Pause for Prayer

By Karen Schoeppach

When you look in the mirror who do you see? I don’t just mean that quick glance at your reflection. I mean when you look in the mirror. When you really see the image looking back at you.

I see so many people. I see my mother and her mother in some of my facial features. Other features are “copies” of features of members of my father’s family. I move my arm and a memory of watching one of my father’s sisters as she worked in her kitchen comes flooding in from the past. My hands, my fingers are identical to my mother’s. It comes down to me from her father’s family.

Who am I? I am an individual. I am unique. I am also the sum of many parts from many family members. Some I have seen, some are just an image in a photograph, and some I didn’t know existed. Whether I knew them personally and saw them at family gatherings, looked at a photo of them, or don’t have any of knowledge of them, they are there in my reflection. Who do you see?

God, I am the only one like “me”. Yet, it took many ancestors to provide the material You needed to create me. How I look and my personality have been shaped by my family. I pray I recognize the sameness and appreciate it the good things they gave me. I hope that, with Your guidance, I can overcome any negatives which have been handed down to me. Help me to really see who is in the mirror. Amen