A clear face and identity

I had recently graduated from college and suddenly felt stripped of my sense of identity. It seemed as though my peace, my purpose, and my direction were tied up in my previous life at school. I felt unclear about who I was and couldn’t seem to figure out how I could get on the right track to feeling like myself again.

During this time, a growth appeared on my face. It was very distracting and discouraging to see when I looked in the mirror. Eventually I decided that every time I saw the spot on my face and thought, “Ugly,” I would say three things that were real about me, the way God saw me: beautiful, strong, loved. Even if I didn’t believe what I was saying at the time, I kept it up. By doing this, I was turning my gaze from darkness to light, “from sense to Soul” (Violet Hay, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 64 ). I was taking to heart Mary Baker Eddy’s instruction in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in truth through flood-tides of Love”  (p. 201 ). I knew that I didn’t want to give error a foundation to build on.

As I was removing the impurities in my thought, I couldn’t help but think of this time as a baptism. In Science and Health, in the Glossary, baptism is defined in part as “purification by Spirit; submergence in Spirit” (p. 581 ). This cleansing was a process of submerging myself in the goodness of God’s love for me, and cleaning away any thoughts that said I was unworthy or unclear.

One night a very comforting thought came to mind: If I am pure, then I am not a mix of good and bad. I decided to look up the word purity in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and found these definitions: “free from dust, dirt, or taint; … containing nothing that does not properly belong.” I reasoned through these ideas from a spiritual perspective: I am always free of any darkness or confusion. Everything I have is good and pure, because it was given to me by God. This confirmed what I knew to be true about man from the account in Genesis, that “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (1:31 ).

It wasn’t until several months had gone by, and I was feeling especially discouraged that the growth was still there, that I remembered an analogy someone had shared with me for how we can understand healing. When you get mud on your car windshield, the dirt never changes the windshield itself; it can easily be washed clean. As with the mud, any kind of problem can never touch the reality and perfection of you, physically, emotionally, or spiritually. I realized that the negative thought of feeling useless and lost was “mud” on my clean window of thought.

The truth was, I was not useless, then or ever. A friend of mine said to me once anything that isn’t good or fruitful in our lives can just naturally fall away. The feeling of uselessness fell away from me like a heavy weight.

Soon after that, the growth became much smaller. At one point it occurred to me that even if the growth disappeared, I might be left with a scar on my face. The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came to mind, and I considered how they went through a fiery furnace (see Daniel, chap. 3). When they came out, they didn’t even have the smell of smoke on them! I was coming out of my own fiery furnace experience. If they could emerge without a mark on them and with their relationship to God untouched, so could I. A scar would suggest that there was a moment when I could have been separated from God, which is impossible; as a reflection of God, I can only be perfect.

From that point forward, I held on to my sweet new clarity about the reality of my life and identity, as pure, free, beautiful, and purposeful. Soon after this realization, the growth disappeared completely, and my skin is perfectly smooth. No scar or mark. No smell of fire. No mud.

Kendra Scott
Manchester, Connecticut, US