Let's Be Real

Hi readers…I know I haven’t been posting a lot for a few months. I’ve been focusing on finishing my degree, planning my wedding (yay!), moving, work, and a lot of health issues (which has been so hard and frustrating- a huge challenge in itself!). There has been so many moves, changes, lessons, ups and downs these past several months! It has definitely been one of the happiest times in my life, but also the most difficult and challenging. Despite all of my busyness, I also have been going through a lot of spiritual growth, and learning very challenging lessons. This is one of the reasons why I have slowed down on the blog and social media to focus more on that. Most anyone reading this probably doesn’t care…but I still thought I’d share a bit with you and let you know what I’ve been learning, for it may be of encouragement to you too.

My blog has been a wonderful outlet for so many of my passions and interests over the past year. I’ve been blessed to work with some amazing people and companies. But what started out as a very naive and innocent outlet to share my passions, it turned into something that I’ve really had to work through. Through the blog, I started to look around to other bloggers, fashion sites, and models, comparing myself and trying to measure up to all of their successes. So sharing my inspirations, photography, and fashion all of a sudden was no longer good enough for me and didn’t satisfy this need to be the best, to reach “x” amount of followers or views, or getting in “this magazine”, or “that feature.” While looking up to inspirational people to help motivate you is such a great thing; I believe that it all has to be balanced and through it all, you should never loose sight of who you are and what you’re all about. This obsession with trying and trying to reach impossible goals, started to give me such a negative outlook on myself. I wasn’t happy with where I was at in life and always was striving to become “better.” Before this adventure, I didn’t have a lot of these insecurities and I’m not blaming the “blog” (poor thing ha) but for me it lead me to prioritize in a very unhealthy way. As a believer, the priority of spending time with my Lord fell very low and the focus on my appearance and success went to a very high priority.

During this time, my relationships to those closest to me really suffered! I became a little “too big for my britches” (as my dad would say :)) and focused on everything worldly, things that do not matter through God’s eyes. And the person who I want to be is someone that helps others, someone who encourages others to be confident in their own skin, and someone that is an example for other girls and women to love themselves for exactly who they are. And if this is what I truly wanted, then I don’t think I was doing a very good job, because if I honestly accessed it, I wanted to use the blog for my own selfish ambitions and glorification (which was never ever my intention). I didn’t want me (or the content that I posted) to ever give women ammo to say, “oh, she is doing this, I now need to do that,” or “oh, she looks thinner than me, I need to loose more weight.” I never want my posts to make someone else internally compare and become negative or sad about themselves. I see so many other women around me struggle with this same issue, and some women that, sadly, never learn this lesson and fall prey to their own captivity and lies that they tell themselves. Lies telling them that they are not “good” enough.

After a lot of prayers, wonderful counsel and encouragement, I realized that the Lord wanted me to fully surrender it to Him. To give up what I viewed as very important in my life, to what needed to be MOST important in my life. I finally realized that by giving my life fully to the Lord, and trusting in Him, that I did not need to worry about anything else. If it is His will for me not to blog, then I won’t do it anymore. If it is His will for me to try something completely new, I want to do that something that is completely new. I know that with whatever I do, or wherever I’m at in life, I will grasp onto the Lord for my strength and security.

If nothing that I described resonates with you, then I am in awe of your strength and security! For those of you who can understand the feeling of never adding up to either yourself or someone else, I simply urge you to believe in yourself—to be confident in WHO YOU ARE and try not to transform into someone else. Don’t let the world’s standards make you conform, do not let that “one person” who you compare yourself to, make you feel so inferior that you feel negative about yourself. Find your worth in the things that are unseen, the things that cannot be taken from you, like kindness, humbleness, determination, compassion, and thankfulness. God made each one of us specifically the way He intended; for we are beautifully and wonderfully made in His image. The best you can ever be is yourself and when you are that, you will be the most beautiful and captivating woman imaginable.

xo