7.      He has to be the kind of person you can take home to your parents. Yeah, I know,  some of you must be cringing right now but though I don’t always agree with some of the things my parents say, at the end of the day parents have this really freaky ability of telling the good from the bad. Yeah sure sometimes you can be absolutely sure that your parents are so “uncool” and they are so “ancient history” but let me tell you something… your parent love you- the kind of love that would die for you, yes they make mistakes sometimes, but I wouldn’t trust anyone else in my life to tell me the truth about a guy, than my parents, they have this animal like instinct for smelling out no-good, no-respect and no-original guys. And some of you might not even have a good relationship with your parents, but there has to be someone in your life, someone older and wiser  that you look up to who you can introduce this guy to, it might be an aunt or it might be your pastor or your grandparent.If he is the sort of person you would be embarrassed to introduce to your parents, you should probably be embarrassed to be seen with him too.

 8.      He has to have good friends, in the same way that your friends are a big part of who you are and what you do, his friends are too and if they live to smoke, drink and party, he probably will too and you will become part of that circle… Who his friends are may not seem important to you, but they make a part of who he is and who he is will be a very big part of your life. The last thing you want is to be with a person who is influenced by the wrong kind of people and if his kind of people aren’t your kind of people, you will clash, a guy is tight with his boys and nothing will change that. also if he has bad friends if they want to they can sabotage your relationship and make you very miserable… so take a very good look at his friends and ask yourself why they are his friends- does he really enjoy their company? What’s he like when he is with them, do you like them? Do they like you? Are they the sort of people you think are good for you and your relationship- if they aren’t- don’t get involved. 

9.      He has to be going places… because women often get into relationships to give  themselves a sense of worth, a sense of meaning, it is inevitable that you will find  yourself identifying with this guy. You’ll do some of the things he does and will go the places he goes and if he is a loser, you will end up a loser as well. That is why it is so important to find someone that that knows who he is, he knows where he is going in life (and I mean realistically- if he thinks that quitting school and becoming a  rapper is going to be his future… you will end up a groupie for a low class musician)  one of my mentors, once spoke to our school and said, “girls make sure that you end  up with a man with a vision, with ambition, with a dream because when you marry a  man you marry into his dreams and his goals in life” and I think it also applies to dating… Does he have focus? Or is he a slacker? And WHAT DOES HE FOCUS ON! Cause believe me it’s possible for a guy to have focus with a games console for days on end, or on his clothes or his music… is he going anywhere? Yeah, I know you might think that all this stuff doesn’t matter now, and that you’ll ask all those questions when you want to get married to someone, but it does matter- you should live a life in which you are always moving, always going somewhere, maybe you want to excel at school or in sports… if you find yourself with a guy who has no focus, he’ll make you lose your focus too… As a young woman you should be going somewhere, moving towards some goal and you need someone in your life who won’t distract you, but help you move that way and for him to help you do that, he must have focus (on the right things) and he must be going somewhere. 

10.  You can add anything else onto the list that you think is important to you… my list has more than 60 requirements. But though I know what I want in my life, and I am realistic and you should be too. If I find a guy that scores on all 60 of the things on my list, Hurray for me! and if I find one that only gets 80% or 70% well, I’ll do with that, because at the  end of the day it better to know what you want and go for it, instead of not knowing  and going for whatever comes along.  

In Conclusion No one out there is perfect, and yeah, I now that kinda bursts your bubble… But all those super-gorgeous and super-lucky babes that got the prince in the end of the fairytales, we never got to hear what happened after the “Happily ever after” I can promise you that there was a BIG “But” after that. So I’ll do the honors… “And they lived Happily ever after- BUT all relationships need tons of work, they hurt sometimes and sometimes they are wonderful. Prince Charming is also human and he makes mistakes sometimes, but if he is a really good guy (REALLY) those mistakes can be learnt from and in the end will make your relationship stronger” 

You kinda have to feel sorry for the guys sometimes, because they have so much to live up to with the whole “Prince Charming” thing, you need to have realistic expectations for any relationship you get into and Psst! Here’s something you have to remember- Guys are clueless! Maybe not all the time, but sometimes, they don’t understand why it’s important to remember certain dates, or why we like babies or anything, or why it ticks us off when they go off somewhere with boys and why we don’t just sit down and watch the game with them instead of pouting that they aren’t listening to us. THEY ARE CLUELESS- So we should live with it. but the secret with living with it is trying our best not to lose it when they do something CLUELESS and figure out first if it’s just a guy being a guy or it’s a guy being a loser- and if it’s a loser then you can tell him to get lost! All this boils down to knowing who you are, knowing your worth and choosing to wait for the prince and not settle for a frog, no matter how desperate or lonely you are and it’s also about taking time to look at yourself. Are you really ready for a relationship? Can you go down the list of qualities I have set for Prince Charming and truly say you are all those things, because what you want to get you also have to be willing to give to someone else. Relationships involve two people and if you aren’t all the things you expect Prince Charming to be, maybe you should be willing to take some time off to learn to be the sort of person Prince Charming would be happy to live “Happily ever after – BUT” with. The sort of person who gives the best of themselves and gets the best from their Prince. Wait for the prince and don’t settle for a frog, no matter what!  

In the last article we found out about that dreaded FPS (Frog Prince Syndrome) if there was a vaccination for it, I would get a yearly shot, because FPS causes havoc and misery in the lives of so many women in the world. Now we have all kicked out the frogs from our lives and are looking to find a Prince! And believe me it’s not as hard as it seems…Here’s the scoop!

The first step to finding the right guy for you, has more to do with you than it does him. 
It has to do with you deciding that you are worth something, that you deserve to be
respected, to be honored, cherished and loved by a sacrificial love. 

Frogs can’t stand a strong woman, a real princess. Be strong. A princess is only a match
for a prince. Be that royalty and give the frog the boot!

The second step to finding a the right guy for you is by going back to step one and
saying, “okay, now that I know I am worth something, what kind of guy do I think is
worth having in my life? What kind of person should he be” and MAKE A LIST!

