myself beautiful and find my purpose--but what I didn't understand was that my creator designed me to find my purpose and my beauty from the inside out, not the outside in. 

" . . . I learned to put myself in God's hand."  She moved to Chicago, got off the fast track, switched to consulting part-time and is pursuing a master's degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield. Having once owned a seven-bedroom house, she now shares an apartment with a roommate on the North Side and says she has never felt so fulfilled.

Other speakers told of their own physical struggles. Cami Bauman, 31, recalled struggling with bulimia. After 13 years, she said, her torment ended when she