Dear friend,
I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well.
A private verdict gets passed on the body most days, and it changes depending on the mirror or the lighting or the number on a tag sewn into a waistband.
I taught for thirty-one years and stood in front of a classroom every day in a body I rarely made peace with, and no one ever told me that Psalm 139:14 was written by someone who may have felt the same argument I did, since fearfully and wonderfully made is not the same claim as easy to look at. The psalm does not say the body will feel like a gift every morning. It says it was known before it was finished, stitched together where no one could see the stitching. That is a different promise than the one most people expect from that verse, and I think it asks something quieter of us than confidence.
In 1991 I stood in a dressing room and cried over a dress that fit a body I no longer had, and it took me years to stop treating that as evidence against myself. What would change if you let the verdict simply go unheard today?
A prayer
God, You formed her before she had opinions about herself, and You have not withdrawn that careful attention since. Meet her in the mirror's harshest hour with something steadier than her own judgment. Amen.