Yeah, this is not like that at all.
I want to clarify because I feel like the things that I’m about to write could make me sound vain, or full of myself. And that’s not the intention. At all.
My teammate/ friend Cassie says it’s okay to like myself, so I’m trying to do more of that.
Let me start of by introducing you to two of the most beautiful women I know. My sisters.
When I look at this picture, all I see is beauty. I know they’re my sisters, and I know how beautiful their hearts are, and so know I’m a little biased on this. But I don’t care. Look at them, they’re flawless.
But do you know what happens when the three of us get in front of a mirror? This:
“Ugh…look at my hair, it’s so gross.”
“What are you talking about? Your hair is amazing. But look at those bags under my eyes.”
“I don’t see any bags under your eyes, but look at my skin. Nasty.”
“I wish I had your skin.”
“I wish I had your figure.”
“I wish I had your hair.”
And so on and so forth. The three of us cannot stand in front of a mirror together without picking apart our own appearance and wanting what the other has, even if she doesn’t like that part of herself either. It’s ridiculous. My mom hates it when we do this. She doesn’t know where she went wrong.
I don’t think she went wrong anywhere. She told my sisters and me that we were beautiful probably almost every day. But somewhere along the line, I guess we stopped believing it.
For me, I stopped believing in high school, when I was a cheerleader and the boys would tell me to get out of the way so that the pretty cheerleaders could stand in front of them instead. Or when my gym teacher told me I had nice legs but I was thick in the middle. Your mom can tell you you’re pretty a billion and a half times, but the moment someone else says you’re not, boom, suddenly you’re not. Funny how that works.
But I got used to it. I became content with not being pretty. I just accepted my fate.
And there were other things I accepted about myself as well. Here, in no particular order, are the things that I believed to be true about myself before coming on this journey:
I am:
Awkward
Boring
Invisible
The last one picked
Unchosen
Voiceless
Forgotten
Not fun to be around
Unattractive
People don’t want to spend time with me
No man will ever have an interest in pursuing me (even just for friendship)
These weren’t simply thoughts I had from time to time, or things that I felt about myself when I was having a bad day. These were things that I believed to be the very building blocks of who I was.
But that isn’t what God wanted for me.
(To find out what He did want for me, please read part two)
