“You don’t have to walk the line to get the call, you don’t have to be afraid against the wall, and you don’t have to live in L.A. to be beautiful.”
Here’s a little something a lot of people probably don't know about me: I spent a year of my life acting in Hollywood. No joke.

I’m don’t even remember how the whole thing came about. One day I got phone call about possibly auditioning; the next, I was sitting in a theater in downtown L.A., listening to some boring guy speak about child actor legalities while my mom frantically took notes. I was 11 at the time, and nothing sparked my attention more than the possibility of becoming “famous,” so I decided to go through with it and start my “serious carrier” as an actress.

I spent the next several weekends of my life sitting in a tiny room in some acting agency in Hollywood taking acting classes with about ten other kids my age. To be honest, the whole thing bored me. And, even more honestly, I don’t remember anything I learned from those classes (well, except character development). I was the weird kid in class who liked to go home and make up characters that I could act out. (Which, looking back, I realize this was God’s way of saying I was meant to write about people, not portray them, but that’s another story...)

Several agonizing months of tapped bank accounts, acting classes, and work permits later, I finally started to do some work as a background actor on TV shows. My mom carted me all over L.A. in our little white minivan as I read my Babysitter's Club books. (I know, so Beverly Hills, right?)

The end of my “serious carrier” or rather, my retirement from the television industry came one day my dad answered a call from our “beloved” acting agency. Disney apparently was holding an audition the following day, and wanted to know if I would be interested.

Are you serious? I was 11; Disney was my life. When they called, I didn't hesitate to say yes. So when my dad returned the call, you could imagine our shock when they said they didn’t need me after all. It got worse. They said that in order to get another call for work I’d need to lose 20 pounds and consider cutting my hair. Until then, they wouldn’t use me. Just like that, my “career” was over.

That might not seem like a big deal now, but did I mention I was only 11? I was devastated! Being the chubby girl wasn’t easy to begin with, but to have some Hollywood hotshot claim I wasn't good enough as I was? Now THAT hurt.

While I laugh hysterically at the possibility that I could have been a Disney kid, the idea that I let another person’s opinion dictate my actions doesn’t. I am very open about the fact that I struggled with self-esteem growing up--probably more than a normal teenager--but it was the words the industry spoke into my life that day crushed whatever sense of happiness I had with my 11-year-old self at the time.

This world’s “Hollywood” view of beauty and worth is tainted, and so many women and men fall prey to its lies every day. We are constantly bombarded with the ideology that we aren’t good enough as we are and we need to change if we want to “make it.” Our face, our clothes, our personality… it’s never enough to please the masses. So we rearrange ourselves in order to gain the love and acceptance we crave in other people, only to be told that we need to change yet again. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s one I toyed with for far too long as I was growing up.

The thing I love about the song “L.A.” by Melodie Joy is the message of unfaded beauty and worth, and how it isn’t found in the changes we make to fit in. It’s found in the uniqueness of who we already are. 1 Peter 3:3-4 says “It is not fancy hair, gold jewelry, or fine clothes that should make you beautiful. No, your beauty should come from within you--the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit that will never be destroyed and is very precious to God.”

God isn’t saying we shouldn’t care about how we look--Heaven forbid we all rolled out of bed and refused to shower--but what He is trying to say is that we can’t rely on this world and what it says will make us beautiful. That stuff is all going to fade away. Trends will come and go, but our beauty and our worth is in who our Heavenly Father created us to be. God loves us for who we are, and we don’t have to change a thing about ourselves to try and earn it.

We need to learn what it means to start being content with who God made us to be, and make the changes in ourselves only when we want to, and not because everyone says we need to so we can be accepted. It’s like the chorus of this song says, “you don’t have to walk the line to get the call.” You don’t have to be anyone but yourself to know you're loved. I challenge all of you today, both men and women alike, to stop looking into this world’s mirror, but instead, to look into the mirror of how God sees you. In the end, I think you’ll come to realize as I have, He loves you… just as you are.