A Little Bit Brave

For the last few months, I've felt God calling me to start a blog. But I was afraid. Up until a couple of months ago, I didn't see any girls close to my age doing things like starting blogs about living for God. I knew teenagers with writing blogs, and I saw a lot of blogs written by women in their twenties, but in my heart I knew that I needed to write to other teenagers about living from a love for God. Yesterday, I got to reading some of  Annie Downs'  writing. Her book  Let's All Be Brave  is technically supposed to be for adults, but I still read the free excerpt because I love Annie's writing. That little excerpt is all I've read of the book, but even that touched that space in my heart that keeps trying to push me forward, into unknown, uncertain places. And I listened. Sunday morning at church, the sermon was given by a woman, something I was super excited about. Then she, Holly Wagner, started  preaching about bravery.  Again, that space in my

" all the world's encouragement to "be yourself" is defeated from the get-go when we use other as the measure of who our "selves" should even be."   - Phylicia Masonheimer  "I wish my hair were straight like her's." "If only I had the fashion sense of my best friend..." "He speaks so much better than me." "I can't dance like them." {~}~{~}~{~}~{~} I stare at the dressing room mirror, sucking in my stomach and standing on my toes. Trying clothes on is a huge pain already, but when you throw swimsuits into the mix, I can hardly stand a glance at that mirror without tearing up. My hair is frizzy from spending six hours in the car. The florescent lighting turns my skin a pasty white, making my acne scars practically glow. If I only had her skn, her legs, her hair. Everything looked wrong in that mirror. My legs too big, my skin too pale, my shoulders too wide. Too much and not enough. When

Tangled is one of my favorite movies. I honestly don't remember what I thought of it when I saw it for the first time when I was eleven. I just remember sitting in the second row of the theater, craning my neck, and wishing we'd decided to sit on the stairs instead. But now? I love the characters, the writing and dialogue, the plot, the music. I've seen it a few more times than the average sixteen-year-old. If you've never seen Tangled, 1.) You should go watch Tangled, and 2.) Here's what you need to know about the movie for the sake of this blog post: Rapunzel, who is about to turn eighteen, has spent her whole life in a tower in the middle of the woods. Every year, on her birthday (" only  on my birthday.") a bunch of floating lights appear in the sky. Rapunzel doesn't know exactly what but she "just feel[s] like they're meant for [her.]" But her mother (well, not her mother. The woman who kidnapped her when she was a baby and h

I didn't expect to feel different the morning of my 16th birthday. I figured it'd be like every birthday ever. People would wish me happy birthday on Facebook, I would eat cheese cake with my family, maybe watch a movie. The thing is, I did  feel different. *Gasp!* I know, I know. I wasn't really that much older than I had been last night. Nothing had physically changed. I didn't magically have a drivers license. I certainly didn't grow (haven't grown since I was thirteen). I didn't wake up to balloons and confetti and people screaming "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!" at me. That would've been terrifying. I probably would've cried. Instead of waking up feeling the same way I did the night before, I came to a realization: I have a life. Like, I'm a person. Who is alive. And breathing. And I can use words. As I reflected stereotypically over the last year of my life, I realized I was tired of waiting for my life to begin. I'm not