Sure I know that many people will say that finding a good guy isn’t like going shopping
with a list, but it should be and there are some things that I think you absolutely have to
have on your list.

1. He should believe in God, I am a Christian I believe that the most thing is that any  man I have in my life should have, is that he should believe in God. And I don’t just mean that he should believe that there’s a man in the sky somewhere pulling our strings, but someone who respects God – someone who knows what’s right and wrong and wants to do right… some of the closest guy friends in my life respect God and it’s what makes them stand out above the crowd, I look up to those guys, I feel safe with those guys and that is because I know that it’s important to them to make good choices and they make those choices based on what they know God expects from them . And though no one is perfect and people do make some mistakes, I can assure you that if a guy has TRUE respect for God- not just faking it- he will probably have most of the following points covered. It all boils down to one thing… If he doesn’t believe in anything, he will fall for anything and chances are he will fall with you as well.

2. He has to respect you! Too many guys out there don’t even know what the word 
means, so you have to make sure that you find one that does, ’cause trust me, the last
thing you need is a dude that doesn’t respect you. He has to value you as an
individual, value your personality, your thoughts, your beliefs, your time, your money
and just in general the things that are important to you! I had a friend who enjoyed
making me waste my time and money on the phone with him, having a pointless
conversation, he lashed out at my thoughts on anything, used to call me names!  Attacked my beliefs and you know what… I really cared about him, but I broke our friendship- and it hurt! but I had to step back and look at myself and say- “Nicolette, you need to learn to respect yourself and part of respecting yourself in not being in
relationships that tear you down!” and I kicked the froggie out! But it wasn’t easy and
it still isn’t! sometimes I just itch to sms him or call… but I bite it down, because I
know I deserve so much better than that.
He has to respect you as a person and here comes a big one- HE  HAS TO RESPECT YOUR BODY!!!  And I am absolutely
disgusted by the way that guys in our generation don’t respect our bodies, I mean
HELLO!!! whenever I switch on the T.V. and see some
rapper saying I should shake my “whatever”. I think Heck No! I’m not going to shake
nothing for nobody! Because my value isn’t in my body! Any guy that thinks that
my value is in my body- just isn’t good enough for me! I can promise you that “Hell
hath no fury” like when I turn on someone who thinks I’m a piece of meat!

3. He has to respect himself and his body. If he doesn’t respect himself, he won’t respect
you, because no one treats you better than they treat themselves… at the end
of the day- you put yourself first, don’t you? You buy clothes for yourself first before
you buy for other (unless you’re a mother) you feed yourself before you feed others-
you matter to yourself more than anyone else does. And if you can’t treat yourself
properly… what would make you want to treat someone else any better? It’s the same
thing with guys- he will not respect you or your body if he doesn’t respect himself. So
what does it mean when I say that he has to respect his own body? He has to be clean, he has to be conscious of the things he eats- does he smoke? Does he do drugs?
And what kind of relationships does he have with women? Does everyone see him at the kind of guy that can be found with any girl? I have a friend, who respects his body
enough that he avoids getting into relationships with girls he knows don’t know how
to keep their hands to themselves and who will expect more from him than he is
willing to give. He has to respect himself.

4. He has to respect other people around him, how does he treat his mother?
Ah… I bet ya’ll think this is a clich?- but a guy will treat you the same way he treats his mother or other females in his life… at the end of the day, someone has been teaching him how to treat women- who was that and what did they teach him? You have to find out.
How does he treat other people in general, is he rude and disrespectful? He has to
have manners, he has to be considerate of other people’s feelings… don’t end up with
someone who only cares about himself and what he wants. He has to value other
people’s thoughts, property, big or small, rich or poor, how he treats anyone should count, like I can’t stand people who say nasty things like, “oh she’s so fat!”, “Oh he is so ugly- look at those ears!”, “look at that dress, it’s so ugly” I hate that! because I think it shows a lack of respect for other people. He has to respect other people.

5. He has to be able to take “No” for an answer.
My goodness I think that somewhere out there, there is a book of dubious things that guys try to get girls to say yes to. If  he can’t respect your choice to say “No” give him the boot! Send him back into his pond. If he has a problem with the word no and overreacts when you use it or nags you to say yes about something  that you know makes you feel uncomfortable… or tries to manipulate you into saying  yes — show the brother, the door!

This deep and insatiable need for love that makes boy bands stinking rich is what drives us in search of the “Perfect Man” (Ha! If there is such a thing!).
When I was a child I read stories about Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Snow white and Rapunzel and all the rest of those super lucky and super fictitious and super perfect babes that got Prince Charming, and I knew, that I knew, that I knew that one day I would find a Prince and live happily ever after.

As I grew older and Prince Charming still hadn’t rode into my life and carried me off into the sunset, I remain determined not to let that ruffle my feathers, because… well, he’s supposed to come along! He has to… he must! It’s how the story ends!

Well, so I waited a little while longer and this deep desire to love and be loved was growing stronger in me… and because it’s a genetic thing, it’s what gives us purpose… the failure to find someone to love me or to love, left me with a low self-esteem… because the thinking goes…
“Why doesn’t anyone love me? Is something wrong with me?”
When the lack of this thing that gives me worth wasn’t there I felt worthless.
We live in a world where “love” is everywhere! People sing about it, people talk about it and some crazy people even kill for it.
The need and the desire to have love in my life just intensified and though some people are willing to wait for it, to wait for Prince Charming, I didn’t have the virtue of Patience and frankly didn’t have the confidence to say to myself “hey, I am worth something, and just because I haven’t found someone who will celebrate my worth doesn’t make me worth any less.”

