Embracing Your Differences

 

Once upon a time, in eighth grade, a boy looked at me and declared, "Beth, you have a really small forehead." I had never, until that point, noticed that my forehead was smaller than average, or really thought about my forehead much at all, but since that moment, it became an insecurity that I've noticed nearly every time I've looked in the mirror. 

All of us probably have our own unique version of this story--a moment as a child or teenager where someone thought it their duty to point something out about us that they thought was weird, flawed, different, or ugly. We may have even gone to great lengths to try and hide this particular feature.

In addition to my forehead, I was insecure about my above-average height, and consequently refused to wear high heels for most of my life. I have experimented with methods of contouring to try and make my round face appear slimmer. And of course, I was always insecure about my plus-size figure. Your own list will be different than mine, but I'm willing to bet that almost anyone could sit down and write a list of things they dislike about themselves, or feel insecure about.

No wonder we have these insecurities! Our entire lives we are told to look a certain way, and do anything necessary to fit in and be conventionally beautiful. We are surrounded by thousands of images in the media that are Photoshopped out of reality to convey an unattainable "ideal."

The last two years, I've tried to combat this. I've tried to look in the mirror and tell myself that who I am, and what I am, is enough. Not only that, but I've tried to find the things that make me unique, and embrace them as a good thing rather than a bad thing. Instead of finding beauty outside of ourselves, we should try to look within ourselves, and what we already possess. We are all uniquely beautiful, and have the right to appreciate and embrace what makes us different.

 

It may be unrealistic to say that we will immediately be able to love everything about ourselves that we have been taught to hate or change. However, we can train ourselves to look at our uniqueness and value that. We can start to see beauty in what makes us different. I have come to love my height, my broad shoulders, and my curvy figure. I have come to feel happy when I see my round cheeks, bunched up when I smile, because I look happy and it reminds me of the pictures of me when I was a little, before I had learned to judge myself so harshly. 

My challenge this week is to find something about you that you have always felt insecure about, and then strive to find beauty in it. Try to love and appreciate all parts of your body, because your body is an amazing and glorious gift from God. Most importantly, it is YOURS. No one else in the world is like you, and that's a good thing. Embrace yourself, because you are unique for a reason, and you are beautiful.