You are beautiful.

Three little words that can be so empowering if we just allowed ourselves to believe them. At MKSummerCamp ’14 we talked a lot about identity and being the real us and we found it easy to identify negatives about ourselves, but more encouragingly we wrote down a good few positives. We looked at the weight we give to the negatives and thought about how we could give our positives the power rather than so readily believing the negatives people give us.

I have a challenge for you. Believe you are beautiful.

Our social groups and the media constantly bombard us with the way we should look, what to wear, what to look like, we’re constantly told we are too fat, too thin, too pale, too tanned, too tall, too small….. Stop it!

There was a recent movement on Social media sites that asked women to go ‘bare faced’ in support of a cancer charity, to raise awareness. In honesty the amount of women who looked perfectly beautiful without any make up on was great, what wasn’t so great was the fact they couldn’t see they were beautiful. It made me question, why do people feel the need to cover up before they leave the house? When did it become bare faced cheek to walk out of the house without make up on.

I’m not a big wearer of make up so I guess you could call me out and say ‘easier said than done Claire, you don’t understand.’ But a few weeks ago I went into the body shop with a friend and got a mini make over. The lady was lovely but sitting ‘bare faced’ in that chair I felt completely inadequate. Everyone around me had make up on and looked beautiful and there I was sat in a chair make up being troweled on my face to accentuate my features. Not five minutes earlier I hadn’t cared what my face looked like and within minutes I felt self conscious and ugly. Then as she put make up on me and told me how amazing my new look was I bought into the pitch. I believed it so much that I left with a bag full of goodies. The following week I got up a smidge earlier everyday to put on my face and get to work, a week ago I hadn’t cared and within a week I didn’t want to leave the house with a bare face. Self image had gotten under my skin.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with wearing make up, I just think if you’ve got to the point where you can’t leave the house without it then you’ve forgotten how naturally beautiful you are.

Today’s challenge: I want to challenge you to brave your beauty. Go bare faced, not for charity, but to embrace that you are made in the image if God, you are beautiful. Believe it.