Stories in this episode: Wendy's childhood is fraught with bullies and self-doubt until she asks God to teach her what her parents knew all along; A run-in with a trampoline right before the family reunion sends Cassidy into hiding, but she can't hide from the Spirit; When artist Melissa can't find herself in museum paintings of Heaven, she decides to take matters into her own hands. For shownotes and more, go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel. Follow us on facebook and instagram @thisisthegospel_podcast TRANSCRIPT KaRyn Lay 0:03 Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. Today, we're talking about beauty. And I have no quippy intro or funny anecdotes or poems. I don't even really have a good etymology lesson about the word beauty for us. Because here's the thing, defining what is beautiful in today's society, and how that's connected to our worth, and our value – that's a really hard thing for me, personally. I mean, I can look at some flowers or a flaming purple sunset over the ocean, or even a baby wrapped up like a burrito, and somehow I know that there's beauty there. But how those things are beautiful, and why some things are beautiful to me and not to other people? That's just confusing. Maybe you feel the same way, or maybe you think I'm nuts for being tied up in knots about all of this. But all I know is that I kind of need something or someone a little bit smarter than me to break it down and teach me the truth about beauty and its place in God's plan. So if ever there was an episode where I need stories to open the door to new spiritual insights, this is the one. And that's what we're going to do today. We'll listen to three stories from three storytellers who grapple with ideas of beauty, and learn something about themselves and God in the process. Now, I have to acknowledge that all of our storytellers today are women. And I really wanted to find a story about beauty from a man, because I know that women are not the only ones wrestling with this ideal. But hopefully, regardless of gender, we can open our minds and recognize ourselves in these stories. Our first story today comes from Wendy. Our first story today comes from Wendy. Wendy 1:47 So when I was a toddler, I was at the grocery store with my mom, and she was going down the aisles and a woman with a bunch of teenagers came up and pointed at me and said, "Hey, look kids, that kid doesn't need a Halloween costume. She's already got one." And then they all laughed and walked off. And my mom was so shocked. She didn't know what to say. When I was about two months old, I had a little red dot that was right center of my forehead and it started spreading out and it was a hemangioma, which is a blood tumor. And it was coming out like a golf ball off the top of my head. A hemangioma, it's got lots of blood vessels in it, you can't take it off because there's too much blood, things, going on in the head. It's kind of purple and red. They usually will deflate a little bit when the child is older, more like nine or ten. Until then you just have to live with it. So I knew I looked different. My mom was always trying to comb my bangs so that they would cover my forehead. I always had bangs right to my eyebrows, but I was an active kid. So you'd run around the bangs would split and you can't cover a little . . . a ball on your head. So no matter what we did, it was always showing and then I would forget that I had it and then run into a new person that didn't know me, and they would stop and stare and look at me and . . . if it was a kid, well, even sometimes adults, then that's when I would get teased for it. So when I was in preschool, I was going to a religious school and the teacher told the class that I had the mark of the devil and that they shouldn't associate with me because they might be infected by my badness, just because of how I look. So I came home and asked my mom, "How come I have the mark of the devil?" And my mom pulled me from the school – because she's a good mom – and then we had to go find somewhere else for me to go after that. So my mom and dad both were very protective of me. And they were trying to be the buffer between me and the world. One time my dad, I had told him that I was being bullied and pushed around on the way home from school, and so he waited for me on the porch. And he saw these kids following me home from school and they were pushing me into the street and pushing me down. And so he came out and told them, "You don't have to be her friend. But you do have to be kind to her, and you cannot put her in danger." And so he was, he was a protector for me. And then right after that, he went to the school and asked them to have a meeting of all of the kids anywhere near my grade and he talked to them all about it. About what a hemangioma was, and that Wendy was a pretty, pretty neat kid if they'd give her a chance, they could be friends. When my dad came to my school, I felt very special. And I felt very loved and protected because my home and the protection that I had at home extended to this school at least somewhat. They were trying to reach out and, and just have a little bit of a safety net for me farther out than our home. So when I was about nine, then the hemangioma started to deflate. So it slowly lost the big redness of having all the active blood vessels. And we were able to go and have it removed. I remember in the hospital, my mom was reading me A Wrinkle in Time, as we were getting ready to go back for the surgery. And my mom doesn't even like reading fantasy books, but she would read me anything that I would listen to. When I came out and had it off, then I traded it for a scar. The scar for a long time was really, really bright. So if I was angry, or exercising or anything, then it was almost as glaring as the thing was to start with. But slowly it faded. And at first I always had bangs, because I was still trying to cover this scar in this place where I used to have this thing that I felt was shameful. My self worth was something that I did struggle with. Having been someone who was told that I had the mark of the devil, often made me wonder what my worth was. I often felt like there was two faces, because there was this face that the world would see, and then there was the real person inside that didn't have value. Because if I was somebody of worth, then why did I have things like this happen? Why were people cruel? There just came a point when I realized that I had to make a choice. If I was going to keep feeling this way, if I was going to keep disliking who I was, if I was going to keep doubting whether or not I had any value, or if I was going to believe in myself and believe that I was worth loving. And so I started to read scriptures more and have prayers that were less routine and more heartfelt. And I just started asking that even if I lacked the belief, Christ and Heavenly Father would help me with my unbelief and make up the difference. A few years went by, and pretty soon I stopped using the bangs, and my parents got me into Taekwondo. And I started pursuing more interests that I loved, like art. So the change in how I perceive myself and where I thought I was, for being worthy to be loved, is not something that happened overnight. But something I had to deliberately work toward. And it's something I'm still working toward, but I think that my mind understands that I am of worth and that I'm worth loving, and that God loves me. Now my scar, it has faded to the point that most people don't notice it. But I remember what it was like I feel that this whole experience growing up with a birthmark and the other things, I feel that that has really taught me compassion, that when I see someone else struggling, then I try to reach out to them. Whenever I see a kid who has any kind of a birthmark especially, then I run right over and talk to him. I feel it. I know what they're going through. And I know what the parents are going through. My parents were wonderful examples for me, it was not uncommon for me to go to see them in the evening and to find them on their knees. So in those moments when I didn't have the faith, to believe enough that I had any value or when I didn't have faith enough to believe that someone was there to listen to me, then I could rely on my parents testimonies, because I knew that they believed enough for both of us. So my whole life whenever I have doubted myself, whenever I have doubted whether or not I was strong enough or smart enough are brave enough to do anything that I wanted to do, then my parents were the ones that were like you can do this. You are a daughter of God and you are of infinite worth. With them believing that, then they were kind of my shield against the world. And they make it so that I can go out. And I can share my stories and my message and I can achieve dreams that I didn't think were possible when I was little. When I didn't think I had any value at all. And a lot of that is because of the faith of my parents. So now I have five children of my own. And I have one who wants to be an artist and another who wants to go on a mission and another who wants to make prosthetics for people who are missing limbs, and another wants to be a dancer. And the other one he doesn't know what he wants to do. He mostly wants to snuggle, but the point is that I tell them that they can do anything they want to do, and that they're smart enough and they're good enough, and that they have enough value, that whatever dream they have is valid, and that I will support them in anything they want to do. KaRyn Lay 11:18 That was Wendy. Wendy Swore is the author of, A Monster Like Me, which is a lovely middle grade novel about a girl with a hemangi
