i am misunderstood :(

okay wait... that's a very clickbaity title lolz.

lemme explain this a lil bit ....

fun fact about me and my church is that we have a small ministry happening within some high schools in our area. We take pizza, invite students into our club, play games, fellowship, and share the word of God through Bible stories and our testimonies.

and let me just say... IT IS A BLESSING!

God has opened up these doors for our church to be able to spread the Gospel in these schools for YEARS now, and although our numbers in students fluctuate a lot or we run out of money to buy pizzas or whatever.... the one thing we've learned throughout this whole time, is that GOD WILL ALWAYS PROVIDE.

and if God has opened the doors and kept the doors open for us to keep going, then I will make it my very mission to make sure that as many students as possible are saved!!!

I wanted to explain all that (lolz) because the topic that I will be sharing and speaking about in these Bible clubs is "misunderstood".

that's kind of a scary topic... at least for me it is ahahha

the truth is I am speaking tomorrow at one of our high school Bible clubs... and I didn't know what I wanted to talk about or how I could when I thought that I had never even felt "misunderstood", but then I had one of those iconic light-bulb moments....

I have been misunderstood .... and I think I even misunderstood myself.

lemme explain a little more....

something I have always struggled with, ever since I was a kid, was the way I looked. For as long as I could remember I had always been insecure about one part of my outside appearance.

one week it was my eyes, another week was my arms or legs, and it was almost always my weight! The truth is I've never felt beautiful. I've never felt like I could be. I looked to the materialistic things to make me beautiful, like the best, most expensive clothes or losing weight.

and none of that actually worked. It did for a while... but then at the end of the day, I knew that all that was never the problem and it would never satisfy my full-time happiness.

I still felt not beautiful.

I lost the weight, cut my hair, got the best makeup and hair products, got the latest fashion trends... and I was still so insecure.

For a while, I just let myself sit in that insecurity.

I wanted people to look at me and tell me I was beautiful. I wanted a boy to stop me and tell me I was beautiful. I wanted my insta posts to be bombed with "SO CUTE", "HOTTIE", or the "you're so pretty" comments.

and the truth was .... I was getting all that, just not in the way I thought I needed it. I didn't need all those comments, clothes, weight loss, whatever it was, I didn't need it!

because the only thing I truly needed was to TRUST GOD! to trust God with all my heart, to dedicate my life to Him, to follow Him, to allow Him and His Spirit to consumer me, and to just be that vessel to spread the GOOD NEWS, and through that all.... God's beauty would shine through me and that is what makes me beautiful.

they say that a person is there most beautiful self when they are smiling... and I noticed that I smile every. time I am worshipping God. or when I read my Bible and discover something new. or when I hear this crazy testimony from my friends. or when I'm on my hot girl walk and I am stressed out, and I can just feel God through the breeze telling me that everything is gonna be okay.

it's in all those moments and more, that I have a true smile on my face... and it's my smile for the Lord. and that's when I'm most beautiful.

so yeah... I was "misunderstanding" myself.

I was misunderstanding the things I thought I needed or wanted or desired to make me happy. When the only true thing that can make me happy is God.

He takes that misunderstanding away ... and makes me beautiful! :)