I know you. I see you. I am you.

I know how it feels to look in the mirror and burst into tears. I know how it feels to listen to your friends talk about how attractive other girls are and feel insecure as to how they think about you. I know how it feels to feel like you'll never be good enough.

I see you when you push away the dessert menu. I see you when your eyes instantly look down if someone makes a negative comment about your appearance and you overhear them.I see how hard you work at the gym, trying to fight these insecurity monsters away, although they never seem to leave.

I am you when you opt out on a night out because nothing you wear ever seems to make you look as good as your friends. I am you when you scroll through your instagram feed, wondering if you'll ever be as pretty and hot and HAPPY as the girls you follow. I am you when you kneel down and pray that He will somehow make you feel worth it.

You are not alone.

However, I'm confused. When did beauty become equivalent to self respect? When did being pretty equate to being happy? When did being hot become the only way that you can be worth something?

Take a minute. Think of a person you admire. Your best friend, your significant other, a parent, a sibling. Now list to yourself every characteristic you like about that person. They may be kind, funny, understanding, a good listener, have a big heart, or have one of the other million qualities that makes someone a good person. Now look through the list of qualities you've thought of again.

Did a single one of those qualities have anything to do with appearance?

Yes, we as human beings have a tendency to judge a book by its cover, to judge a person by their looks. However, this DOES NOT have to equate to worthiness, or happiness. The number on a scale or the way your face looks in the mirror does not define you. It is just one small part of you. People love people because of their inner beauty. People love others for the way they make them feel about themselves. People love others because they have big hearts, or they like to dance around the living room with you, or because they are just a genuinely good person. People do not love for physical appearance. Because when that all fades away, what's left is what's on the inside. And someday, that's all that's going to be there for all of us.
Everyone truly has something beautiful about their appearance. Weather it's their eyes, their smile, their body, their hair, or themselves as a whole, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are a million different types of beauty. Christmas lights are beautiful. Sunsets are beautiful. Flowers are beautiful. None of these things look even remotely similar. And yet, they are all beautiful. People are like that too.

However, being a good person is not in the eye of the beholder. Having a good heart, loving others as much as you can, giving back to your community, being kind, these are all things that make someone a good person. And if being a good person makes you beautiful, then this is the truest beauty of all. It's beautiful to be kind. it's beautiful to be smart. it's beautiful to give parts of yourself back to others. it's beautiful to have a good heart. When it comes down to it, true beauty has nothing to do with appearance. It goes deep down into the soul. Into the core of who we are as people.

If being a good person makes you worth something, and makes you happy, and you have to be beautiful to be worth something and to be happy, wouldn't that mean that the truest beauty lies in being a good person?

So the next time you're like me, and you're feeling ugly and trying to chase your monsters away, look past the reflection and into your soul. Look into the eyes of the people who love you. Look into all the good you have brought into this world, and remember that that is the truest beauty of all.