Falling In Love

When you love someone, you begin to notice the little things that make them beautiful. Their little habits or quirks, the certain look they get in their eye or the way they do something that is entirely and beautifully their own.

Have you noticed that those you love become beautiful? 

And that beautiful is an entirely different beautiful than is portrayed in the magazines or on TV. Falling in love means falling for all the little things that make that person who they are.

I challenge you to fall in love with yourself.

You heard me. I want you to fall in love with the way little lines appear by the sides of your eyes when you smile at everyone you see. Fall in love with the little bits of paint you find in your hair from when you were losing yourself in your art. Fall in love with the way you throw your head back all the way when you laugh at your little brother's knock knock jokes. Fall in love with the way your face flushes when you get excited during a presentation on study abroad programs. Fall in love with the way you tap dance in your sneakers to the beat of the music playing in the grocery store. Fall in love with how gently you handle your new niece as you dream of one day having your own children. Fall in love with how you curl up in an oversize sweater and messy bun to read in a corner by the window on a rainy day. 

Fall in love with those things others fall in love with about you. Fall in love with what makes you you.

Jeffery R. Holland, an apostle in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said in a General Conference talk, "A woman...once wrote...that in her years of working with beautiful women she had seen several things they all had in common, and not one of them had anything to do with sizes and shapes. She said the loveliest women she had known had a glow of health, a warm personality, a love of learning, stability of character, and integrity. If we may add the sweet and gentle Spirit of the Lord carried by such a woman, then this describes the loveliness of women in any age or time."

You are lovely. You are worth loving. You are loved.

A being of infinite power and wisdom knows your name and knows everything you are now and can be someday through the help of His son, Jesus Christ and his infinite Atonement. He loves you more than you can ever comprehend and He wants you to feel love for yourself too. I know from firsthand experience that if you pray to God asking to feel of His love, you will be encompassed with a feeling stronger and more pure than you've ever felt - The Holy Spirit witnessing to you that the God of all heaven and earth knows you individually and loves every. single. detail.

Fall in love with yourself, and learn to see yourself the way you truly are: capable, wonderful, beautiful, loved.