I look around me. I see so many beautiful people. Tall, short, thin, chubby, blonde, brunette, blue eyes, and deep brown ones. Some of them are math nerds, some are musicians. Nurses, biologists, teachers, bus drivers, students, crossing guards. Isn’t it wonderful how diverse our  world is? I thank Heaven that we are all so uniquely different. God created man in his own image (Gen. 1: 27) so of course, we all have bodies like him (D&C 130: 22). But they are all different. And wonderfully so. And then it hits me. All of our lives we spend looking to celebrities and fashion models for the perfect size. And there never will be. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland (a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) said: “there is no universal optimum size”. And he is right. I doubt that the majority of women are a size 2 or 0 or whatever is “in” right now. And even though I struggle with wanting to be a size smaller, I’ve realized one important truth. The Lord made each of us different. So whether we are a 6 or a 20, God loves us. So what do we care what the world is saying?

Thinking, obsessing more like, with how we look has become a tool for the devil. If we’re down at the gym for 6 hours a day just trying to lose that extra poundage from over the holidays, what are we not doing? Are we putting off our study of the Holy Scriptures? Are we falling into bed without saying our prayers? What about that older woman you saw walking home from the grocery store with her arms full? Were you too busy to stop and help because you were worried about not getting your 6 hrs in at the gym? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take care of our bodies. The Lord has given us the responsibility to care for ourselves. Being healthy is a good thing. But it isn’t good to have that occupy our thoughts 24/7.

The Lord loves us for who we are. He loves that we are trying to become more healthy. But he doesn’t love the fact that our focus is always on how we look, instead of how we act. This world is full of so many wonderful beings. Let us all try not to compare ourselves to them, because we are already one of them!