I hope you had an amazing weekend!  I had the blessed opportunity to spend time with family and friends this weekend.  For those of you living in Chicago, I hope you got to enjoy that first snow fall yesterday!  It was so beautiful.  Today’s post was inspired by yesterday’s snowfall.  Before we get into the inspiration part of yesterday’s snowfall, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for being a supporter of this blog, my passion. I get so filled up with joy and purpose every time I post to this blog and hear a story about a woman (or man) being touched by the post. It truly means the world to me; it brings me great joy to serve you with discovering your true style; your inner-beauty style.  As a token of my gratitude, I have a gift for you.  Throughout the month of December, I am going to be sharing with you 5 reasons why your style may not be expressing who you really are.   I have come across these barriers that keep us from fully expressing our own true style through my own experience and with the experience of styling clients. I hope you will find them helpful in your own journey of discovering your true style.

Reason # 1 – Unforgiveness

Now let’s get back to that snowfall. When I saw those white snowflakes gracefully falling outside of my window, it reminded me of the beauty of God’s grace falling all over me. His Grace is full of beauty and never ending (the snow fell all day long).  God reminded me that there is more where that came from whenever I needed it.

Psalm 51:7

Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean,
scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life

Wash me as white as snow. I stood outside in the snowfall for an extra 5 minutes to allow the snowflakes to fall and soak into my hair and skin.  I wanted God’s grace to penetrate from the external all the way inside of me. I wanted His grace to fill me up!!  I wanted Him to show me the beauty of his forgiveness so I, too, can forgive myself. Something about that exercise brought a warm and fuzzy feeling to my chest.  You might be asking yourself, “What does all this have to do with my style?”  Good question let me make the connection.

Inner- Beauty embraces our true selves and our gift to the world.  When we walk around in un-forgiveness of self, it will manufacture a product of shame.  Shame is a barrier to inner-beauty.  It will darken our inner-glow, little-by-little, day-by- day, until eventually if we don’t forgive ourselves the light will go out.

The definition of shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. Just reading that definition, feels like a pile of bricks have been placed on my back. It’s like a glass ceiling, we can never elevate into the next level of our “true selves” because we are bogged down by a burden of shame. When we release it we are then able to grow and elevate ourselves into the next season of discovering our “true selves”. If we dim or even turn off the light inside of us, it will dangerously lead us down a path of “false self”. No one likes a phony.  If we don’t work against the barriers of inner-beauty then how will we know our “true self”? Think of a time you saw a woman you wanted to be like, she was powerful, full of grace, confident in whom she was and she wore it all over her exterior. How can we begin to express who we are externally, until we have addressed what is going on inside?

I ask you today could you be potentially carrying a burden of shame that is holding you back from discovering your “true self”. Perhaps you have been carrying it for so long that it has become familiar, second nature and you don’t even recognize that it is there.  My prayer for you today is that in a moment of down-time you would reflect on anything that could be holding you back. Take a moment to journal any ideas that come to mind. This is a great start into discovering how you can better express your individual style. You see when your inner-beauty shines the brightest; your clothes will be an extension of it. Let’s focus on building that inner-beauty so that your style will scream the individual beauty you were created to be.

Love in Abundance,

Jamie