Kat Mills on the importance of being true to yourself and finding your voice.

Kat Mills

I am a stay at home mum, and every Wednesday my son Dom goes to his grandparents. What often happened on Wednesday is that I would run around like a crazy woman doing all the house work: cleaning, cooking and sorting. I would then sit down and write, or song-write, and then if I was lucky, I would get half an hour to chill out in front of the TV with a cuppa before he arrived back.

A few weeks back, I decided that occasionally I needed to use that time to do something just for me and have some down time. I had got the point that I was overtired and feeling stressed, so I decided that I would treat myself and go to the cinema to see 'The Greatest Showman'.

I am a huge musical fan and so I was very excited. What made it even better was the realisation that tickets are half price during the day! I was a little nervous about going to the cinema by myself, but I was soon surrounded by OAPs, which did make me giggle!

I was captivated by the film from the first moment. I did a lot of weeping throughout, and although it does have some sad moments, it wasn't a 'weepy' film. I was crying because people who had been shunned by society, cast out because of their differences, were being given a voice.

These outcasts came together in their differences and became a 'family'. Everyone else had hidden them away, but Barnum had given them a stage. It may not have been for entirely the right reasons at the beginning, but it became a celebration of who these people were and what they could do. The differences that had ostracised them now brought people to watch and revel in their uniqueness. It helped them accept who they were, and where once they had felt ashamed and afraid, they now found freedom and joy in accepting who they were.

There is a very powerful song from this film called 'This Is Me'. It's a song of proclamation of not being afraid to be different, and to be who you were made to be. It spoke to me so much as I am someone who has always felt different, and like I didn't fit in neatly. I would often end up hiding away and feeling ashamed of my differences. But over the past few years God has been changing this around. I am learning to embrace who He made me to be and realise that my differences are just a beautiful part of the way God created me - uniquely.

It was only when I stopped fighting the differences that I could revel in the way He created me, and step into the joy of not trying to be anyone else, or fit into a box that I will never fit into. It's great just to be who I was made to be.

In the same way that we can accept our own differences, we need to learn see the beauty of differences in others. Of course, it means being willing to go out of your comfort zone and to see beauty in different ways.

If we dig a little deeper and move past our own prejudices and ideas, there is such beauty to be found.

When I was able to hear the truth that God loved me and accepted me as I was, it helped me accept myself and also accept others. I had to be secure in who I was and it has been an eventful journey. As the song in the film goes, "I am who I'm meant to be, this is me!" What about you?