YOU.

This morning as I was fixing my hair and mentally planning out my outfit for the day, I thought about how cool it is that each and every person on this earth is different. No two people are exactly alike. And really, no two people can be compared because we are all SO different. What's even more cool is that God loves each and every one of us exactly how he created us.

You see, God created you to be you. He didn't create you to be someone else's carbon copy. He didn't create you to live your life constantly trying to be someone else. He didn't create you to chase after someone else's dreams or live out someone else's calling. He created you to look like you, to act like you, to talk like you, to live out the calling he spoke to you, to chase the dreams he gave you, to BE you.

It's so easy to look at yourself and see all the imperfections you wish would disappear. And it's easy to look at other people who seem to have it all together and to imitate what they're doing to try to get the results they're getting. Just like Madi alluded to in her guest post on my blog, we will go to ridiculous, extreme measures to be like someone else. But what we don't realize is that when we do that, we're making life more difficult. We're putting more hurdles on our paths than we began with.

God equips you with everything you need to be YOU, not someone else. So when you try to be someone other than yourself, you've got nothing to work with. Think about it this way. Let's say your friend asks you to bake her a cake for her birthday, so you walk into the kitchen, open the drawers to get out all of your cooking utensils, but all you find is a hammer, a screwdriver, and some screws. Well, had your friend asked you to build her a bookshelf for her birthday, you might be good to go, but those aren't the tools you need for the task you've been assigned!

It might take some time to figure out who YOU are. I'm not saying it's easy. But it's better to spend your life learning about how to be yourself than to spend your life trying to become someone else. You'll never get there because you aren't equipped for that. Use what God has given you. Be who God created you to be. Love the person God created in you, and strive to be no one else. Because despite all the imperfections you see, God STILL loves you and He STILL has a plan for your life.

I love how Dr. Seuss says it... "Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."