You Are Beautiful

Be Beautiful YOU!

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful, know that full well. Psalm 139:14

I was raised in church and from a very young age I knew about God’s love. I knew that God made us for a purpose. However, somehow, I have always struggled with being accepted for who I am. As I grew up, my struggle continued with being accepted by others. This struggle continued as I grew up into my young adult years. I went around looking for the acceptance of others and didn’t want to be rejected. I eventually met a man and got married young. As a young married woman, I struggled with insecurity issues and it intensified even more because I was in an unhealthy environment. Unfortunately, I looked at myself through the eyes of other people for most of my life. My value came from what others thought of me and if I didn’t meet that expectation, I felt like a failure.

Being in an unhealthy relationship and environment made it even worse. I wanted to be accept by others so much that I lost myself in my journey. Isn’t it always like that? We try so hard for love and acceptance of others that we don’t truly take the time to find the person God has called us to be and allow God to truly love us. I felt like I was drowning in trying to meet the expectations of the people I was surrounded by. I wasn’t truly free to be who I felt I was called to be. I was often surrounded by criticism and negative feedback. I felt guilty when I was myself because it wasn’t accepted. On top of that, I struggled with being worthy of love. Being in a relationship where lies and adultery was happening, I internalizing all of it. I subconsciously believed that I wasn’t worthy of being loved and that I wasn’t good enough due to other people’s expectations of who I was supposed to be. I was in an unhealthy environment for way too long. I started to allow myself to be molded by it. I started to become a person that I was not designed to be. I knew that there were some things about me that I hid because of being in a unhealthy environment I didn’t feel safe to be myself, the people that were in my surrounding were very critical and negative about the essence of who I was. That caused so much turmoil inside of me and the enemy (the devil) used it to cripple me.

Today, I am not in that environment anymore. It has been about four years since I went through a divorce. When I went through that process, I was crippled and broken. It was not until after the divorce that I truly started the journey of discovering how I really. God started to speak to me in such a beautiful way. I heard his tender voice telling me over and over, I love you! I fashioned you to be YOU! I designed you a specific way and that has its purpose. I love you just like you are. Come to me. Come to me. Let my love heal your heart.” I meditated on Psalm 139:14 for months which says: I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

It has taken me some time to discover who I am in Christ and I am still learning about who I am called to be. I have stopped trying to be someone I am not and I stopped trying to meet the expectations of others. I am learning how not to compare myself nor my story to anyone else’s. My friends, God has fashioned each of us in a specific way and gifted each of us with a specific personality. He made you with that silly laugh. He made you with that smile. He designed you to have the color of eyes you have and the color of hair you have. He fearfully and wonderfully designed everything about you. Yes, we all have things that we need to work on and improve. We are a work in progress. God continues to mold us more into His image. However, the very essence of who you are, is found in the way God designed you to be. God designed you to love a certain way, laugh a certain way, serve a certain way, and even talk a certain way. He took the time to wonderfully fashion you to be the beautiful YOU that you are.

Please do yourself a favor! Stop comparing yourself to others! You are YOU! Only you can be the person God has fashioned you to be. This is one of the most harmful things that we can do to ourselves. Compare. Just STOP! It saddens the heart of God because He fashioned you to be YOU! He spent time with his hands making every part of you in your mother’s womb. He thought about how you were going to smile, how the sound of your voice was going to be, how your personality was going to be. He did not design you to be anyone else.

You are beautiful! You are fearfully and wonderfully made! In Hebrew, the word fearfully is yareʹ, which means to be astonishment and awe, be held in awe; to inspire reverence or godly fear or awe. Wow! Did you read that? It means that God the Creator of the heavens and the earth, made you with astonishment! He was inspired when He created you! He was in awe of His creation. You, yes, you!! He fearfully and wonderfully made you!

You are full of value and resources that you cannot even begin to imagine! Believe in you! Bet on you! God bets on you because He has already placed everything you need to be the YOU He has called you to be inside of you! I challenge you to find YOU, to EMBRACE YOU! Discover your strengths. You are worth it my love. God thought that you were worth it when He was thinking of you before the foundation of the world. He believes in you! His love for you is so deep, and so wide that He doesn’t want you to continue living a life that you weren’t created to live! He is cheering you on to be beautiful YOU!