Oh there I am...

 Y'all! I took this picture today to send to David to get his opinion on this shirt. After I took this picture, I stood and looked at myself in the mirror.... for a long time. 

Not many people believe me when I say this, but I really struggled with self esteem when I was younger, and still do now to an extent. My coping mechanism was humor, and it still is. I would try to hide by beating everyone to the punch and just putting myself out there before anyone else could "put me out there". However, today, when I looked in the mirror I saw someone who was attractive, pretty and dare I say a bit of a bombshell in her own right. Haha I looked in the mirror and kept trying to find myself. I literally had to convince myself that it was me. 

My whole life I have, for the most part, been surrounded by people who lift me up, people who encourage me and people who love me. Yet I still had such low self esteem. There were a few mean girls in high school, but I often wonder if they were mean to me, or if I was mean to me for them. I once was looking at a collage of pictures of myself and my friends with another friend. She made the comment, "Your friends are all so good looking." She by no means meant it as a blow to me, she went on to say that I fit right in with them. However, for so long after that I always felt inferior to my friends. Even now when taking pictures I am constantly comparing myself to everyone else in the picture. People will say to me "you look great" and I want to point out all of my flaws. 

But today, that didn't happen. Today I cared nothing about the neck down (my major struggle areas). I looked at my face, my eyes and my hair. I realized that THAT is what people see when they see me. I started to look at what I WANT them to see. I want them to see my eyes that look for the good in everyone else, my ears that are always willing to listen, my mouth that always tries to uplift as well as entertain, and through all of these things, I hope they see my soul, the soul of someone who struggles a bit but is trying her hardest to do her best. 

I pray that Bailey never has these struggles, but odds are she will. So I pray that she is blessed enough to be surrounded by awesome and uplifting people like I was. I pray even more that she figures out just how awesome she really is before she is 36 years old.