When Your Worth Feels Tied To The Way You Look

It started the way many impulsive ideas start.
Innocently.

Years ago, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and thought,
Hmm. My hair is getting a little long for my liking.
I said, You know what?
I can fix this.
Right now.
Myself.

Instead of trimming the ends like a sane person, I decided to start in the back.
Yes. The part I couldn’t see.
Yes. On myself.

I don’t know what I was thinking.
But I do know that I ended up with bangs.
In the back.
Where no bangs should ever be.

From the front, it looked like I might have pulled it off.
From the back, it looked like I cut it blindfolded on a trampoline.
It was the kind of cut that would make a stranger stop you in the grocery store just to say, Are you okay?

And it was that precise moment I realized I had not just cut my hair.
I had quietly zipped myself into a twelve-month cocoon,
waiting for the day I could feel like myself again.

It took time for me to understand, but that haircut ended up shaping far more than my hair.
It shaped the way I walked into a room.
It shaped how much of myself I was willing to let people see.
It even shaped the minutes I wasted in front of the mirror, trying to decide if I felt brave enough to leave the house.
With one reckless snip, I handed my hair disaster the keys to control everything else.

Is there a part of your appearance that takes up more space in your mind than it should?
Mine was hair. Yours might be something entirely different.
Maybe it’s the thing you’ve noticed for so long, it’s faded into the background.
But it’s still there.
Always there.
Quietly shaping how you carry yourself, how you walk into a room, how much of you the world gets to see.

Most of us have something we have learned to manage, minimize, or work around when it comes to how we look.
Sometimes it’s one thing.
Sometimes it’s a list.

You angle your face to downplay your nose.
You avoid close-ups because of your skin.
You keep your arms crossed in every photo.
You’ve mastered the smile that hides your teeth.
You never wear your hair up because of your ears.
And while the rest of the world may never notice, you notice.

You stand behind others in photos.
You wait to show up fully until you feel better about yourself.
Somewhere along the way, the way you looked became linked to the way you live. 
But when your worth is tied to how you look, you don’t just fear aging, you fear existing in any moment you can’t filter, stage, or script.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Not fearfully and eventually wonderfully made.
The freedom you’ve been waiting for does not come when you fix yourself. 
It comes the moment you believe the truth God already said about you.
You were made in His image.
You are loved without condition.

You can keep letting your reflection dictate your confidence,
or you can anchor your life to something that never changes. 
What you see in the mirror might change by the day.
But what God sees in you hasn’t changed since the beginning.

So stop waiting to feel beautiful enough, thin enough, young enough, put-together enough to live fully.
Show up now.
Laugh now.
Live now.

Your worth was never built on flawless hair, clear skin, or the right number on the scale.
It was set in place the moment you took your first breath.
And when you finally believe that, you stop living for approval and start living from abundance.