baby daughter.  Growing inside and forming and being made in his likeness.  I think of her possibly bald head and can't wait to hold it, caressing its softness and smelling its life. I sigh at the depth of love and meaning already held at the hope and desire to nestle her skin next to mine.  And then to whisper and coo and tell her she's beautiful, over and over again.  For she is created good, very good.

Yet, in great horror, I think of the the already-spoken judgements on her.  The sin that has already entangled her as the pressure to appear in the form of the perceiver has already committed her acceptable or non, based on blue eyes or blonde hair or brown curls.  And I inwardly weep and anger and fight already for my daughter.  Screaming inside to will sin's power and Satan's curses away from her.

Lord, let her come in Your Glory!  Let her know and feel Your Acceptance!  Your Love!  Your bounty of spoken words through Scripture about your joy in her, your glory revealed in her as your perfect creation!  Let the words she hears and feels and knows be, "And she is created good!  Very good!"

Oh to redeem Genesis 3!  To conquer sin, Satan, and the death it curses over souls!  Oh to hear God speak great adoration over my stretching skin, my pregnant body.  Oh to hear Him lavish his likeness over my daughter. Oh to bear and claim God's truth, it is good, against Satan's curse of shame on skin.

~  ~  ~

"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."  Genesis 1:31

"God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; 

male and female he created them."  Genesis 1: 27

"Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt now shame."  Genesis 2:25

"Then the eyes of them were both opened and they realized they were naked; 

so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves."  Genesis 3:7

"I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."  Genesis 3:11

"You crowned them [humankind] with glory and honor."  Psalm 8:5

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 

your works are wonderful, I know that full well."  Psam 139:13-14