Love You for You // Deliteful Thoughts by Chandra Delite

Girls and women these days are bombarded with images and messages of how they are to act and how they are to look to label them as beautiful. We are told constantly that smaller waists, bigger breasts, smoother skin, thicker hair, longer eyelashes, tanner skin, bigger lips, and whiter teeth, among others, will make you more sexy and beautiful. While a few may have some truth to them, these messages are damaging, demeaning and poison to girls and women alike. I strongly want to fight against this message for the sake of my daughter, myself and women around me. Being a beautiful woman is so much more than fake eyelashes, breast implants, and spray tans. It is creating the beauty starting from within, which will radiate to your outer appearance, in essence creating true beauty. It's about learning to be healthy and wanting to take care of our bodies, as they are sacred as temples. It's using your body to serve and to love other human beings. Learning to love what beauty God has blessed you with, and not constantly being obsessed with what else you can change to improve your appearance, will help bring true happiness and will set the course to a happy and healthy life, not only for yourself, but those that look up to you.

For a lot of my life, I've struggled with loving myself, specifically my physical appearance. I was always self conscious about many things and didn't feel confident or beautiful. I knew I was loved by a loving Heavenly Father and that I had a lot of self worth, but always doubted if others found be beautiful. Often times I would compare myself to other girls or women and wish I had things that they had. It was not healthy and only made my confidence worse. In high school, I was diagnosed with PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome), a syndrome that causes many awful physical and emotional changes in your body, not to mention infertility which was heartbreaking to find out. All of these symptoms were so hard on me and I tried to make them go away by praying every single night about it. I believed if I had enough faith, that God could just make them go away, which actually He can if it's his will, but little did I know, it wasn't His will for me. He had a bigger plan for me. I had to learn how to accept myself and love myself for who I am and not what the world wanted me to be. It wasn't until about a year before I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in 2012, that I was actually getting to a point where I really loved who I was and learned to love my body and see the beauty in it, despite all the flaws. I loved myself. I felt beautiful. I felt empowered. I felt strong. I remember finally feeling comfortable in my body and not wanting to change it, only strengthen it and make it healthier. Little did I know that I was going to be losing my breasts and hair within the next year, but that was exactly God's plan. God prepared me to learn to love my body no matter what happens to it, so that I could climb the next mountain in my life. It helped me deal with the many physical and emotional changes in my body that come along with treating cancer. The emotional and physical loss of my breasts and hair wasn't as severe as it could have been if I hadn't learned that very important lesson. I thank God that he allowed me to go through that, to prepare my way to fight my next battle. 

As a mother, I have such a strong desire to help my daughter and future children to learn this important lesson starting at a young age, so they don't have to struggle how I did and so that they can help change the world. My daughter has been a huge motivator for me to truly love myself, so that I can be an example for her. I want her learn to find true beauty in everything. I want her to see beauty within herself rather than outward appearance. Along with being a mother, comes stretch marks, muffin tops, saddle bags, wrinkles, gray hair, and gravity becomes a reality, but I wouldn't change it for the most perfect body in the world. These parts of my body are my battle marks for bearing and raising a child, and on top of it I have scars all over my chest from all my surgeries, but I still feel beautiful and have been able to feel more comfortable in my own skin. This is me. My body is not perfect in the worlds eyes, but as far as I'm concerned, I love my body and want to take care of it. Please join me in finding the beauty in your body and within. You are beautiful in your own way and don't let the world tell you otherwise.