So impatience set in and like lots of other lonely people I decide to take things into my own hands and found a frog and hoped that I would turn him into a prince!
I like to call this the Frog Prince Syndrome! It’s this absolutely absurd idea that women have, that though they can’t change the world, they can change a loser and make him a good guy? Aghhh… I suffered from this sickness for such a long time that I feel like I have become an expert on it!
I was bullied at school and made fun of, I had a very low self-esteem and very low self-worth. And I was so sure that one day Prince charming would ride up on his horse and carry me off into the sunset and when he didn’t, I got tired of waiting, I got tired of being alone… I needed somewhere to take this amazing gift of love that every woman has been given and so I did what a lot of women do… I settled for a frog.
Who remembers the story of the frog prince… The frog did the princess a favor by going to the bottom of the well and getting her golden ball for her and in return she had to look after him. She had to share her pillow with him, share her plate with him, share everything with him and one day she shared a kiss with him and he turned into a prince.
If only they all turned into princes… They don’t and because we are so desperate and so hungry to love and because the frog does us a favor by showing us a little bit of love we are willing to be dedicated to loving the frog and sharing everything with the frog and kissing the frog in the hopes that the frog will change and turn into a prince. And that is what I believe keeps many women in abusive relationships… I remember when I was at school, some friends had watched a movie about a woman that was in an abusive relationship and when asked why she stayed, she said, “Because he loves me”
She stayed because he gave her what she was hungry for… love.

When I heard this, I thought it was ridiculous until I found myself in an abusive relationship. What can I say about my frog prince? I don’t know what to say anymore, because I’m not angry at him anymore, but he made suffer… and stayed through it all because he “loved” me so much and even after we broke up I still couldn’t break that bond with him, I just needed to hear from him, to know he was thinking about me. Logic told me to stay away! But how often do most people listen to logic? There were times when I would tell myself that I didn’t have to be emotionally and mentally abused and yet I went back… time and time again. I just shoved all the painful memories in a closet and “forgot” about them, I was in denial- it took me two years to finally cry about it. It just hit me like a ton of bricks one day, and I sobbed so much and wondered why no one had told me and the truth was that no one else could really know. Why? Because there’s a way that a guy behaves when he is with his girl that other people never see or understand, even in good relationships, there’s that intensity of emotions when you’re together that other people will never experience with that person. So no one knew and I always acted like it was all fine, but it was killing me on the inside- it was SICK! That’s the best way I can describe our relationship, IT WAS SICK!!! Not that it was disgusting, but it was some kind of twisted mental and emotional dependency and no one knew. But in his defense, he really didn’t know… I mean, there is a way we all act and it’s normal to us, but it can be destructive to others and as far as he was concerned he was just doing us- the best way he could. And that’s why it’s been “easy” to forgive him, I mean sure there were times when he did things to hurt me on purpose, but for the rest of the time he was just being himself- a frog and didn’t know better… or didn’t want to know better. It has to be one of the worst experiences of my life and sometimes people have asked me if I ever think about the good times and I think- what good times? There were times when it was all easier, but it was never good. Well for my part anyway. I always felt like something was wrong, deep down on the inside I knew what was happening wasn’t right- but he wore down until I just accepted it all, it gave me a lesson in love I will never forget.

I should have known better- but I guess “love” is blind, it’s not like I grew up not being appreciated by men in my life, I have a great dad, I have great uncles and great guy friends… I have no one to blame but myself. But sometimes a woman doesn’t know better.
 Some women have just grown up around frogs, the guys around them, who influence the way they see men and think about relationships have been frogs. This can be anyone from your brothers, to your father or people that have made you expect as a princess to be loved by a frog and to accept frog love as a standard. What you need to know is that just because you grew up surrounded by frog princes doesn’t make you an automatic match for one. So if you have been entertaining a frog prince it’s time for you to get a change of mindset and tell him to pack his bags and get out! Go COLD TURKEY!

It may be easy for some of you, and for others it won’t be easy. It wasn’t easy for me, even until this day, it’s still a little difficult for me, when he comes into the picture at times my heart starts racing and I have to remind myself that it’s all over and done with. Sometimes you’ll give him up for a while and everything will be okay and then one day the old feelings of loneliness and worthlessness may come back- don’t – no matter what, don’t turn back to him, it would be so easy, maybe he’ll just be an email or a phone call away. Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! there are times when no one has thought of me in a while, no one has emailed or called and I feel like I just need to feel appreciated and I have to fight to stop myself from reaching out to him. It’ll be super hard to get rid of him again if you invite him back- even if it’s just for a moment. If you need someone to make you feel special or to remember you, reach out for a friend… talk to someone you can trust about this dependence on this person. Let them be the one you call- the one who’ll remind you that you don’t need him anymore and that you’re special, whether anyone is dating you or not.

And once you have scrubbed every last slimy piece of him from your life… you will be ready to move onto a higher class of royalty. It’s time to find Prince Charming.

She couldn’t believe it! It wasn’t fair and didn’t make sense! She’d done everything she could- she’d done her part and now it was just over? She’d tried hard to make things work, she’d given him everything. But obviously everything, wasn’t enough. And looking into his face she saw he wasn’t tearing on the inside. He’d gotten what he’d wanted. She’d gotten nothing.  

What Women want: What men want. Men want sex.

Women want intimacy. Men give intimacy for sex. Women give sex for intimacy. Women come out of that “exchange” with nothing. He’s given something already and doesn’t see why he has to give anymore. We’re still left with that hole in us that cries for intimacy and security, to know that someone loves and wants us. Women hate being alone, because when we are, we don’t feel important. We wonder what’s wrong with us and why no one wants us.   What we really want is to be wanted as a person, as an individual. When we can’t find that, we settle for being wanted just as a body, even if it’s less than what we want for ourselves- it’s better than nothing, right? Wrong. At the back of our minds, we know that it’s not good enough and it eats away at our self-respect. We might not say it to ourselves, but in our hearts we think- “What’s wrong with me? Why am I selling myself short?” …Because it feels better to be wanted for something, than not wanted at all.  

What’s SEX really about?  

It’s certainly not what rap artists make it out to be. Sex is your special gift. It’s not just about physical enjoyment, it’s about communicating with someone on a very intimate level- giving yourself. When you give someone your body, it should be an act of love and trust, not about raging hormones. That’s why it hurts when you trust someone enough to give them your body and they ditch and replace you so fast your head spins. It hurts because they’ve betrayed your heart.  

