I am the little one

I have had this picture on my refrigerator for the last couple of months. My daughter brought it up one day from the disorganized box of pictures from the office and said, "Mommy, you were so cute when you were little. You looked just like me!"

I laughed, and my husband laughed.

A couple of days later, I was looking at the picture, and I was struck with sadness. I realized that I had spent almost thirty years telling that sweet little girl that she wasn't pretty. How could someone say such a thing to an innocent little girl? How could someone tell that little girl over and over, nearly every day, that she wasn't beautiful? Think how damaging that can be to a little girl!

As I realized that the little girl in the picture was indeed cute, I had just a fleeting feeling of how Heavenly Father must feel. He sees the beauty in his children, even when we can't see it in ourselves. He sees our individual worth.

Tell the girls in your life that they are pretty, because they are. Tell your daughters. Tell your sisters. Tell your mothers. Tell your wives. Tell your friends. Tell the little girls in the pictures. They deserve to know. (Husbands, please don't tell other people's wives...)

I hope that my daughters know that they are pretty, that they have true beauty. I don't want them wasting all their time thinking about how they look or thinking that they are better than anyone else. But they need to know that they are beautiful.

I don't want to spend any more time trying to convince that little girl in the picture that she isn't pretty. I don't want her to hear that she isn't pretty one more time, at least not from me! It wasn't true then, and I am working hard to try to believe that it's not true now.