This one’s for you, Mariel

You’re beautiful.

 

I am going to take the next paragraph to specifically talk to all the girls out there. So listen closely. (gentleman, that doesn’t mean you can’t read this!)

 

How many times has someone said the words “You’re beautiful” to you? And how many times have you just shrugged it off and not let the meaning of the phrase sink into your heart? Now, if there are any of you girls who are reading this right now, and are thinking “No one has ever said that to me.” Let me be the first. God doesn’t care what this world will tell you, He’s telling you something totally different. He’s looking each one of us in the eyes, holding our hands, and saying, “Beautiful daughter of mine, I have created you in My image and you are My masterpiece.” You are beautiful.

 

Now, I would imagine most of us are told we are beautiful time and time again in a variety of different ways. Whether it be through compliments, or any other gesture. Sometimes it’s not always by the people we want to hear it from, but nonetheless, we are told on a regular basis in a number of different ways.

 

Now here’s where I am going to get to my point.

 

Stop letting them be just words. Don’t deny them, accept them. Don’t just shrug them off. Accept that you truly are a beautiful creation of God, and then move on to tell someone else they are beautiful! Realize the gift God has given you with the person standing in front of you telling you you are beautiful, and turn it around and be that gift for someone else.

 

Here’s my personal connection to the message I’m trying to convey.

 

Mariel.

 

One little girl who taught me the true meaning of beauty. I can still see her eyes open wide in surprise when she finally understood what I was telling her. “You are beautiful.” And when Ruben told me it was probably the first time anyone had ever told my precious little Mariel she was beautiful, I can still feel time stop, and the fight to catch my breath as it had been knocked out of me by the sheer cruelty of the world we live in, and yet the duty and power God had given me to speak those words to this precious little filipino girl.

 

It’s my prayer that years from now she would remember those words. I don’t want her to remember what I looked like, or what my voice sounded like. But I pray she’ll remember those words and be flooded with the love of God when she thinks of them. When she’s surrounded by a group of people…and men, telling her she needs to look a certain way, act a certain way, or do certain things in order to be beautiful I pray she would say “No, I know what beauty is, and nothing you say can change the fact that my Creator has called me His own.”

 

So this one’s for you, Mariel. I won’t let another compliment pass me by without thinking of the gift you gave me that day.

 

May we all think of the precious little girls around the world who don’t get to hear they are beautiful. Who don’t have mothers to hold them and stroke their hair and whisper to them what a gift they are to the world. And don’t be afraid to tell someone they are beautiful, because who knows when the last time they’ve heard it was……

 

Or as in Mariel’s case…… who knows if they’ve ever heard it.