We all forget every now and then. We forget the answers to the questions that once seemed logical, obvious and simple. Questions such as “Who are you?” or even “Who am I?”

Well, I am Mary. I am five-foot-five (and a half) and have been alive for 20 full years, going on year 21. I am a middle child with two older and two younger siblings. I was a gymnast once, now I am a musician and an artist.

There. Done. That is who I am.

If I were nine years old, this simple answer might have satisfied me. Yes, this is who I am and this is what I can do. But naturally, as I have grown, so have my questions, and so have my answers. And this answer, these types of answers just aren't enough anymore.

So who am I, really? Who are you, really? Are you a simple name or a label: a can or a can't? A face in a picture, a body to fill am empty space? Or have you forgotten? Well, let me be so honored as to remind you just exactly who you are.

You are powerful. You are beautiful. You are tangible. You are an image of God.

You are tangible. You have a body that can be seen, heard, and used to express your power and beauty. This is where is gets hard. Our tangibility is our only source of expressing our image and likeness of God. But this is so cool.

As a Catholic woman, I believe that we, as human beings, were created by God in his image and likeness. Therefore, by the transitive property, if we are like our Lord and creator, and if our Lord and creator is nothing like we could ever imagine --we are like nothing we could ever imagine.

We are unimaginable. You are unimaginable.

But God imagined you. He made the stars, the universe, the earth in all of its splendor and thought, “I need you here just as well.” So, he imagined a world with you in it. Not only that, but he took imagination and made it into image. You are an image of his imagination. And you, in his image, are beautiful. God is constantly willing you to be here on this earth. Every moment that you are alive and every breath you take is possible because God wills it to be so.

We have this chance here on earth to be beauty for ourselves, and beauty for others. We have the power to be Christ to one another, and to ourselves. We deserve to treat and be treated as images of God because every human being is just that.

Now, as powerful, beautiful and tangible images of God’s imagination, you are capable of so much more than you could possibly imagine.

You are limitless. You have the power to conquer any trial, destroy any label, overcome any fear, let go of any heartache or earthy pleasure that is not of God because your life is of God.

All of the limits that we are binding ourselves to, they are false. We can imagine these limits, but not much beyond. So why limit yourself to a name, a sport, an age, a person, to an ideal or a label? We are beyond that. We are the likeness of God.

Remember that.