I have grown up knowing that I was not traditionally beautiful, I was not beautiful according to society’s standards (I never could be). I knew that I wasn’t pretty like my sisters, but they are beautiful in their own way as well. I was the girl in school who was taller than other girls, I had more body mass. I remember a time in middle school when I heard girls talk about how they just reached 100 pounds. I remember thinking that I was 140 pounds and these other girls were not even close to that. I also remember asking myself why I was so much bigger than they were. They ate better than I did, they went home knowing that they would have dinner that night, while I didn’t know if I would that night, yet they were smaller than I was. I understand now, because of science, that my body would store most of the fat from the food I was eating, so that when I did go without food, my body would not completely shut down.

I had to come with to terms with the fact that I was not like them. It was hard. I chose to make myself even more different when girls started to wear makeup and I chose not to, for two reasons 1) I didn’t have the money to buy make up. 2) I could sleep more if I didn’t worry about it, and I embraced my natural self. I like to sleep. This was a way to compensate for who I wasn’t but who I wanted to be. I understand now, that I did want to be like those girls who would spend hours on their makeup, but I couldn’t, and so I had to try and be as different as possibly, so that it would seem like a chose and not something I was forced into.

Now a 20 something in college, I wear makeup, but it is never to change who I am or the way I look. I use it to enhance the beauty I have been given. If you know me well you know that I really don’t have time for anything more than some mascara and maybe filling in my eyebrows, it looks like I don’t have any if I don’t fill them in. But on the days I have time to put more make up on, its usually never more than a natural color eye shadow and a pink lipstick if I have time. I am confident in my skin. I don’t think I could ever be as confidant I am now, if I had not stopped comparing myself to what the world thinks. I did not do this on my own. I had many incredible women in my life, who taught me what true beauty looks like. But I don’t know if I would understand what they taught me if I did not have somone show me what true love looks like. The person who did this is God. He should me how to love myself by loving me in every flaw and making my strong in my weakness.

God is my reason for my confidence in who I am as a person. He made every cell divide in just the right way, he arranged my DNA in the most beautiful and unique way, so that I would never be like anyone else on this planet. Knowing this I would never want to change or hide the beauty God gave me. Yes I am a corrupted, sinful, broken human. But he loves me in a way that make me perfect, whole, and beautiful. To try and change or hide is to deny what God has blessed me with, and this is why my beauty could never be found in an eye shadow pallet, because it is only found God, who made me who I am today!

It hasn’t been easy, and it won’t be easy to accept who you are as a person. We live in a world where the media screams in our face that we will never fit. At the same time it screams at us that we need to be different. It’s a beautiful thing to be different, but it as well is a beautiful thing to fit in. We all have to find the balance and the place where we fit into. Once we do we won’t ever have to worry about fitting in or not!