Pick your head up and smile. Life is too short and Jesus loves you how you are.

As I grow older I tend to catch myself, more often than not, worrying about what i'm eating, the clothes i'm wearing, or how many likes I have on my Instagram page. I find myself striving to be like the beautiful, skinny, flawless looking girls in television shows and magazines. The Victoria's Secret models that seem to have their whole life together and look flawless. The world is teaching young girls like me that beauty is being skinny, having boys drool over you, and having lots and lots of friends. But becoming that definition of beautiful that the world gives us is a struggle and many girls tend to get into bad habits when trying to become all of those things. Eating disorders are more common now in young girls, and the depression rates in college students are continuing to rise each year. This is something that scares me to think about and makes me more motivated to show them how beautiful they truly are.

Why do we want to be like those girls we see in the headlines of magazines if it only hurts us mentally and physically to get there? Why do we tell ourselves we aren't pretty enough or good enough when we have a heavenly Father who continuously tells us we are always enough no matter what. It doesn't matter if our hair is frizzy, or if you have on the same t-shirt that you wore yesterday. It doesn't matter if you eat two pieces of cake instead of one. Eat that other piece!! It means nothing if you aren't wearing makeup to class today. And who is really keeping tallies on how many hours your spend at the gym each week?Jesus tells us each and every day how beautiful we are, and each and every day we are letting that go through one ear and out the other and we focus on what society tells us is beautiful..

Being confident and happy with our bodies is a hard thing to do, and it doesn't happen over night. Struggling with self beauty is a hard thing. This is something that has held me back for a long time and continuously makes me sad. I struggle with my appearance in a bathing suit just as much as the next girl, and I continuously want to look like other girls around me sometimes, but once I put all the nonsense I hear from the world and I listen to what God tells me, I know that I am beautiful and I am created through His own image and he see's me as the most treasured princess on this Earth.

Each and every day I do my best to listen to Jesus tell me how beautiful I am, I am becoming more and more confident and happy with my body and myself. Beauty is within. And I know that sounds cheesy and you probably hear it more often than you want to, but those who have a whole heart and are filled with happiness and joy are much more beautiful. Those who strive to be beautiful and work to meet the earthy standard of beauty rather than seeking out our Father will never be fully satisfied. Outer appearance does not matter one bit. What truly matters is what my Father thinks of me, and He is always bragging on me and pulling me up daily. Listen to his compliments, and He will do the same for you. Drown out what the world has to say and dive into the word.

Song of Solomon 4:7 (ESV)

You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.