on being the smart one.

{photo by Arielle Elise}

The first time a boy ever called my house, it wasn’t to ask me out or to talk about the comings and goings of adolescent life. It was for homework help.

As my mother held the phone out to me, I distinctly remember not a feeling of elation, but of frustration and fear. I was 10, and I was mortified. I was past the age where boys had cooties, but that didn’t mean they crossed my path very often.

In fact, that phone call was the only one I’d receive from a boy until I was about 17. I’m not complaining; my life has turned out in the most magnificent of ways.

But make no mistake: Just because I’m married doesn’t mean I don’t remember what it’s like to be the smart one. Because every girl knows, deep down, that there are categories. And that doesn’t make them right or true or very much fun, but they are there. They exist. You are  smart or pretty or funny; even if your soul encompasses all of those things, it’s into one category you often go.

My category was “the smart one.”

So when I read this post by Annie Downs, about a self-described “pretty girl” with a prettier friend who gets all the boys’ attention, the memories came flooding back.

The time I wore a denim jumper to school, and my best friend told me I looked pregnant.

That fall football game walking around the high school track, when my friends and I discussed which of us would grow up and be on homecoming court, and my name was never even mentioned as a possibility.

A walk up the staircase in which I ran into the “it couple” of my high school, and the girl looked straight into my eyes and asked me if I was jealous.

The time a guy introduced me to his girlfriend, asking me: “Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t my girlfriend beautiful?”

How my junior high best friend and I looked so much alike that people couldn’t tell us apart, until the summer she grew up and got contacts and her braces taken off, and everyone described her as “the pretty one.”

And, in case you think this all fades away with adulthood, that day not so long ago when a well-meaning woman at church patted my arm and told me I was “pretty in my own way.”

It’s a lot for a girl to handle, this pressure to be pretty and funny and smart and interesting, some incredible combination of “all of the above.” And no matter how long you have been comfortable in your role, in your box, the words and the memories are still there.

Because the truth is, it’s not really very fun being put into any box.

I’ve never been called “the pretty one,” but I imagine it’s no better than being the smart one or the funny one. I imagine the expectations and the frustrations are unbelievably similar.

That’s what happens when boxes are involved.

We all start to look the same.

Growing up, I didn’t keep a mirror in my bedroom. It wasn’t intentional, really. The bathroom was right down the hall, and I had a desk and a dresser and a bed and a poster of Roman Holiday hanging on my wall. I didn’t need a mirror.

My heroines, my role models, were the girls I read about in books. Sure, I thought the Olsen twins were pretty, and there was a picture of Sandra Bullock taped to the back of my door. But mostly, I idolized Jo March and Anne Shirley: girls who were smart and independent and brave. Girls who, it should be noted, were rather ambivalent — or perhaps, more appropriately, dissatisfied with — their appearances. Jo chopped off her long locks and longed to be a boy; Anne couldn't stand her carrot red hair or her freckles and wished she wasn't so skinny.

Despite those skin-deep frustrations, though, Jo and Anne manage to move on. They move beyond the face in the mirror, and they triumph.

I suppose that’s what I wanted to do, so I left the mirror in the bathroom.

Here is what I would tell that pretty girl Annie wrote about.

There will always be someone prettier than you. There will always be someone smarter than you. There will always be someone funnier than you.

But there will never be another you.

And I know that’s cheesy, and it’s not much consolation when you’re standing in the corner getting ignored by all the boys (and, hey, let’s be honest, some of the girls).

I know.

I’m married to someone who thinks I’m beautiful, and it can still be a struggle. I can still feel like that little girl who got a phone call not because she was pretty, but because she was smart.

Finding “the one” doesn’t mean those insecurities fade away.

I think there’s a reason for that.

True happiness and true confidence don’t come from what other people think about you.

Confidence and happiness come from what you think about yourself, from recognizing that you were made this way. The God of the universe knows every wrinkle, every pimple, every gray hair, every pound, every inch. He knows it. He owns it. He loves it.

I am 26 years old, happily married with a job that I enjoy and a life that I love, and there are days when I get up, and I look in the mirror, and I don't really like what I see. (Adult acne will do that do a person, am I right?) 

And, yes, the attention of my husband and his repeated affirmations of my beauty are helpful. Being loved by someone always helps.

But it's being loved by the Heavenly Father that heals.

That pretty girl with the prettier friend? She will never know she is enough until she realizes He has made her this way. A wonderful, bright, energetic young man won’t make her feel whole. Finding a husband won’t make her know her beauty.

But a relationship with the Father will.

I may never be the prettiest girl in the room.

But if I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my Father loves me, is in love with me, and made me who I am for a reason?

I can be happy and confident and authentic.

And really, the older I get, the more beautiful I believe that makes me.

Oprah’s said it, fashion designers have said it, my mom has said it to me my entire life.

It’s the smile that comes from deep within, it’s the complete and utter contentment with myself that make me beautiful and noticeable, by both men and women alike.

That feeling can't come from another person. It comes from being in love with the King and from being happy with who He made you to be.

If we could ever see what the Father sees, if men and women could begin to look at each other like Jesus looks at us, we might be able to put the boxes away. We might finally be able to understand that we are smart. We are beautiful. We are funny.

We are all of the above and so much more.