Poor little thing. So much of her fins and tail had been eaten away that she looked more like a rubbery blue tube than a beta fish.

She was in such bad shape that she couldn't even eat. Without a means of propulsion, the food escaped her before she could get it into her mouth. She reminded me of the fish from a game I had when I was a kid. There was a rinky-dink fishing pole with a blunt plastic hook and six blobby plastic fish that floated on their sides at the top of the water. That's exactly the way the little blue fish was floundering in the fishbowl by the windowsill.

My 16-year-old daughter, Monica, had four beta fish — two males and two females — that were part of a biology experiment for school. Her assignment was to study their behavior under varying conditions. Before her experimentation got fully underway, however, the fish all caught a fungus that eats away at the fins and flesh. Left untreated, the disease will destroy the fish entirely. Monica's fish all had cases that advanced at a surprising pace — but the little blue female on the end was the worst of all.

Monica bought some special drops to put into the water that were supposed to kill the fungus. When she began the treatments, I was hopeful but not optimistic. The little blue female seemed too far gone. But, after the third treatment, the ugly white patches began to recede and the fish started perking up. Each morning, I would check to see how she was responding. Within a few days, she was able to wriggle around enough to feed herself. Little by little, her tail and fins grew back and at long last she was her same old self, swishing this way and that propelling herself around the bowl effortlessly.

One morning as I watched her, I chuckled to myself, “Once a fish, always a fish.”

Of course, I remembered enough from my own schooling to know that the little blue female's tail and fins would grow back and that she would resume her identity as a fish and not morph into a tadpole or a snail. Still, watching the miracle of it was fascinating.

Even a crippling disease couldn't alter the essence of the creature. And isn't this true of all God's creatures — especially human beings? We can become diseased physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually, and yet the essence of our being cannot be altered. God created us individually, uniquely. Each of us has a specific mission to fulfill that can't be fulfilled by any other human being.

The words of the prophet Isaiah are also true for us: “Listen to me, O coastlands, and hearken, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, and he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified'” (Isaiah 49:1-3).

We hear a similar message from Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).

Parts of us may become eaten away by sin, overactivity, spiritual dryness, worries and the influence of the godless world around us — but we will never cease to be who we were formed in the womb to be. We only have to open ourselves to God's grace to kill the disease and allow ourselves to continue to grow into the person we're meant to be.

Marge Fenelon writes from Cudahy, Wisconsin.