You Are Beautiful, Day 20

“You are beautiful, no matter what they say. Words can’t bring you down” – Christina Aguilera

I’m sure many, if not all of you, are familiar with the above lyric to the song You are Beautiful that came out in 2008. I’ve heard that song numerous times, but the actual words just don’t sync in.

I grew up in an emotionally abusive household. My father was continually negative about himself and others. It didn’t take long for my mother to adopt that way of thinking either. Growing up, I had no idea what it meant to have a positive self image, as it was a foreign concept to me. When I was younger, there were several times that I was told I “looked too fat” in that outfit, or “you’re never going to amount to anything”, or “singing isn’t very hard. You should be more like your [younger] sister and play an instrument”. This type of “affirmation” didn’t bode well for my self image. Not only was I not pretty enough for my own parents, but it didn’t matter what I did as I wasn’t good enough either.

School didn’t help much either. I was always the one without a date. No date to the prom. No dates to any dances. Nothing. I felt as though something was seriously wrong with me. I remember back when I was a freshman in high school, getting some attention from a neighbor boy. He was a year older than I was and I had known him for several years as his mother was my babysitter. I loved the attention and felt that I needed to do whatever it was that he wanted in order to keep that attention. Except, that ended in disaster and I was raped.

All of those events, and more, compounded together to create this very negative, ‘unbeautiful’ person. To this day, I still fight myself with body image. I have come a long way, but I have found solace in God. I am reassured of His love for me through scripture and through others. It’s so easy, especially for us women, to get caught up in what others think and what they say; in how others look and how you don’t look like them. None of use are perfect – only God is. We are made in HIS image and HIS likeness. God doesn’t make junk and we are made just the way we are because HE made us. He doesn’t make junk. That doesn’t mean that we are not to care for our bodies – we are after all temples of the Holy Spirit.

God is life. God is love. God is beautiful. When we have God within us, there is nothing more beautiful on earth. The more we seek Him, the more beautiful we become. We are in our bodies for just a short time – its our souls that matter the most.

Tina is a single, 30-something young adult who blogs over at Consecrated Wanderer. A cradle Catholic, Tina has been active in her Church for over half her life. Tina is an avid lover of photography, her cat Gallie, and of course Jesus!