I don’t remember ever not being different. I don’t remember ever not being judged for my size…by most everyone. I don’t remember there ever being one single person who didn’t judge my size and blame me for it…….the negative always out weighs any positive that existed…..that’s life. I never met a Dr who cared enough to find out why the weight would never change until last year at 33 years old. I carried guilt for my ugliness, my difference was wrong, unacceptable, and no one could love me, see who I really was, they could only see my size. No one could love me through my shameful existence. And oh how I was judged, how lonely my heart was, how empty of love I felt for so many years. How it shaped who I became.

I became this person who apologized for everything..even when the fault was not mine. I tried to be enough, to find a way to fill the unobtainable level of expectation that comes with being different.  When your different you have to work harder, longer, and prove yourself more than others. Even when you accomplish something amazing, you might not here “I am proud of you.” for years. The empty spot in your heart that just wants to be enough for those you love may always remain empty and being treated different may never change.

But in the middle of all those years of guilt, of not understanding why, of begging God to make me different, of wishing I would just cease so the shame could finally just end………..my heart broke and became something even I didn’t understand. It became the source of my strength…this broken damaged heart. God used it to make me something I would never have been otherwise. I have the ability to see the beauty in everyone I meet, in everything I see. Love is what I share with the world, it is my job, it is my joy, it is my life.

In the middle of this broken life, God sent me someone who truly never judged me. Never saw my size…just saw my heart, he saw the REAL me, the me no one else ever really got to know. He loved me and became my shoulder, my reason for smiling, and he gave me the strength to slowly but surely accept myself as I am.

God never changed who I was, my body never magically became different, I was diagnosed last year with a medical condition that runs in my family. It causes the weight to stay, it caused me to be this size, and I had to accept that I wasn’t responsible, that every harsh word spoken to me as “constructive criticism” was really just spoken from judgmental hearts who were ashamed of me. There are days it still hurts, but in the middle of it all I was always put in a place to rise above……Just as this song says, my life is the result of a “Beautiful Heartbreak”.

Looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way.