Recapturing Beauty Day 10: Making peace with God.

LAST DAY! 

Today I was challenged to feel God's love and to ask for help seeing me the way He sees me. This challenge reminded me a lot of one of my favorite childhood stories.

Have you ever read the book You Are Special by Max Lucado? It's the best children's book ever.

The idea of the book is that while the world judges each other and determines what makes for a good or a bad person, the Master carpenter made each one of them and he doesn't make mistakes. Each person he makes is special and is loved. I just love it! Go read the book right now. I'm sure it's in your nearest library.

I feel like I compare myself to others a lot. I notice things about people and I immediately compare those things to myself. That's not fair to me, considering everyone is different. Everyone has different struggles, different strengths, even different looks. I'm unique and therefore shouldn't compare myself to anyone.

I also put a lot of merit in how others view my accomplishments and failures. I try to be ambitious and prove to people that I'm not stupid. I have my moments but I definitely know how Hammy feels that moment when RJ infers that he is stupid.

With people, I may look stupid to them and those first impressions may be all they judge about me. However, God may think I do dumb things, but He knows my full potential. He knows what my greatest accomplishments and most embarrassing failures will be and despite all that, He will always love me. 

How did I see God's love today? 

I saw it in the sunshine. We were supposed to have snow a week ago, but for some reason, the sun persisted. It's a tender mercy that I'm thankful for. I'll try to be more thankful for snow in the coming days but for now, I'm REALLY glad when it's sunny.

I wish someone would invent goggles that you could put on and see yourself through anyone's eyes. You could see through your parent's eyes, your friend's eyes, your spouse's eyes, and you could even see through God's eyes. Wouldn't that be cool? Dove did something sort of like that. They had a person describe themselves and then they had someone else describe that person. Great video, great message. (Dove Real Beauty Sketches was the video if you missed out on that whole thing)

Like I said before in my "making peace with my face" post, I'm sure God sees me as beautiful, even when I don't feel like it, because he created me. I just need to remember that when I don't feel beautiful. That's the real challenge. 

I'm glad I did this 10 day challenge. It was good to re-examine how I feel about beauty and redefine it. I'm still a big believer in natural beauty and being comfortable in your own skin and your own style. I know I come from lines of beautiful and strong women. I'm aware of all the amazing things the body is capable of. I know that God created me in his own perfect way and will always love me. I've still got lots of room to grow, too!

It's time to move on to a new challenge and continue to love life like crazy.