Being Beautiful

What is the first thing that you think of when I type the word "Beautiful"?
Seriously.
The first word that comes to my mind is "conceited". How stupid is that.
I am pretty sure I have said this before, but I am single and I struggle with my outward appearance. When I look in the mirror I don't see a beautiful girl in front of me and I am always picking out the flaws in myself. This past week my friend and I were walking out of a dining hall on campus and a really attractive boy that we have met once or twice walked past us. My friend immediately said, "why don't you date him?" My first thought wasn't "oh yeah maybe" it was "you really think I have a chance dating someone that attractive?". Comparing myself to this other attractive person, I did not see myself as being physically attractive enough to someone else. I am constantly worried about my big thighs, crooked nose, whether my hair is looking nice enough and whether you can see the pimple on my cheek. Why is beauty such a hard thing to grasp? As women we always seem to be reaching for this beauty ideal, but I am a woman of God and built in his image so beauty doesn't even begin to describe me.
Conceited means using your beauty, all I need to do is to change my mind to believe that I am beautiful. This may not even apply to you, and if that is the case then you are extremely lucky, but if this does apply to you, there is a 100% chance you are beautiful. It does not matter what our insecurities are, what matters is how God made us beautiful so for us to believe that we are not beautiful is, in a way, caving into beliefs that the devil has placed in our heads. God is beautiful, we are beautiful, and let's let the light of Christ shine through us so that we can show the world our beauty.