I thought this was supposed to end with my teenage years...

I saw this picture tonight, and it made me incredibly sad...
Look at my skin! (Above picture, not below.) I would never have considered my skin flawless at the time of this photo--I've had acne problems for forever, it seems--but compared to how my skin looks today, I would now say it was flawless in the above photo. When I started dating Jacob, it was still pretty, but within a month, my face looked like the picture below. I HATED it, and I couldn't figure out why it suddenly changed. My forehead was the worst, and no matter what I did, I couldn't cover the scars and craters. Makeup hardly helped. It looked awful. When we got engaged, I was so terrified that I was going to look hideous on my wedding day and that my acne would ruin my pictures. This worry caused tears on many occassions. Jacob was the perfect fiance, of course, and he constantly told me how pretty I was and how I was just as beautiful as when we first started dating... and it would make me feel better at the time, but in the end, I still knew my skin was hideous.

As I continued looking through my photos tonight, I realized how much better my skin looks now. Luckily, my father is amazing, and after I called home numerous times in tears, despairing about how ugly I felt, he gave me some advice. He had a feeling that the acne outburst was a side affect from a medication I was on, and he was right! So only a couple months later (and a couple prescriptions later), my skin was looking good again... still not like it used to be, but good enough that I can look at my wedding photos today without tears. :)

Thank heavens for expensive prescriptions!