People are Flowers, not Snowflakes

 This will be a strange blog entry. Hopefully someone will enjoy it.

God has shown me that I have approximate rotational symmetry. And so do you.

 To have perfect rotational symmetry, an object must look exactly the same even if you rotate (turn) it. Snowflakes are like that; triangles; stars of David. They look exactly the same if you rotate them by certain amounts.

 An example of approximate rotational symmetry would be a chrysanthemum. If you turn it a bit, it doesn’t look exactly the same as it did before. The petals are not arranged at regular intervals and are not all the same length.   

If you look at a chrysanthemum and focus solely on a malformed petal, it won’t look as beautiful to you as if you looked at it with a wider focus or from a bit further away. In the same vein, when I obsess on the details of what I’ve done and try to figure out if I did any tiny thing wrong, I’m going to miss out on some beauty. There is no beauty in the obsessively extracted details of things that I’ve done wrong.

 So, being created with (and intended to have) approximate rotational symmetry means that my performance need not be perfect; a chrysanthemum is beautiful even if it doesn’t have perfectly formed petals and a perfectly round bloom. I am beautiful even though I don’t do everything right.

 My performance need not be perfectly orderly, either. My petals don’t have to line up at certain specific angles. God made me to follow a more organic process when it comes to accomplishing things.

 Just as importantly, my growth as a Christian, and as a human being with free will, need not be linear or in perfectly formed steps at certain rigid intervals. God made us to grow like chrysanthemums, not like triangles or snowflakes (even though they’re pretty). Our growth – and our performance – can look a bit messy, and that’s alright.

 There is some order to the arrangement of the petals in a chrysanthemum. It has an overall order. When you look at it as a whole, it is almost round; it looks almost the same no matter which way you turn it – and that’s beautiful. But it is also interesting and enthralling in its “imperfection”, its lack of perfect order.

 Overall, judging by my actions – looking at my true, God-given heart – I am loving (for instance). I am a chrysanthemum who is almost round.

 Also, my stage of growth has beauty even if I’m not fully formed.

 I’m almost certain that no two chrysanthemums are exactly the same. Contrary to popular myth that  no two snowflakes are the same, some of the snowflakes you observe in a snowfall actually are exactly the same. I, on the other hand,  have a unique beauty because my details are unique and I form a unique bloom.

I wrote that growth need not be orderly. Even if I have a petal that grows abnormally, there is still hope for a rounded bloom. There’s always hope with God. In the meantime, the petal itself has value to the bloom.

Even if my bloom develops in an unbalanced way – one side is larger or more healthy than the other – there is still hope for symmetry and balance. There is still hope for a rounded bloom.

Even if one petal is ill, malnourished, deformed or dying, that petal (that part of me) is valuable, pitiable and worthy of compassion, in God’s eyes. Furthermore, there is hope that either a healthier petal will take its place or that the bloom will overtake and overshadow that defect or malnourishment. In DID terms, a healthy Christian host can integrate with a malformed part and overshadow it. Also, a wounded part can accept the Lord and transform to have a valuable place in the Christian host system.

 I want to apply these principles to a specific ill and malformed part in me. She is accepted by God even though she has grown abnormally. Is she responsible for her own illness? In the case of the part in me to which I am referring, yes: she is responsible for some of her illness. That’s because she spends much of her time examining the details of the things she’s done, fearing that one of them might have caused someone to love her less. However, that part in me is not responsible for being malnourished, malformed, deformed or dying.

 Actually, she is in some ways beautiful. She formed amidst distress and trouble. The adaptations God made were, and are, beautiful. God used that part for the sake of the whole person.

God is in charge of growth and functioning. Who are we to judge ourselves?

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