Transformations

I am often moved by the artwork of Ria, a two-time, two-type cancer survivor whose catharsis is found in brush, pen, film. Her self-portraits are beautiful. I was inspired to try a series of self-portraits myself. Someday, I will frame this series for my daughters when they embark on their own either physically or spiritually - whichever comes first.

METAMORPHOSIS IN THREE CHAPTERS

1. HEART

God took me to the brink of the grave as a teenager, but I bowed my head low and set my brow in confusion and disgust. Life seemed colorful for a while, full of the color I myself created: red for fury, orange for vibrance of human spirit, white for void, black for depression. This self-portrait includes a lot of ugliness, craters where selfishness scarred my soul.

2. MOTHER

It was the birth of my second child that tilted my head back to the heavens as I searched for answers and found nothing within myself that was holy, pure, blameless, or particularly beautiful. This transformation turned me outward, and desaturated my vision: black for self and white for Christ. The ugliness is pushed to the borders of this face, as I began to see myself washed clean by Christ's blood.

3. CANCER

Balance and moderation began to speak deep in my soul when cancer came and stayed. The colors are beginning to creep back into my days since cancer highlighted beauty once again. It brought me to a place where I can both praise God's holiness and see my own beauty and transformation as a new creature in Christ. I can bare more of my soul to the world around me, seen here as shoulders and neck emerge from the pinhole view of the first portrait to the broader spectrum of this one.

...the final removal and transformation of all that can be shaken in order that what cannot be shaken may remain and continue. Let us therefore, receiving a kingdom that is firm and stable and cannot be shaken, offer to God pleasing service and acceptable worship, with modesty and pious care and godly fear and awe; For our God is indeed a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:27-29 Amplified)