For many years I focused my energies on my faults. I had great insight, and applied it to diagnosing all the short-comings in myself, with brutal honesty.
I was scrawny thin, my face was too small, constantly blemished with acne and clogged pores, my hair was too oily, -not at all how I dreamed I ought to look.
Besides all that, I tired easily on exertion, and was downright klutzy, tripping over my own feet when my mind was in a hurry to get somewhere.
Socially, I wasn't up on all the current fads or ways of having fun. But then, Mom had been sick a lot during my school years, and so I'd been a surrogate mom to my siblings, and had to do the housework and make meals, do dishes... a real-life low self-esteem Cinderella.
I confess now that I was rather ashamed of my parents too. They were so old fashioned, and just focused on surviving, never having fun. I did not have a friendship with Mom the way other girls seemed to have with theirs, and Dad was mainly he was a day labourer and not bright enough to know when he was taken advantage of. He was not worldly wise at all.
I didn't call it that, but in a sense, when I moved away to Ontario, I was running from home. I was out to see the world and meet new people. Surely, in a new environment people would recognize me for a lovely swan, despite my ugly duckling manners.
Fortunately, I did have running conversations with God, and I did my best to please Him as far as I knew how. So the Lord took pity on me.
My Aunt Jean in Toronto invited me to come spend a week with her, to attend a week-long seminar on Basic Youth Conflicts. I was able to take that week off for vacation.
Since the seminar sessions were in the Colosseum in the evenings, and she worked as a church secretary during the day, I had all day to live the life O' Reilly in her nice apartment up on the 19th floor, reading and lolling on the deep-piled carpets, or going to visit other relatives and friends.
Alumni could repeat the seminar anytime, anywhere, so I ended up taking that seminar five years in a row, always in June for free. There was so much that each year I learned something new to apply to my life. But that first time, June of 1979, the main thing I learned was that when I put myself down, and hated how I looked, or behaved (especially the unchangeable), or my parentage, then I was saying that God has made a big mistake with me. He made junk.
However, I knew deep inside that God never makes mistakes. Never! I was aghast at making such a charge against Him, though unspoken.
The advice given in the seminar was to put myself back on God's easel and let Him continue to make me into something beautiful, and to start thanking Him for how He had made me. If I did that, what I considered to be my worst flaws would turn out to be beauty marks that showed the world I was especially designed and made by God.
This was new thinking for me. Yet it rang true. I resolved to do this. I got back on God's easel and gave Him permission to continue making and shaping me. I made it a part of my daily prayers to thank God for how I looked, and who I was, even though some days the old attitudes wanted to bob to the surface.
Several years later in a casual conversation with Lynette, a young woman who was heading to Bible School, I suddenly stopped, and my talkative mouth froze as I realized that a transformation had taken place. I no longer thought of myself as the ugly duckling, who couldn't do anything right, and who had always felt sorry for herself.
What I used to whine and complain about weren't a big deal anymore. They were areas in improvement phases.
In fact, upon a fresh study of my face in the mirror later, I saw it had cleared considerably, and my full head of wavy hair had been drawing compliments since -- well, since I'd started washing and styling it more often.
I'd stopped saying disparaging things about myself, and my family, and envious exclamations when others had what I did not. Gradually, I'd learned to keep my mouth shut about myself, and focused on encouraging others. My friends had multiplied!
"Guess what, Lord," I said impulsively. "You ARE still working on me! I believe I'll just stay here on Your easel. Let's see what more You can do yet."
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