“You are beautiful because God created YOU for HIS purpose!”

     ”Lucy…what have you done, child?”
     ”I don’t know. That was awful.”
     ”But you chose it, Lucy.”
     ”I didn’t mean to choose all of that, I just wanted to be beautiful like Susan. That’s all.”
     ”You wished yourself away. And with it, much more. Your brothers and sister wouldn’t know Narnia without you, Lucy. You discovered it first, remember?”
      “I’m so sorry.”
                         ”You doubt your value. Don’t run from who you are.”

        -Aslan and Lucy, The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

     I don’t know about you but on a daily basis I feel just like Lucy. I want to be __________ like so and so. (Fill in the blank, any of these work: beautiful, talented, extroverted, smart, outgoing and the list goes on) As girls we doubt ourselves daily. Our self esteem is attacked by the media, our families, our friends, and the largest culprit of these attacks is ourselves. We are our own worst enemy.

     Daily we subject ourselves to the views of the world, we drown ourselves in ‘Reality’ television, we watch America’s Next Top Model to define what we should look like, The Bachelorette to figure out how we are supposed to ‘fall’ in love. America’s Got Talent to dream about the talents we wished we had instead of embracing our own. We watch the supposedly real lives of celebrity and dream of their money, success, and wardrobe.

     Somewhere along the way we got caught up in the worlds definition of beauty and have allowed doubt to sink in, and instead of beating it back down the devil has taken hold of that bit of doubt and worked it into your life, and everytime you take a step forward, the devil comes back with a response to beat you back down.

     We are listening to the wrong voice.

     It is time for us to change our thinking, our beauty is not defined by the world! In fact we are told not to worry about our outward beauty.

        “Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty if fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry or beautiful clothes. You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.”

                                                         1 Peter 3:3-4 NLT (emphasis mine)

     Girls it is our time. It is time to step up and stop letting everyone around us define what beauty is. Stop doubting who you are and start embracing who God created you to be and who you will become!

     You are a princess! You are the daughter of the Most High!! You are a daughter of THE KING! 

     I read this quote once, I can’t remember where I found it but I have it posted everywhere. I want you to do the same, write it on your mirror, your notebooks, on a post-it note at work, in the car. Everywhere! 

“You are beautiful because God created YOU for HIS purpose!”

And don’t forget it.

-Elle