Be -YOU - tiful

Recently, I received a gift bag with a present inside of it. The gift inside was lovely, but it is what the bag said that keeps on coming back to me – “Be-YOU-tiful.”

Do you struggle with being you – the beautiful you that God created you to be? I know I sometimes do. I’m not sure where it comes from (maybe from the enemy, who wants us to be anything other than what God wants us to be), but I find that I lose myself somewhere along the road of wanting to be like someone else and not appreciating or being content with who God made me to be. I can be distracted by what others are telling me to be or I don’t take the time to see who I really am.

For some of us, there even may be messages from the past, like you are not beautiful. You are boring. You are weird. You are not gifted. You are not fast enough, creative enough, smart enough, or funny. Maybe you’ve been told you are fat, clumsy, forgetful, or worthless.

We lose ourselves, or we never really found ourselves – but God never loses us. He treasures us, and has a plan for us.

And part of that plan, is being YOU. Rabbi Zusya once said, “When I reach the next world, God will not ask me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ He will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusya.”

That’s my thought for today. Am I being ME? Are you being YOU? Or are we busying ourselves with trying to be someone we are not – someone God never intended us to be?

God made us. We are His handiwork to bring glory to Him – and we can do it by appreciating and embracing who He made us to be. God created beauty and part of His beauty, perhaps the most beautiful of all His beauty, is you.

Be YOU. Be creative. Be strong. Be athletic. Be musical. Be smart. Be thoughtful. Be whimsical. Be serious. Be noisy. Be reflective. Be relaxed. Be adventurous. Be a home-body.

God has placed special gifts and talents in you that He plans to use in the lives around you – He is orchestrating all things at all times.

So, dear reader, BE YOU – be beautiful YOU. Stop toiling and fretting and trying to stuff yourself in to a mold that will never fit you -- just BE YOU. Ask God to help you see your value and worth today. You are beautiful, just the way God created you to be. Figure it out. Embrace it. Share it. Love it. Be comfortable with it. Be flexible with it. Be confident in it. Be willing to offer your beauty to God for His glory and for His purposes.