Dear Girly,

You are beautiful, fearfully and wonderfully made.

I remember being told at the age of 5 that I am not beautiful enough; I was told a lot that my thick eyebrows and thick hair made me look bad. So at the age of 9 I desperately asked my mum to help me with having my hair temporarily straightened. I even lost 20 pounds and I was amazed with how the same people who teased me suddenly started to compliment me. I suddenly started to believe that if I improved my outward appearance more that people would see me differently. I failed to realize that I had been allowing myself to believe in a lie. So during my teenage years I began to work more on appearance- straightened my hair, had my eyebrows perfectly shaped and married myself into a strict diet. The thought of gaining weight and not having clear skin was often my main source of worry and anxiety. At 18, I found out that the man I am with cheated on me by stalking on other instagram models. It made me even more insecure, conscious and fearful. I doubted myself a lot and blamed myself for not looking like them. I asked myself, "Why can't I be just as beautiful as they are?" "Am I not enough?" "Do I have to lose more weight?" After that incident, I had difficulty with accepting compliments from others thinking and believing that they were all lies. No matter how many times my friends tried to remind of the truth, I just couldn't accept it for myself. So, one day I came to God. I screamed and told Him how exhausted I was. That I no longer wanted to care about just my physical appearance. I realized during this season of my life, I had become so obsessed with wanting to be better than these women that he had stalked and my heart was filled with bitterness and anger. I asked God in my moment with Him to help me see myself the way He sees me. It didn't happen in an instant, I did not learn almost immediately. It was a progress. I had to learn how to trust in Him and to yield unto Him. It dawned on me that I was more concern about my outward appearance than my the state of my heart. I was far from God. I was full of angst. I learned that You can have everything in this world, the fame, the beauty and the wealth but without Christ in your life you'll never be content. You and I will continue chasing after the things of this world. I believe I am beautiful now not because I feel I look better. But because when I am in the presence of God, I become more like Him. And to become more like Him is the kind of beauty I am after. Jesus taught me how to care less about what I have and what I don't have. In the end of the day, He is all that matters. In my season of knowing more of who I am in Christ, I also learned how to forgive and how to focus on the things above. 

My love, you are beautiful. Let's stop comparing ourselves to other women. Let's celebrate them and praise God for their lives! As women, let us champion one another. If you think they're pretty? Well they are! But so are you. I want to encourage you that beauty is so much more than our physical appearance. That will fade but a woman who fears the Lord shall be Praised.