He says he loves you?  What’s to stop him from taking your special gift and dumping you? What’s to prove to you that he loves you and not just your body? Nothing. Some guys have honey soaked tongues, they’ll swear on the stars and heavens that they worship you and tomorrow you’ll find them worshiping the girl next door! 

God and Sex. What’s the big deal with God and sex? What’s his problem, why is he so uncool! Waiting for marriage??? HELLO!!! What about our raging hormones?  Your raging hormones won’t cure a broken heart or bring back your self-esteem and self-pride when you realize that all he was after, was your body. God sole purpose in the universe isn’t cramping your style. If he was totally uncool and whack, he wouldn’t have created sex. He knows you and sees things in your heart that no one else sees. He knows before you do that someone using you for sex kills you inside even though you act like it’s nothing. God wants to protect you, from the heartache that comes with sharing you special gift and having it thrown back in your face. To him, it’s not about being legalistic and bossy and uncool, it’s about protecting his little girl from someone taking your gift and walking out of you. What God knows that we don’t. God knows that if you wait until your wedding ring is blinding people as you walk past… That after giving that gift to you’ll be able to look at that guy and smile. You’ll put your head on his shoulder and say to him, “It’s just you and me forever. That’s a good feeling because we love each other. I feel safe this way and truly loved. I’m not afraid that you’ll leave me if I don’t give you what you want. I’m glad, I’m with someone who wants all of me, not just my body. I’m glad that you want me for being me.” And that’s the best place you can be with sex, where it’s not a game and not an act. But the real thing… Forever. 

 Finding the Beautiful Young Woman Beyond the Ashes 

Who am I? I am a young woman, I am wise and yet very foolish at times… I am emotional and sensitive, yet at some points in my life I have been cold and uncaring. I have been happy, and I have been sad, I have laughed and I have wept… I was once ugly and defiled on the inside, but now I’m beautiful and undefiled…

Why am I writing this? Because I’ve been hurt, I have cried, I have been angry and my heart has been broken many times. I have pounded my fists against the walls, I have screamed to God for mercy of some sort and now that I’m not hurting anymore, I see that so much of the pain, I didn’t have to bear… I didn’t have to carry, I had to let go of it. I just didn’t know that there was a promise of beauty beyond my pain.

Have you been hurt or just felt like giving up? If you have… Join the Club! We’ve all

found ourselves at some point or another hurting very deeply.

I am writing about this, because it’s an issue that often unites women… it’s right up there with gossip and the love of shoes. It’s Pain.

I’m not against female solidarity and unity, but gosh! I think it’s about time that we found something more in common than pain … women everywhere, it doesn’t matter where you come from, whether you live in the North America, South America, Europe , Africa or Asia! Everywhere you go you are bound to find women having pity parties together and sulking at how bad their lives are… young and old! I’m writing this to let you know, the days of inviting pain to afternoon tea are over! It’s time for us as women to rise up from the ashes, walk through the rain and find a rainbow at the end of it all… find the promise of beauty for ashes.

So the name of this message is:

Beautiful and undefiled- how to find beauty beyond the ashes

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If you like me, you’ve probably been broken hearted at some point in your life. If you are like me, you desire to honor the Lord. You desire to make God happy, but then again we  all know it’s not as easy as snapping your fingers… it’s something that you have to work at. And on the road to achieving this goal, there are many, many, many obstacles that make it a little harder than starting an exercise program or sticking to New year’s resolutions. One of these obstacles is having your heart in the right condition, to start the journey in the first place. It’s just like someone with a heart condition, you wouldn’t exactly expect them to run a marathon or they might drop dead! They would have to work at developing their heart health first before they attempt to even run around the block. And a very simple thing which often keeps our hearts in the wrong condition is a pain. A broken heart can’t effectively serve God, just like a cracked bucket can’t hold water. I haven’t been heart broken for a while now, but I’m not so keen to forget what it feels like, when you are heart broken, you feel hopeless, you don’t know what to do, you try and sleep it off, but you just lie there thinking about the source of your pain, you get up and go see friends, but you’re in such a sour mood that you rain on everyone’s parade, you sit around and listen to depressing songs and get more depressed. You just live for your pain, but let’s face it, if you want to honour God, to live for God, you can’t do it, you are living for pain. I repeat you can’t live for God if you live for pain.

