Day 24: Something I've Learned

I've learned to embrace the curls.

That may seem so very trivial to you, but seriously- it's a big deal.
I hate thinking about the mornings before school when I brushed my hair so much that it would lay shapeless on my head... all so that I would look like everyone else. I hate looking back to the days in high school when I tried a homemade chemical straightener that made me lose some hair and didn't even work. I hate, hate, hate looking back to the days when I would cry in front of the mirror, wishing I would look like all my other pretty middle-school friends. In my day, the curls just weren't cool. And because of that, I felt like the ugliest girl alive.

But you know what I learned in the process?
I have been created. Not only that, but I have been created with a distinct purpose and design in mind. God imagined me long before I was born, and He indeed "created my inmost being." And He loves every single, tiny, itty-bitty part of myself that He created! He calls me His beautiful daughter. And although by the world's standards I have huge, frizzy, crazy, textured, untamed hair (all of which I have been told before at some point), and it is completely opposite of the "sleek" look we equate to beauty, I have learned that God sees me with entirely different eyes.

There was no amount of reassurance from my parents or curly hair how-to magazines that could give me the peace that God has given me in how I look. I'll admit, the days of the curly pouf bangs were not my best, but I have definitely come a long way since then. Not too long ago, a high school girl on my WKU tour asked me how I style my hair. She had curly hair exactly like mine. I looked at her and saw the helpless and insecure girl that I most definitely was several years ago, and my heart seriously dropped for her! Needless to say, we had a good conversation in the middle of the admissions office about what seems so trivial but is really so huge in our lives... and I felt God using me. Isn't it funny how God uses our struggles and our lessons in order to help others through the same thing?

And besides, curly hair is so much fun. I can hide things in it, make myself look like a lion, make myself a 'fro, throw everyone off by straightening it... the list goes on. It's quite entertaining :)