At a recent weekend getaway, my friend compared our identities to necklaces, that each part of us we discover is a new bead adding to the beauty and complexity of who we are. Someone else equated the emotional scars in our lives to cracks in the armor we wear, but instead of signs of weakness, they are places where the light inside us shines through.  A third friend pondered the idea that we are beings who like to slap stickers on one another. Before long, you can't see the person - only their labels.

Looking at both others and ourselves, do we tend to only see the labels? Do we see cracks instead of colorful beams of refracted light? Imagine how different, how vulnerable, it might feel to peel off the labels and take off our armor.  But, what if in doing so we are freed to see ourselves as God does: completely beloved?
I invite you to come sit with me as I stumble through figuring out how to do just this.