{Beauty} Just One Thing…

Written by: Joceline Sweeney

I remember (back in the day… I have to say that because after all, I am 38 years old! ) when I was a teenager I was surrounded by what I considered to be beautiful friends, blond ones, tan ones, … In my mind this is what pretty looked like and let me tell you when I look into the mirror all I saw was a pale faced-freckled girl, with frizzy brown hair!

Definitely NOT what I considered to be beautiful. I struggled with much insecurity about my looks because at that time, I hadn’t learn to appreciate my own unique, beautiful qualities. I began to try to change myself to look more “beautiful.”  My first plan of action was dying my frizzy brown hair with this “wonderful” new product called ‘Sun In.’ Most of you won’t even know what that is but, the girl on the bottle had gorgeous blond hair and the promise on the back of the bottle was, if you sprayed this product in your hair and applied some heat it would turn your hair a beautiful shade of blond. But as far as I can recall, they neglected to inform you (or I may have skipped the warning parts!) that the more time you spent in the SUN (a source of heat!!) it would continue to lighten your hair!  My hair turned a brazen blond-orange! (not as in sweet red headed orange no no…orange like the actual fruit!) It completely dried out my hair and I had to brush it very gently because it would literally break off if I didn’t. It was like straw!!!

ON top of ruining my hair, I tried laying in the sun to tan my pasty white skin, yep you guessed it, all I got was MORE freckles!!  My plan to “beautify” myself was seriously crashing and my skin was burning!

One day in our school devotional time, my teacher was talking to us about finding “just one thing “that we liked about ourselves, something we may have even found beautiful …Hmmm, I literally sat there for quite a few minutes trying to think of something…nope I wasn’t getting anything, but then I remembered I had thought my feet were kind of pretty, although rather large, I found them kind of cute, so I focused on those. Then before I knew it, as I was thinking positively about my feet, I continued to find ”just one thing” that I liked about myself. A new appreciation for my uniqueness had been sparked.

I was, much to my surprise, now embracing my porcelain skin, with all of those sweet sun kissed spots and when my hair finally returned to its normal color, it really wasn’t that bad, it was so much better than straw!

So if you struggle like I did (and still sometimes do!) with insecurity about the way you look…Stop and find “just one thing”, focus on that and then keep repeating, until you too can truly appreciate how beautiful the girl in the mirror really is!!!

(P.S. My husband loves my freckles!)

Until Next Time,

~Joceline