You Are Beautiful, Day 1

This is the first post in my month-long extravaganza project called "You Are Beautiful". The idea for this project came from an organization called Made in His Image, which is a Catholic organization based in Nashville, TN, and helps women recovering from eating disorders and abuse discover that they are beautiful because God made them in His image. I would be fibbing a bit if I didn't admit that the idea came to me when I wasn't feeling my most beautiful, and I hoped that writing a post reminding every woman, and indeed, every person, that they are beautiful would make me feel better.

But then I stopped. I'm not the only one who feels ugly sometimes, and it never hurts to hear that you're beautiful, or that you're loved, or that you're worth something. So I took the idea of writing one post to make myself feel better, and turned it into a month-long, post-a-day, multi-blogger collaboration project. I've recruited almost twenty Catholic writers (most of them bloggers much more prolific than myself) to write posts on the theme "You Are Beautiful". Some of them I know personally, some only through Facebook. Most of them are women, though I do have one intrepid young man contributing. There are single, dating, and married women, though there are no nuns (that would have been awesome). Basically, I tried to get all different sorts of women to put their own spin on how you are beautiful, and relate that to God.

I am psyched to post these amazing reflections, and to share with you all the writing of great, faithful bloggers. I want this message ingrained on the hearts of everyone who reads this blog by the end of the month: you are beautiful. God made you in His image, and because God is beautiful, so are you. And I'm not limiting this to external beauty, because if that is all you focus on, you can make anything imperfect seem ugly. Outer beauty is wonderful, but a good heart, a strong mind, faithfulness, love, and hope can make anyone radiant, and those are what make up a person, not how he or she looks.

This project started as an idea in the head of a slightly dejected twenty-year-old woman, and I'm hoping that it will become so much more. I hope that my readers will read each day's posts, and my contributors, as well. I hope that everyone will be able to take something away from this project, and if even one person feels a change because of it, then no one's efforts will have been wasted. Stay tuned for thirty days of fun, insights, and positive reinforcement! And remember, you are beautiful.