Flaws and All...

So I'm sat in the hairdressers. It's busy. Lots of beautiful women scattered around like wasps to a pot of jam. A row of us sit and stare at our reflections as our very talented hairdressers snip away, desperately trying to style and perfect our every strand of hair.

I can't help but look at myself and feel so disheartened about my reflection. 

I know I've blogged about this a million times and used to think 'well now that I've gone through insecurities and prayed about my insecurities, I'll be fine.' No that's certainly not the case. They will always sit on your shoulders, attach themselves to your wrists and ankles. Insecurities and doubts and worries always make a re-appearance- but I've learnt that there are ways of handling it.  

A year ago I walked down the street a little differently. I used to walk with a bit of a spring in my step like something out of a sickly Disney movie. I held my head up whilst bouncing along to a Colbie Calliat tune. 

If I was to take you back to my school life, where my insecurities were so plastered across the walls I could barely see the paint work. I was full of self-hatred that I was forever stood on the outside whilst the pretty curvy girls, with the indie clothing and dip-dyed hair were giggling like a chorus of morons. I would watch. I would try and bend over backwards to look a little more like them and a little less like me.

So Jesus came along and He told me something wonderful- 'Alice, blessed are those who are cracked and let the light shine through'

So I started to walk with a smile, and sure enough each step I felt a little more at peace with myself. 

The mirror became my friend. My clumsiness was (surprisingly) tamed. My 'going red at any given moment' was embraced. So suddenly I was able to council younger girls, girls that remind me so much of myself at that age.

It's funny how, without even being aware of it, Satan gets in to the cracks and fills them with darkness.

So let's go back to my hairdressing experience. As I sat and read their endless supplies of women magazines, I noticed how every page was filled with women that I'll never be able to look like, and every page I turned was a constant chorus of 'your hair isn't as nice as her's' 'your body isn't as good as her's' 'your eyes aren't as bright as her's' so I closed it with haste, and began biting my nails in the horror that my insecurities are still very much there, and this time closer than ever.

The fact is everyone I know is so obsessed with diets and weight and faces and hair and noses and eyelashes and nails. EVERYTHING. So how am I supposed to escape this concept of 'vanity' when I practically eat sleep and breathe it.

I learnt a harsh but very honest reality about myself when I was 13 years old and complaining to my mother about the fact my bra was from the 'haven't quite gone past triple A' section. I learnt that I will ever and could never be like everybody else. That's it. That's my lifetime reality.

I will never be the girl to put pictures up of my buttocks hanging out or discussing the endless amounts of boys I made out with through my teenage years, because I never did that! Nor will I be the girl to get uncontrollably wasted and regret one too many things the next morning. I will always be the one that sits at a party admiring the choice of wallpaper, than stumbling in 10 inch heels. I  mean let's be honest, I spent 99% of my time in choir practice or singing in my hairbrush to Taylor Swift as a young lass.


But then I get to the question- why IS our society so bloody obsessed with being like everybody else?! Why do we live in a world of comparisons and 'upgrading'? Why can't we be our very own jigsaw piece that doesn't need to be bended into another shape to fit in- why can't we just embrace our shape, our colour, and the part of the picture we fit in to?

You know the FIRST thing I get told at any audition I attend is this- 'just be yourself' and I could never quite get my head around the fact that 'being myself' meant talking with a volume of 100, falling over/dropping things at any given moment, being overly enthusiastic about the most mundane things, a rubbish speller, a girl who still dances on my own in my bedroom to 90's dance songs. I'm a mess.

But what makes me a mess?! Who decides that I'm not good enough exactly the way I am? What does being sexy even mean these days?! Is it the size of my breasts or the size of my heart? Because option A isn't the one for me...so maybe the answer is confidence. Being confident is the sexiest, most beautiful and most sparkling thing on any young woman.

So yes I do turn up to my auditions being myself, whatever the hell that means, and sure enough
through my over-enthusiasm and clumsiness, I get recalls, I start to get noticed.

And sure enough I woke up this morning, after falling to my knees in prayer and asking God to get rid of this darkness weighing down my shoulders, and suddenly I felt bright again. I slipped on my new dress, stepped out the house and I started to get my walk back, I started to smile again- flaws and all.

So if I could challenge any young girl or middle-aged woman today; I'd challenge you to start embracing and enjoying the qualities that make you different to the other billions women on this planet. I'd challenge you to stop fretting about your weight gain, or weight loss and start realising that life is more important than a dress size.

But most importantly I'd challenge you to start feeling about yourself the way Jesus feels about you- and He thinks you're flipping perfect the way you are.

Start letting that light shine and sparkle through the cracks. Go on, I dare you.