 My life has been charcterised by a lot of pain, even from an early age. I came from a broken home, I was bullied at school, rejected by friends and my heart got broken quite a few times. And this one time I nearly lost my best friend and that memory still carries a little bit of a sting when I think of it today. And I want to share that experience with you, it might not be as dramatic as a friend dying, like I’m sure some of you have experienced, but it really hurt me. They say your friends are part of who you are- it’s true, he was very much an important part of my life and even today it still hurts when I think of how absent mindedly I got hurt by people who should have handled the situation better.I think I was in my first or second year of high school when I met him. I’ll call him Robby. He was different, all he did during recess was go into the library and flip through Time magazines- he was weird (and I mean that in a good way) I guess from a worldly point of view, one could say he was a geek, a nerd , a loser, but then again the world is a mean place anyway. I was also different- I had always struggled to make friends and be accepted for who I was and when I got to high school, I changed, I metamorphosized like a butterfly I guess you could say. And I became more out going, more social, I wasn’t haunted my then skin problems that I had suffered before that time so much and I had friends, loads actually, but because I had struggled in the past to fit in as the real me, my character was always alternating- trying to fit in and at the same time protecting myself from other people. High school is a jungle and if you let everyone get to know you really well, find out your weaknesses, then they might use them against you some day, so I never really gave anyone a real picture of who I was.So anyway, his difference appealed to me. I remember I used to follow him around at a safe distance, sort of the way a kid follows an interesting person they see walking across the street. like I said, I had a lot of friends and I wasn’t particularly desperate for a friend, me following him around was me being draw to something new… I even remember on of my close girlfriends saying, “you’re following Robby around, you’re in love with Robby! you’re in love with Robby!” but I wasn’t, I was just fascinated.Robby was slim and they guys used to call him Sticky- he had a very interesting way of thinking and looking at life- it was funny and real and soon we became the best of friends. The up side of the relationship was that, Robby didn’t like girls! He just wasn’t interested, so I didn’t have to worry about him harboring any teenage boy agenda’s. I even teased him about being gay- although he wasn’t. It was one of the best friendships I have ever had. I had never had a friend who’s intentions were so pure- he wasn’t my friend because he wanted something from me- he just liked my company and I liked his. We talked about the silliest things, like how much he tasted crisps that melt in your mouth and the colour pink and he loved chocolate. We had just about the same interests and when I was with him, I felt like I was breathing fresh air- I was just happy. During the weekends I couldn’t wait until Monday so I could see him again. I was in a school that provided boarding facilities, and while I stayed in  a hostel, he went home every afternoon and we only saw each other at school. Now I know you might honestly be thinking, “she was in love with him,” but honestly I wasn’t. He was just a really good friend and I actually used to discuss a lot of my crushes with him.“Oh Robby, Jack is so cute!” and he would say, “that is so disgusting- the guy is a jerk!” he was there for me when I was depressed over Jack and the way Jack was treating me and as it turns out, Robby was right and I wish I had listened to him, it would have saved me a lot of heart break.Anyway I remember one afternoon I was playing hockey alone with him on a field, hockey was one of the things we both liked. Anyway there was some landscaping being done on the same field, but we were just playing aorund with the ball and staying out the way. Then the headmaster- let’s call him Mr. Stanbury walked across the field and was talked to some of the landscape designers, walked away got into his car and drove off. We didn’t make much of it… yeah so what? The headmaster is inspecting the work, we went on playing. In fact we even greeted him… but like I said, I didn’t think much of it, until I went home for the holidays. My mother confronted me and said that Mr. Stanbury had called her and had used all sorts of words to describe me, I don’t remember most of them, I do remember one. Devious! He called me devious! Now, I’m going to act all innocent, yes, there was a time in my life when I was down right devious, but it wasn’t then. I didn’t know what the word meant, like in terms of a dictionary definition, but I knew it was a word for describing something really bad or evil. The way the phone call was justified was that, because I had scoliosis- that’s a back condition it was difficult for me to participate in school winter sports. The winter sport for most girls was Hockey, but I’m not athletic and I found hockey training to be grueling and painful. Not just for my back, but for my whole body, after hockey training I couldn’t even walk up the steps to the bathroom, every muscle in my body ached! So I got excused from doing winter sports, because of the pain. There was nothing actually wrong with hockey, I love hockey, I love playing hockey, but I’m not team material, I wouldn’t have minded doing social hockey, the training was just for people who were more fit than me. So I guess maybe when Mr. Stanbury saw my playing hockey with Robby, he might have thought that I was lying or faking my injuries or just being lazy. But that wasn’t a good enough reason for him to call me devious! To make the situation worse, I was alone with a boy- now my mom is one of those people who think that every guy out there has ulterior motives for being around her daughter. I hadn’t told her about Robby, because we didn’t talk about boys in our house, it was an unspoken rule- so I kept the first real friend I had ever had from her. It was surprising to note that Mr. Stanbury hadn’t mentioned that it was on an open field in the middle of the afternoon in full site of lots of adults- anyway she ordered me to terminate the relationship. I don’t remember what I said, I doubt I argued with her, you argue with my mother. I was crushed, I didn’t understand what had possessed Mr. Stanbury to do such an awful thing, all I knew was that because of someone else’s actions I was hurt and I was hurting badly. Even when I think of it now, it still hurts, I haven’t talked to Robby in about two years, but it still hurts… I’m still tempted to call Mr. Stanbury and ask him why he did that. to make the situation worse, I tried to tell my dad, but because my parents are divorced and I lived with my mother, he didn’t want to discuss it and took my mother’s side, because mothers know what’s best, right? But in this case she didn’t. I know she loves me and she was trying to protect me- but she knew nothing about Robby and the type of friend he was and as a result they hurt me more than they have ever done before.For me, finding Robby was like finding a place to be free, all my life I was rejected because I was different and I had to change myself to fit in, but with him, it was okay to be me. 

So after I was told I couldn’t be friends with him anymore, I did a dangerous thing… I swallowed the pain and kept my mouth shut. I didn’t terminate the relationship- but it changed, we didn’t spend that much time together. It was a very bitter moment the day I saw him after the holidays, he headed straight for me and smiled and said hello and I just looked at him… gosh, I even have tears in my eyes thinking about it now. Anyway, as pain usually does, it changes you one the inside, but I did what lots of people do when hurt- buried it and just smiled and waved. That was about five years ago and it really does still hurt… I have come to grips with lots of other painful situations, but I guess the reason this situation really struck a cord was because it meant I was losing a part of my freedom, the freedom to be me, it gave me more of a reason to put on masks and not let people really get to know me… it made me very bitter.

When I first started writing this, I thought, this is my story, this is about me, but at the close of it I realized that it wasn’t my story, I was our story. It was the story of every young woman and girl in my generation a story about wanting to be beautiful. I hope that as you read this, the things that have happened in my life, may inspire you to look at beauty from a whole new point of view.

It’s dedicated to my friend Maria, she never let the words people said to her, tear her down. She’s one of the strongest and most beautiful person I know… Here Goes!
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Part One.

Why am I writing this? Because I want to know what beauty is, what it looks like and most of all I want to be beautiful.

I have always struggled to have a positive image of myself. It all started in junior school, I was nothing spectacular to look at. I was skinny, scruffy and suffered from a bad case of eczema. I remember being called skinny and rashy by my friends, “rashy, rashy, rashy,” someone once taunted me in class and I burst into tears, not really understanding why the world was such a mean place- My mom even recalls me telling her that one of my, “so called” friends had told me that I wasn’t beautiful, but that my friend Greta was the beautiful one. Gosh what great friends I had! The ointments which I applied for my eczema also didn’t have a pleasant smell so as a result I didn’t smell that great and the other kids didn’t hang around me that much and for any child that sucks! A year later I was the favorite target of a bully, he used to call me “hamburger lips” so as you can imagine I didn’t have a particularly good impression of myself.

