I had the best childhood I think any little girl could ask for my parents were so loving and humor was a huge thing in our family I was born 2 pounds 10 ounces I was very very tiny I stopped growing in my mom's stomach so I was born early the doctors didn't know why or what happened they just knew I needed to make my grand entrance into the world before they took me in to see my mom they took a Polaroid picture of me and showed my mom the photo and said we want to show you this before we show you your daughter and she pushed it away and said bring her to me right now my parents raised us so normally I never felt different from my brother or sister much less anyone else because it was just such a loving home filled with faith and just encouragement it wasn't where Sunday's is the only day for church Sunday's only day for prayer it was faith is first in our lives I hated looking in the mirror I hated going out in public because people would just stare at me I hated all of those things but it wasn't until I was starting ninth grade that I decided I wanted to put myself out there I wanted to join different activities and organizations I tried out for cheerleading I did all of these things just because I wanted to be able to prove to myself that I could do it cheerleading was something that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be I think if I thought I want to wear the cute uniform and didn't think past that it was sort of like my superhero cape like walking around the halls I wasn't Lizzie the girl who looks different I was Lizzie the cheerleader things were really looking up and things were really positive and my friends were amazing my family was doing really well and it wasn't until I was 17 that everything sort of just came to a very halting stop crash Rumble I don't even know what to call it I was on YouTube and found a video that someone posted of me calling me the world's ugliest woman there were four million views thousands of comments and I stopped there and I read a lot a lot of comments because I was so desperate to just find one that stood up for me or that was positive or that said hey you don't know her story why are you saying these things and I didn't find that it was just awful comment after awful comment I was devastated I cried for many days and I fell asleep crying many nights I had already worked so hard to get my confidence up to a certain level and finally it was just done everything I worked for just disappeared I told myself what am I going to do from this how am I going to move forward and at the time all I could think of was keep improving myself as a person I had a lot of mixed emotions with my faith when I found that video I of course was more confused as to why what this happened why would he allow someone to do this so I would heal out all of these people to say these horrible things about me I had this dark cloud just hanging over me how am I going to find that sunlight again how am I going to get out of what I felt like was the worst storm of my life I struggled with my faith when I was in high school just because I was at a point where I couldn't accept who I was and I didn't know who to blame and it was do I blame my parents do I blame my teachers who do I blame because none of these people gave me these struggles in life and my faith came into play and I thought do I believe God because he's not changing me he's not making my miracle I should come true to make me look like everybody else and I think that was a really really hard time and luckily I was still proven wrong and went from seeing my whole situation or my appearance from being accursed to be one of the biggest blessings I could ever ask for because that's what started me to be able to turn on my own light for myself having that bad video as I call it and having all of those people tell me all of those things that was 1000% meant to happen and it sounds crazy for me to say that but I wouldn't never change it because that's what started me to be able to figure out how I was going to shine my light I now have this incredible platform to be able to shine that light that he helped me shine for other people if I can help a stranger if I could help a little girl in another country to believe in themselves or just to have that faith that it's going to be okay no matter what I think that is the most incredible incredible gift I'm Lizzy this is my story and I am wonderfully made you