Skin Deep Beauty

Shine brighter than a diamond

MARY IDOWU

Last week, I was at a "girls’ night out", and we were discussing self-confidence, I didn’t get a chance to speak due to time however, and so I have decided to come share what I learnt; my insecurities and how I overcame them.

Growing up as a child, I was always called 'Oh Mary Mary Kampala', usually in a sing song manner. This habit actually started from my nursery two class teacher. It spread fast, and a lot of people picked up the habit. I didn’t really understand what was wrong with me and why people would seek to make fun of me, as I was 'daddy’s girl' and I got all the love in the world from him. As I grew, I started seeing myself in the mirror, I started realizing that I had different skin colours on me; some part of me was yellow (which is my actual colour) and some part of me was dark, like really dark. I had brown discolorations and I had dark, more like black patches on me. I then understood that I was different. It actually didn’t bother me as such because I had my family around me and they always made me feel better.

However, upon getting into secondary school it became a big issue for me, as I was in a boarding school. A roommate relocated from my room to another because she didn’t like the way I looked. I tried every cure that was given to me, nothing worked; rather, I started getting worse. I would have sudden discolorations on my face, arms, legs, thorax that wasn’t there before and they wouldn’t leave. I started to cry a lot and felt kind of depressed. When my parents asked me why I was sad, I found it hard to tell them for reasons beyond me. I was angry. I was angry at my dad; I was angry at myself for being ‘ugly’.  I could see my parents putting effort to make me feel and look better but it wasn’t helping matters, rather it depressed me even more. I have had people call me a tiger, I have issues wearing certain outfits or even rubbing white powder. I had issues with being comfortable around girls because they would always ask questions that I couldn’t answer.

Basically, being different hurt. Asides that, I was short and skinny. I kind of grew to become average height, but I haven’t got fat. Everyone is always bugging me about my size, either jokingly or intentionally. It always hurt. So, how did/do I cope? Sometimes I like to feel like I have the solution locked down. Maybe I do, maybe not.

Counted

There's this song I know. I think you guys'll know it too. It goes like this

♬   Count your blessings, name them one by one,♬   Count your blessings, see what God hath done!♬   Count your blessings, name them one by one,♬   And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

How many times have you sung this song I wonder? I'm asking myself as i am you, this very question. You see, when you tell someone to count their blessings and see how impossible they are, they go and get you a list of all the cars they've got, lotteries that they won, clothes they bought, job promotions they've earned, you know....all the big stuff. I wonder, how often do we remember that
we also have to count the blessings of clean water? clean air?

Confidence, The Superpower

The business executive was deep in debt and could see no way out. Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy.

Suddenly an old man appeared before him. “I can see that something is troubling you,” he said. After listening to the executive’s woes, the old man said, “I believe I can help you.”

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Hi. 

As a lot of you know I'm not really all that much of a regular poster on here as much as I would have loved to be, but I'm still working on it. I've got my own good reasons, but I won't be addressing those now because I'm here to talk about something else, which is much more important.

I'm here to talk about sharing the Christian faith.