But I was young and soon it was time for high school and “HEY!” the hormones kicked in and I had “HIPS! WOW!- not so skinny and unattractive anymore- the ugly duckling was becoming a swan slowly but surely. Then nature played a cruel trick on me, with the curvy hormones came the acne hormones and you can guess it, I had “SPOTS!” Agrrr… they just wouldn’t go away and still haven’t. Now don’t get me wrong I haven’t gotten it as bad as other people when it comes to my skin… but that doesn’t stop the average teenager from wanting to hide under a blanket every time a zit pops up. Also for some reason it seemed that I was one of those people that had been cursed to forever have bad hair days! My hair was even crazier than my attitude, people used to call me scary spice. To add to my frustration I had scoliosis. Now for those of you that have no idea what that is, it’s when your spine grows some degrees out of place and needs to be corrected or can I say straightened. My treatment meant wearing a back brace, it was this hard plastic cast like thing, that wrapped itself around me from just under my bust to my waist. When I say hard, I mean hard, if anyone had punched in the stomach they probably would have broken their knuckles. It had no ventilation and let me tell you where I live it can get hot and I used to sweat in it, I could literally feel beads of sweat rolling down my back and sweat doesn’t smell all that great at the end of the day, so basically I didn’t have much going for me. I didn’t think that I was in anyway attractive, I had very little self-esteem. To make the situation worse this one guy I really like, lets call him Paul, liked my worst enemy, I mean we had the same talents intellectually, but she was prettier and sportier and he liked her! I mean isn’t someone not supposed to look at what you look like to like you? But then again probably he liked her for more than just her looks and I didn’t understand that, I was young and foolish. Well I got over Paul and then the next guy I liked and had told that I liked decided to go out with one of my younger prettier friends! On the outside I was smiling and supportive of the relationship, but on the inside I was screaming murder!

Luckily I changed schools, or so I thought. The next school I went to didn’t do much for my self-image, in fact it helped tarnish my self image. We talked about being ugly- we said we were ugly, even the gorgeous people, I remember this one girl when I first saw her, I thought she was so beautiful, I just stared and stared at her and guess what? Even she called herself ugly. It was the school culture that no one was beautiful but that everyone was ugly. There was this clique of gorgeous girls and they called themselves “Gorilla inc.” I don’t know why, but that’s just the way it was.
It was a place where you felt no insecurities about how you supposedly looked (which was ugly) and you got comfortable with the situation. The truth is, the last thing I needed was to get comfortable with being supposedly “ugly.”  By this time, the back brace had been vanquished to the land in the dark corner of my cupboard, my acne had settled out and my eczema was in remission, but I still had one problem- the GAP! The one thing I had always disliked about myself was the gap in my teeth, I hardly knew anyone who had a gap in the middle of their teeth. It is genetic, it’s basically my dad’s fault or my grandfather’s, but clearly when it came to dental formation in my DNA my dad clearly had the aggressive genes, my brother and sister, not to mention cousins all have the GAP. I thought it was terrible! In fact I tried not to smile in such a way that my teeth wouldn’t show. I remember once smiling with my mouth closed and my step mother said, “that’s not a real smile- give us a real one” and I would, but inside I would be thinking, “this lady is trying to ruin me!”
Now don’t get the idea that I was brought up with no positive emphasis on my physical out look, because I had plenty! My real mom is always going on about how I should go on a modeling course, because I’m so beautiful and well, my dad just dotted on me- but HELLO! That’s what parents are supposed to do- right? I mean who trusts their mothers to tell them the truth? The average mother doesn’t look at her child and say, “you poor, sad, ugly child,” I didn’t count what my parents said at all. So anyway I decided to get rid of the gap and some of you might have guessed what I did, I got the so-called, “train tracks” I got braces. I went to the orthodontist during the school holidays, I knew that having braces maybe a little bit humiliating, I thought braces were so uncool! Well the orthodontists told me that on my upper jaw, the one most visible when I talk I could have white brackets and they wouldn’t be as visible as the metal ones, and then on my lower jaw I could have the metal ones. Well he told me that he couldn’t completely close the gap, but he could reduce it, it wasn’t the news I’d been hoping for, but it would do. Now to secure the wires to the brackets he used tiny little rubber bands that came in all sorts of different colors and we had to choose which Colour we wanted. My friend Maria who was also getting hers done at the same time, chose something crazy like red or blue. Well I chose the clear ones because I didn’t want to draw attention to my mouth, little did I know how much attention my teeth would be getting once I was through with my mother’s curry. My mother makes a wonderful chicken curry and she served it for supper a few nights before school opened, after supper I went to the bathroom with all the new weird dental equipment that the orthodontist had given me and brushed my teeth then hoped into bed. When I woke up the next morning and I went to brush my teeth, you wouldn’t believe it, my rubber bands were yellow! From clear to yellow! Of all the colors, yellow! I scrubbed and I scrubbed and it wouldn’t go away, my teeth looked dirty and it was too late to get another appointment with the orthodontist, I went back to school with my head bowed with shame, this one friend kept asking me why I had chosen yellow of all the colors! My guess is that the curry and the rubber had some sort of sick twisted plot to humiliate me or simply it was a chemical reaction. Now all people who’ve ever had braces, know that braces take all the fun out of eating, you can’t bite into juicy bones or an apple because of the risk of breaking something and messing up you treatment and also, food gets stuck in between the wires and the teeth and if you talked or smiled after eating without first brushing your teeth the person infront of you would probably pass out from disgust. It’s just gross. Well the braces finally came out and I’m proud to say that my teeth are just amazingly straight and look great. Maybe not celebrity perfect, but I like my teeth. I still hated the Gap although it was significantly smaller and I still didn’t smile that much either.

