What I love about you

A love letter to myself

Dear Becca,

I’ve known you your whole life. I’ve watched you from the moment you first came into this world. Of course, I didn’t understand much about you until later in life. It was wonderful seeing all your first moments. Walking. Talking. Adventuring. Discovering. Your mind is so curious. I think that’s one of my favorite things about you. You see life with such interesting and fascinating eyes.

As time went by you started to develop some character. You were always pretty shy. Keeping to yourself and creating a world in your mind that only you were a part of. You’ve always been a little.... unusual. Just a little different from people. But you were real and I really appreciated that about you.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t always like you. It was probably sometime in middle school or high school. I noticed other people around you that looked prettier. Had a bit more charisma. They were outspoken and popular. They dressed a little more interesting. They had more stories to tell about all the places they’d been to. You sort of blended into the background and became irrelevant to me. I didn’t care too much about the kind of person you were anymore. I wished a lot of times that you would be more like them.

See, at times I catch glimpses of you looking at yourself in the mirror. Your face changes and it twists into this look of disgust. You just focus on the parts of your body you don’t like. You can’t seem to see past your skin. At first, I would follow your eyes and start to hate it too. The things you saw. But I want to help you look past those things and look at the things I have started to notice.

You know, there was one day, I started to pay more attention to you. Not necessarily the outward stuff. It was more of the small actions of every day. You tend to stare at the clouds a lot. You like to trace your fingers and draw out shapes when people aren’t looking. There’s this cheeky smile you make when you’re thinking about nothing in particular. It’s almost like you’re revisiting those places you used to imagine when you were younger. There’s times when I’ll catch you humming to yourself. When you think no one is around. You do this shimmy with your shoulders with each happy tune. Sometimes, I’ll just watch you talking with someone about the things you’re passionate about. You should really see the way your eyes twinkle. Becca I wish you could see how you glow! And gurl!!!! The way you are with kids! Oh you should see how they look at you. They see someone to look up to and model after. I know you don’t like to be seen, but it really amazes me how much you love to serve and be there with a helping hand to whoever needs it.

The thing is, we’re stuck with each other till the end of time. So Becca, it’s time for some self-love. It’s time to start looking at your life and fall in love with it. It’s time to actually see yourself the way God sees you. This beautiful human He created for His glory. So I just want you to know, that I love every little thing about you. I love finding more things to love about you. I can’t wait till you learn to love you more too. I want us to make up the time we spent hating everything we were and start embracing everything we’ve become.