Dear Beautiful Girl {a letter to the teenage me}

I see the days when you eat a candy bar, sneak out into the bathroom to try to vomit it up. It doesn’t work and just makes you feel like more of a failure. I see the days when you can’t concentrate because you’re hungry. You’ve convinced yourself that food is disgusting and when you glance around the lunchroom, watching everyone shove food in their mouth, it makes you nauseous. Again, you revise your daily 600-calorie or less menu. One thing it can never include is food at school in front of others.  I see you leafing through the pages of the latest issue of Seventeen, tears dripping down your cheeks because you’ll never look like those girls, and it makes you feel like your worth is less than zero.  

I know you hate your lips and how full they are.  Those kids around you certainly haven’t helped that matter at all, calling you “lipper” and “n… lips”.  But guess what?  Some day women are going to pay to have amazing lips like yours!  I know, right?  And God gave you them for free  🙂  You trendsetter you.

So, you’re finally old enough to date and you’ll finally get your first boyfriend.  But sadly, for two years he fills your head with “I won’t date a fat girl, remember that”, “Look how fat your thighs look in those pants” and “If you would just lose weight, you’d be so beautiful.” You will spend countless date nights sitting in restaurants watching him eat because he feels you’ve had your calorie fill for the day.  And countless nights crying yourself to sleep.  Eventually he is out of the picture, but his words aren’t.

Those words will haunt you for decades.

Darling, gorgeous, lovely, wonderfulness…you are beautiful and worthy exactly as you are, and nothing anyone can say or do will change that truth.  Do you hear me? Your body type does not dictate your worth, no matter what society tells us.

God has told you the truth about who you are. You are beautiful simply because He made you. The only perspective that matters and the only One who defines us is our Maker. How freeing is that truth?

You are beautiful. Nothing can change that fact. Ever. Not aging, not gray hair and not scars from surgeries. The only thing that can change is whether you believe it or not.