When Do You Become Pretty?

The truth came out when I was about twelve years old.  My mom thought I was an ugly baby.  Well, at the time she didn’t.  At the time she thought I was the most beautiful baby that ever was born – of course – just like moms are supposed to think.

But when I was twelve she said to me, “I didn’t think so at the time, but now when I look back at pictures I think to myself, ‘She really was an ugly baby!’”

It truly didn’t offend me.  I don’t know why because if she told me I was an ugly teenager I would have lost my mind.  I guess I felt like I had no control over being a pretty baby.  But a teenager?  Much time, effort, and fretting was spent being pretty then.

But when did I really become pretty?

Was it the day I was born?

Did I become pretty after trying hard to look that way?

Was it when my mom told me I was pretty or when she truly thought of me as pretty? 

Or maybe it’s that year I lost a little bit of weight and boys started talking to me?

Was that when I became pretty?

For years pretty did not look back at me when I glanced in the mirror.  Frizzy hair. Flabby arms. Oil slick skin. Wide calves. Last year’s clothes. Or the never changing barely 60 inches.  It was always something.

Then there was that one day that I caught my reflection as I walked by the mirror.  I did a double-take, glancing again.

Pretty was staring back at me. 

Did my mom change her mind and realize that I truly was a pretty baby?  Had I tried harder that morning and succeeded at being pretty that day?  Or somewhere out there were there boys that were daydreaming about my beauty?

The day I became pretty was the day I saw myself that way. 

Nothing had changed on the outside. It was my mind that chose to see differently.  I began to see the creation that was woven so intricately together, thread after thread.  And I began to honor the Creator.

You see, a creation is-what-it-is.  We cannot not add value to it or take it away.  It’s only how the person chooses to see it that makes it something different.

You are a valuable creation whose worth has been set.