Self Esteem.

Looking at this picture you'd think either I had a lot or very little self esteem.
Actually, it was to demonstrate to a bunch of girls 8-11 yrs old at a stake "Faith in God" girls activity my thoughts on 'Self-esteem' and being 'Daughters of God' in the class I was asked to teach. Except in my class I dressed up one of the girls instead of myself. They all thought it was hysterical.
It actually turned out to be a really good class. I had all the jewelry, scarves, etc displayed all beautifully for the girls to see as they came in. After I got a consensus that it was all beautiful I put it all on one of the girls and asked the rest what they thought of her. When they all giggled and said it was, "too much," I asked why when they had just told me it was all beautiful; so why wouldn't she more beautiful the more we put on her?
Then I told a story I just heard at a YW event -- about Buddhist monks in China that had to go into hiding when the communists came into power. They also had to hide their statues of Buddha since the soldiers would come to the monasteries and destroy them. One such monastery the soldiers came to housed an enormous Buddha, but it was made of dirt, mud and clay. They figured it would be easy to topple. Not so. They had to bring in a crane. It broke the crane. So they brought in a bigger crane. It finally cracked the mud only to reveal that underneath the dirt there was a statue of pure gold.
The lesson, of course, was that there are beautiful things everywhere in this world. And putting them on (or partaking of them/in them/whatever) was great. But any time we told ourselves that we needed it to be beautiful we were putting some mud covering on our pure gold worth.
Then I directed their attention to a covered surprise sitting on a red velvet pedestal. I dramatically whipped the cover off to reveal this:


Amidst all the oohs and ahhs I asked if anyone recognized me? Anyone watch Miss America 5 years ago? And when they all gasped I told them I wasn't on it or anything, I was just joking. Then I told them how my husband got me this crown for Mother's Day and we have it displayed in our home to remind us that the point of everything we're going through here on Earth is to be able to live as Kings and Queens. Literally.
And after that they all got to try on the crown and then go home with little ones of their own.
Lots of fun.
Sometimes it's really good to "teach" a class on something you need a reminder of yourself.