When it comes to educational institutions, I think I’m a gypsy, because I changed schools again for senior high, this time I went to a Christian school. At this time beauty was something that I just didn’t focus on, I was used to what I thought I was- I had a general impression of myself, which was- I was okay. I mean I haven’t always looked in the mirror and thought, “what happened to you?” I think every girl goes through that thing, where you look at yourself some days and think, “hey, not so bad, you actually look good,” and then some days you look at yourself and think, “what went wrong?” I was one of those people that looked at myself, went away and forgot what I looked like. I just thought, “whatever!” I would look at myself and make sure that I fulfilled society’s obligations to look acceptable. Beauty was something that I considered to be at the bottom of my priorities, but the truth of the matter, like with most girls, it was lurking near by, my insecurities were always near by.
During my second school holiday at my new school I spent it with my aunt and uncle in another city , it gave me an opportunity to explore the city I had been born in, because although I was born in that country, I grew up in neighboring one and I hadn’t gotten to spend a lot of time in the city while I was growing up. I love to explore things and go window shopping, so it was a great opportunity to try and get to know the city of my birth. Anyway, one particular morning I looked at myself and thought, “you look terrible, look at the pimples, look at your hair, you look terrible,” but I just shoved that to the side after I left the bathroom and went with my aunt into the city center. I had just left my aunt’s office and I was walking and looking at the ground and someone said, “hi”. Now I’m sure that most girls have gone through the irritating experience of being whistled and hooted at by the common vulgar, Tom, Dick and Harry’s of this world, well in that city they often say, “hey sweetie” or “hey baby” or “hey sister” or just plainly, “psst! Psst!” But someone had actually said Hi, I looked up and there was Paul, remember Paul? The guy who had liked my worst enemy a couple of years back. Let me tell you about Paul… Paul is Hot! Paul is cuuuuute! He has an amazing voice, he is a Christian, he is sporty and he is smart, very smart , he is stylish, this is not one of those guys that just wakes up and puts on the first thing he sees. He is a little arrogant, but then again, which guy isn’t? So there he was, tall, smiling and very handsome. The first thing I did was put my hand to my face and said, “Oh hi Paul, I can’t believe it’s you!” inside I was thinking, “Why him? Why today? I look terrible!” and to the inexperienced eye it might have looked like my hand was over my face because of shock or because I was shielding it from the sun… hmmm shielding it from the sun indeed! I was shy and in shock. When you meet a total hunk, you want to look like a picture of heavenly beauty, with angels in the background singing “Hallelujah” not having the devil whispering, “U.G.L.Y. you ain’t got no alibi!” Well he paid me the usual compliments that you give someone when you haven’t seen them in a long time he said, “hey, how are you? It’s been three years, you look great,” the “you look great” went in one ear and out the other. Well we spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on what had been happening in each others lives and window shopping, Paul has a great eye for style, he picked on things while we were window shopping that were really good and I thought here is a guy who has class. Well we eventually got round to talking about my physical appearance and no he isn’t a pervert, he’s the kinda guy you can trust to make an assessment of you and give you tips on how to look better. And I started to voice my insecurities or my disregard for my physical appearance and he said, “But you’re not THAT UGLY”

I didn’t catch onto that statement until a couple of seconds later, because I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts and before we all get up and form an angry mob and hunt Paul down- I truly believe that it was a slip of the tongue and he apologized immediately and said it hadn’t come out the way he intended it to. He meant to say that with a few changes I could be a bombshell, I wasn’t that far off. Well I said, “it’s okay I don’t really think much of myself anyway.” I guess I was too busy trying to get used to the fact that my first holiday in my country of birth in years, I had bumped into such a hunk in a city filled with millions of people. I mean hey, things like that only happen in the movies. You’ll be glad to know he spent the rest of the afternoon telling me how great I looked from the time he had last seen me, he said I used to be straight! In other words I had no curves and that’s an insult to the average young woman in the country I come from, curves are very important! Well Paul is a no nonsense guy and will tell it like it is or like it was.

It was a complete turn around, from that moment on my motto was, “I am beautiful!” I was obsessed with the thought and the more that I thought about it the more I realized that God’s opinion was the only one that really counted for much. And I knew that God thought I was beautiful, how did I know that? Because God doesn’t create junk, God can’t make something that is ugly, because there is no ugliness in him, all there is, is perfect beauty.

I imagined that early in the morning when my hair was all in a mess, one leg hanging off my bed, and my mouth wide open and drool dripping onto my pillow and with my snoring shaking the house, that He was looking down on me and saying to the angels, “look Michael, look! Isn’t she just beautiful!” He probably says the same thing to the devil and Satan looks at you and says, “that is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen” but the lord is looking at you and thinking, she’s the cutest thing ever, just like the way I feel when I see a baby, “Awww… that is so cute,”

So I went to the camp completely consumed with the idea that I was beautiful. God thought I was beautiful. And every time we would settle down for a session of hearing the word I would stand by the pulpit and just look at people and everyone would say, “SB, why are you standing there?”

And I would say, “because I’m beautiful”

And they would say, “yes we know you are beautiful, now get off the stage!”

And I would say, “no I want you to look at me and every time you see how beautiful I am, you’ll be reminded how great God is.”

It was righteous vanity at it’s best.

At those moments I stopped defining beauty as something that I could see or compare physically with something else. I stopped looking for beauty on me and stopped comparing myself with other people. I started looking at me through God’s eyes. I started to love myself through God’s eyes. I figured that there had to be something in me that would make God obsessed with me and you might be thinking, “whoa, what do you mean obsessed?” I mean that God is so crazy about me that he takes time to know everything about me in psalms 139 verses 1- 6 it says

 Lord you have examined me and know everything about meYou know everything I do, from far away you understand all my thoughtsYou see me whether I am working or resting, you know all my actionsEven before I speak you already know what I am going to sayYou are all around me, on every side, you protect me with your power

Your thoughts of me is too deep, it is beyond my understanding.

