I am beautiful

I am beautiful….
I'm beautiful because I am made in the image of God.
I'm beautiful because before the world was created God knew who I would be, when I would be and what I would become.
I'm beautiful because I was born on April 12, 1990 at six pounds, twelve ounces precisely as He ordained me to be.
I'm beautiful because I have been given unique abilities and talents.
I'm beautiful because in me is a mind that God crafted with His own hands so that I can think on His majesty and greatness.
I'm beautiful because I'm little yet empowered by the strength of God to do things bigger than man can fathom.
I'm beautiful because I have a heart that was fashioned to seek and yearn for God.
I'm beautiful because I was created with a purpose that is all my own.
I'm beautiful because there is truly not another person on this earth just like me. I'm a one-of-a kind. I'm uniquely me. To the rest of the world I may look like an alien. I'm small…shockingly so. My weight, or lack of, provoke eyes to stare, to gawk and look upon me with sideways glances. But that's okay.
What those people don't know is what is going on inside. They don't know about the MS and the battle for my health that has taken place over the past four years. They don't know the taxing ordeal my body has been through and that's okay. I can't blame them. They simply are unaware that I'm a different kind of beautiful than they're used to seeing on the covers of magazines. I don't fit their glossy ideal of what an ideal woman should look like.
Perhaps I was created to be Christ's kind of beautiful, not the world's.
On days when it seems that all I receive are anything but adoring eyes all I need to do is smile and remind myself that the world doesn't measure beauty by God's standards, but I do. My kind of beautiful is the kind of beauty created by the hand of God for His pleasure and for His glory. I may not be what this world considers beautiful, but if God smiles down on me then I know I'm beautiful in the eyes that matter most, my all-suffieicent creator and lover of my soul. To Him I am beautiful and that will always be enough.