More Than Skin Deep: A Guide to Self and Soul - Softcover

Kirgiss, Crystal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031066926X ISBN 13: 9780310669265

Verlag: Z Kidz Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Dig deeper. You hear a lot about skin these days, and all the products, moisturizers, makeup, makeovers, soaps, masks, and lotions that you “need” to take care of that skin. This book isn’t about that. It’s about something much deeper—the “skin” you have inside that holds together the things like your passions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that make you who you are. Uniquely created and loved by God, this skin contains your inner beauty—and understanding its power can help you overcome the anxieties, insecurities, and fears the outer world presents. Find out what it means to celebrate, accept, love, and care for the skin that really matters.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Crystal Kirgiss teaches writing at Purdue University and is the author or co-author of more than ten books, including What’s Up With Boys?, Sex Has A Pricetag, Girls, Guys, and A Teenager’s Daily Prayer Book. She’s been married to Mark, a Young Life area director, for 25 years and they have three college-aged sons. Crystal also writes the monthly “Guys” and “Girls” columns for YouthWalk magazine.

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More Than skin deep

A Guide to Self and SoulBy Crystal Kirgiss

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2011 Crystal Kirgiss
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-66926-5

Contents

Acknowledgements......................................7Chapter 1 Skin versus skin............................9Chapter 2 Skin Crisis, Part I.........................21Chapter 3 Skin Crisis, Part II........................35Chapter 4 Questions, Part I...........................51Chapter 5 Questions, Part II..........................65Chapter 6 Beauty......................................91Chapter 7 Fashion.....................................101Chapter 8 Shoes.......................................115Chapter 9 Boyfriends and Romance......................123Chapter 10 Skin Care..................................139P.S.: Going More than Skin Deep.......................151Appendix: Advice from the Experts.....................152Bibliography..........................................159

Chapter One

Skin versus skin

Junior high wasn't my favorite time of life. Because of bizarre district boundary lines, I'd gone to an elementary school on the west side of town but then got assigned to the junior high on the east side of town. All of my elementary school friends went to the west side junior high. The new junior high. The awesome junior high. The junior high with a full-size gym and a legit cafeteria. The junior high with carpeted hallways, bright windows, and huge classrooms.

But not me.

Instead of walking out of my neighborhood and turning right, like I'd done for the past however-many years of my life, I now turned left—east—and walked into the great unknown. For some people, this might not have been an issue. For someone like me, who didn't have an overabundance of friends and who wasn't overly outgoing, it was a tragic moment of epic proportions. I headed east that first day with faint hopes of building a new life for myself, convinced that things couldn't get any worse than they already were.

Wrong.

Kids from three different elementary schools attended my junior high, so in theory the students knew only one-third of their new classmates and were strangers to the other two-thirds. In that sense, my situation as the new kid wasn't totally hopeless. But instead of getting placed in a typical homeroom where students knew only one-third of their new classmates and were strangers to the other two-thirds (decent odds for the new girl), I got placed in a section with twenty-or-so students who'd all been each others' classmates for the last two years and each others' schoolmates for the four years before that (they were in some experimental program for Talented and Gifted Students) and were all on a first-name basis with everyone. They had inside jokes. They had nicknames for each other ... nice nicknames. Nicknames of endearment. They knew each other's parents and siblings. They were—or at least it seemed to me—a family. And I was the stranger. The new girl. The outsider.

Fantastic. Marvelous. Lucky me.

I'd been in a similar situation in second grade when my family had moved to the other side of the suburbs halfway through the school year. I'd gotten a new home, new neighbors, new school, new teacher, new classmates, new everything, and it was kind of scary ... for about ten minutes. I'd walked into my new second-grade classroom—where everyone already knew everyone else, and everyone already had a desk, and everyone already had friends, and everyone already knew the rules and the routines, and everyone already had art projects hanging on the wall—and held my breath in panic for about three minutes, at which point a girl named Cynthia came up to me and said, "Wanna see what I'm learning how to make?" and my world was okay again. It was as easy as that. But things sometimes aren't as easy in junior high as in second grade.

For me, starting at a new school wasn't as easy the second time around, because I didn't have quite as much self-confidence—and I had a lot more self-consciousness—when I walked into my new junior high as when I'd walked into my new elementary school almost five years earlier. For starters, I was aware of Boys (with a capital B). Up to that point, they'd just been boys—lowercase b—neither greater than nor less than girls. But now, well, they were still neither greater than nor less than girls, but they certainly were very different than us. I wasn't necessarily interested in them as Boys, if you know what I mean—but there were plenty of girls who were interested in them as Boys, and that was a whole new world of drama and romance and gossip that I wasn't ready for. Still, my intense awareness of them made me act differently. Sometimes silly, sometimes stupid, sometimes awkward, sometimes aloof.

On top of that, I was sure that every person passing me in the hall was thinking, "New girl. Bad skin. Look out." A year earlier, I'd had two skin-related episodes that were more than mildly distressing. First, I'd gotten pimples. Zits. Acne. Whatever. I didn't care what they were called, I only cared that I had them and my friends didn't. How unfair could life be? Pretty unfair, it turns out, because just a few months after getting pimples, I got chicken pox. For two long weeks, I watched pox multiply among all the other imperfections on my face, prohibited by the doctor from scrubbing for fear of making everything worse, which was small comfort because when the chicken pox were gone, the scars and the pimples were still there. When I finally went back to school, one girl came up to me in the lunch line and said, "Gee, it's kind of hard to tell that you don't have chicken pox anymore because your face looks so awful anyway."

How do you reply to that? I just turned away and kept filling my lunch tray.

On that first day of seventh grade, I still had bad skin. (Why do you suppose we call it bad, as though it has its own will and is guilty of misbehaving or being disobedient? It's not as though my skin had any choice in the matter.) And I still thought it was unfair because so many other people had good skin. Even perfect skin. Why was I one of the unlucky ones? Oh well. At least I had my health. (That's what grandmas and great-aunts say to make us feel better, but it's not at all helpful or comforting.)

Truthfully my complexion issues didn't totally drag me down. I actually felt pretty good about myself in some ways. I was a good student. I could play piano well. I liked my family. And I was determined to make some new friends in my new school — friends who I could hang out with for the next few years, friends who would like me for who I was.

Then came Second Hour—social studies. We had to read a short chapter about I-don't-remember-what, and then the teacher started asking us questions about what we'd read. I prayed she would skip me. After all, I was the new girl. I didn't know anyone. I was from the west side of town. I had bad skin. Surely she would sense my discomfort and unease and move on to the next student.

Wrong.

She ignored all my mental commands to "Skip me! Ignore me! Don't notice me!" and asked me what I thought about question number three. I withered. I froze. I panicked. I wept (inwardly, of course). And then I thought, This is my opportunity to show that I'm confident. That I'm intelligent. That I'm not afraid of a challenge. That I can be a strong person who would be a good—no, a great friend—to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Z Kidz Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 031066926X
• ISBN 13: 9780310669265
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: BOOM ENTERTAINMENT; https://harpercollins.co.uk/; ; The News Building\n 1 London Bridge Street,; London; SE1 9GF; Vereinigtes Königreich
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