Now if that doesn’t sound like a guy who is crazy about you then I don’t know what is. Another verse from this Psalm that my step mother used to quote when ever I said anything bad about myself, was verse 14 which says,

“I will praise you because I am wonderfully and fearfully made”

This used to puzzle me a lot because I didn’t understand what it meant, but what David had done was look at his body and had praised God because it was perfect just as God wanted it to be. I can tell you that very few artists can look at their work and say it’s exactly the way they had imagined it. But God can and when David said he was fearfully made, he was acknowledging how amazing God’s genius was, it was even scary- how complex the human body is and God was able to engineer every single cell in it. It is impossible for God to create something that is ugly, everything he does is perfect. So the way I look is no mistake and isn’t ugly. Even if you’re involved in an accident and you get scarred, you have to realize that everything that happens to you is part of God’s will, under His control, so the way you look is no mistake- I repeat- the way you look is no mistake.

David is described as being a man after God’s own heart. His heart was set on the things that God’s heart was set on. We need to do the same, we need to be set on the things that God’s heart is set on and those things go far beyond what you see in the mirror combined with what you think you know about yourself. The bible says, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is” basically that means- what you think of yourself is what you will become. If you think that you are ugly, every time you will look into the mirror you’ll see something ugly. But if you set your heart on God’s heart, what you see in the mirror, won’t be what you think about yourself, but what you know about yourself- that you are wonderfully and fearfully made and that God loves you and is crazy about you.

God has a destiny for each and every young woman and girl. In the book of Isaiah 49 vs. 1 it says,

 “listen to me distant nations, you people who live far away!Before I was born, the Lord chose me and appointed me to be His servant,”  

So before you were born, God had plans for you. Fulfilling God’s destiny is our purpose on earth and for you to be able to achieve it- in fact if you want to achieve anything at all in life, you need to be confident in every aspect of your life and even in the way you look. Lacking confidence in any area can be a serious crack in the foundation of your destiny and a huge portion of the lack of confidence in most women comes from insecurities about the way they look, whether they realize it or not.

Now you might be thinking, “hold on, what does the way I feel about myself have to do with the work I do for God?”

Well it’s this simple, I don’t know about you, but personally it takes me forever to get dressed, because I want to look good, not really for myself alone, but for other people.  The reason that I say this is because when I’m all alone at home, I don’t bother to make sure that I really look great, I can do with a T-shirt and a pair of old shorts. But when I go out into society, I subconsciously worry about what other people will think of how I look. When I went to look for a evening dress, I got into this one store and I saw all these dresses, I took a couple went to the changing room and tried them all and it was like- I put the white one on, but no, “it’s not right, it makes me look fat.” I put the brown one on and “it brings out my curves too much” and finally I put on the last one, which was pink and I thought: “This is it! I don’t have to wear a secret bra, it’s not too fancy, but it’s not plain, it doesn’t bring out my curves too much and I can stuff myself silly without worrying about my tummy showing!” I bought it.

The point was that, although I was buying the dress for myself, I chose it based on what other people would think of me in it. If I was buying a dress to go dinner with my mom, who thinks I’m the most beautiful girl on earth, I would have settled for anything. But the fact that I was going to be seen by other people made me careful about what I chose. And quite frankly I had to look good, I was one of the organizers of the event and I needed to be confident to do that and if I had bought a dress that made my tummy stick out I would have spent the whole evening sucking it in and not enjoying any of the great food.

If you think you look terrible, you’ll be busy paying attention to what you look like and not to your destiny. To fulfill destiny, you have to be confident you have to be the sort of person who can make a grand entrance into life. While watching the Oscars on TV I’ve never seen anyone make a grand entrance without confidence and it’s what makes the stars look so good, because frankly the types of outfits I’ve seen being worn to award shows don’t look good at all.

And to add a funny little note to this all: I had a dream a few weeks ago and in my dream I was wearing shorts or a skirt and I was in public, walking around when I looked down and saw that I FORGOTTTEN TO SHAVE MY LEGS!!! I was horrified! And for some freaky reason that day the hair on my legs was SO LONG!!! Like about an inch long! I had on these socks (which was strange, because I don’t put on socks in summer), so I tried to lift them up to cover my legs and I couldn’t! They were too short! I can promise you that as soon as I woke up and took a bath, I shaved my legs!

In John 10 vs. 10 Jesus said that he came to give you life and life more abundantly and that abundance includes beauty and confidence.

The devil knows that God has great plans for you and the last thing he wants is to see you fulfill those plans, so what he has done is created an identity crisis in the world. Because he knows that if you know who you are and believe in who you are, nothing will stop you from doing the great things that God has called you to. So to try and stop you from creating an identity in God he helps you form an identity in the world. An identity in the world is focused on how you look outside, the make-up, clothing and let’s not forget the plastic surgery industry are worth billions of dollars. But the interesting factor of beauty in the world isn’t how much it costs or is worth, but that it is a trend.

Beauty in the world is a trend! One year slender is in fashion, then next curves are in. and there is so much pressure in the world to look right, to be in, not out. Just switch on your TV and someone is telling you that your skin has to be perfect and smooth and then your boyfriend will caress your face gently and fall more in love with you. Yeah right! But we often fall into these traps to focus on the outside, to look good, and we end up with a lot of pressure and anxiety when we fail to meet the standard.

 In the bible, the Lord sent the prophet Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint one of Jesse’s sons as king in Saul’s place and as he was examining them he saw one that was really handsome and he thought to himself. “Hey, he’s handsome, this must be the one that God wants as king,” but God said to him, “Pay no attention to how handsome he is, I have rejected him, because I do not judge as man do, man looks at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”  This isn’t to say that being beautiful or pretty is a bad thing, the point of this isn’t to make you feel bad if you are a bombshell, but it is to make you focus on the beauty that God looks at. The beauty that is in the heart. It is that beauty that the devil wants to stop you from getting focused on, but that instead you focus on what nail color is in this summer. Now don’t get me wrong, it is important to look your best, (I for one wouldn’t be caught dead wearing yesterday’s trends) but to look your best you have to feel your best, not the other way round as is often presumed. By getting you to focus on the outside, the devil helps you to create an identity in the world and not in God and let’s face it and identity based on passing trends offers no stability, it’s not permanent like an identity in God is.