Big thanks to Erynn for writing this post! Erynn is another friend of mine from YBL, and I loved getting to know her those two weeks and see how God' is working in her life! Erynn is starting a blog of her own, so be on the look out for that :)
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Hi everyone! I am so honored to be a guest blogger today on Altogether Beautiful. My
name is Erynn, and I just graduated from high school. Elia and I met this summer at a
phenomenal leadership camp (check out Youth Becoming Leaders if you are in high school!), and
I am excited to be a part of this project of hers by sharing a piece of my heart with you all.
I am just going to start out by saying that I am not your typical girl. I don’t wear makeup, I
usually detest shopping, and I’m not a Justin Bieber or One Direction fan (sorry not sorry). Ever
since I can remember I have been confident and independent. I follow my own standards, not the
standards society tries to push on girls. Side note here I know that media tries to tell you ten
million things about your bodies. Here is my advice: live a healthy lifestyle and shut out the haters
who have the audacity to tell you that it is still not enough. I can assure you that you are beautiful
no matter who you are or what you look like, because God created you in His image. Now that is
awesome and something to be celebrated, not nitpicked and criticized.
Anyway, I have always been a big follower of living how I want to live, looking how I want
to look, doing what I want to do...list goes on. I was never really cursed with the whole
bodyimage hatred, which is something I am thankful for. But the past few years, I have struggled
with comparison. Not with my image, but rather with my personality with how people viewed me
or who liked me. I would look at other people and want so badly to be them to have their
personality or their gifts. See, I am a fairly quiet person. My name legitimately means “One of
Peace.” But I did not want to embrace that my gifts were as a peacemaker. I wanted to be loud
and to be known! I wanted so badly to have the charismatic personality that drew people to me
and put me as the center of attention more often. Except, I’m not. I am not that person. And the
more I looked at other people and their personalities, the more I disliked mine.
If I am completely honest, I still struggle with this right now as I am writing this post. There
are days that I don’t want to accept the way God has wired me. As a friend of mine so perfectly
put it this summer, I am still growing into it a little bit. But when I struggle with accepting who I am,
I remind myself of the need for different gifts in the Body of Christ. After all, “If the whole body
were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?” We have to each have different gifts to be a
functional body and that means that no gift is greater or lesser than another.
A word that I have been meditating on recently is ‘Embrace.’ As I try to be more at peace
with my simple, quiet, and peaceful nature, I remind myself to embrace the person God is calling
me to be, and trust that He will use me regardless of how useless I may feel. I encourage you to
simply embrace who God has made you, and trust in His faithfulness to work through you! He is
waiting for the invitation all you need to do is ask.