I put myself in a bubble sometimes. I expect a level of perfection from myself that is unattainable. I try for perfect scores on assignments, have a perfectly clean home, make meals that are perfectly balanced, keep everything moving at all times without a single thing out of place. It becomes exhausting trying so hard for perfection and failing miserably every time. I hate failing. I hate the idea that I cannot do everything for everyone at all times. I spend more time feeling like I have failed than succeeded. Perfection is not something I am made for. In fact, its presumptuous of me to believe it is even possible because the only perfect being is God. I am not God, not even close. I make mistakes, I am emotional and prone to speak in frustration. I give more grace to others than I do myself. I go through life with a prayer on my lips and soul of redemption because although my sins and weaknesses are many, God can make any mistake in my life beautiful for his purpose. He can take the parts of our past we are the most ashamed of and use those broken pieces to heal others. We can use the sins we have committed for victory in God by helping others to learn from our experiences. God makes messy moments beautiful, and that is not something my desire for perfection can do. My life is far from perfect, I have scars and brokenness that can only be healed by our heavenly father. Striving for perfection means that I think my best is not good enough or that I am a mistake and that is impossible because God doesn’t make mistakes. So when the road ahead is hard, you feel unequipped, unworthy, useless, or a mistake remember that God does not create life without a purpose. He does not make mistakes, and you are made in His image.

I am a new Christian. I know that I have mentioned in past posts that I grew up Catholic but floundered on religion for quite some time as a late teen and early adult. As a result, I did not really know God. I knew of Him, I knew of his powerful rage and the punishments that can come from disobedience, but I did not know about the unfailing love God has for me. When we were first married, my husband and I struggled with fertility, by 2020 I had given up hope of ever having a child. I began to lose hope in God, and if God existed, he hated me. I felt like I was being punished for something that I did in my entire life thus far. My feelings towards God changed with much prayer from my husband, my mother-in-love, and their church family. A year later, I was being baptized while pregnant with our daughter. How did this happen? Faith grew. I started with small prayers that felt awkward at first. I was not sure what I was supposed to say to God, so I started with an introduction. Hi God, my name is Sharon. I know that sounds odd because He is the creator of heaven and earth, so of course God knew my name. Somehow, the introduction made it feel less weird. I started off talking about what I was thinking. I would talk about how the weather was suiting me, I would ask questions about my life like why I can’t seem to have a baby. I also tried bargaining but never had much luck with that. Although I never received an audible response, I did have answers from God. The answers came through His word. It is amazing to me how all of life’s problems could be answered while reading through the Bible. Until I became a Christian, I never read through the Bible. The Bible is truly a guide on how to live well and follow God. If you have not opened your Bible lately, 10/10 recommend. So armed with my Bible, and conversational skills, I started to talk more about what God has done for me to others. I became the person that I used to judge, I started sharing the good news of God. I began to write about his love for me and others. I started to write for fellow military wives and joined the Homefront Heros ministry (shameless plug for how much I love these women and the outreach they provide) and joined the prayer team at our church. I went, in the span of two years, from believing God hates me to knowing his never-ending love for me. If he can love me, with all my flaws, he sure can love you too. If you ever question your self-worth, the possibility of being loved, what life really means, or need to read a beautiful love story……open up your Bible and read through the countless broken people that were redeemed and used for God’s glory. These words have the ability to pour love into you when you are empty. I’m praying for you and hope you will introduce yourself to God with a hi, my name is.

Today I planted seeds for the first time in my life. Since our first wedding anniversary, I have been acquiring sunflower seeds from every single sunflower that my husband has gifted me, as well as others that were collected by my mother-in-love. I love sunflowers, in fact they were one of the flowers in my wedding bouquet. As a result, every year for our anniversary, my husband has my bouquet replicated and I save the seeds. The sunflowers themselves are exciting to me because there are so many different colors that were saved, but also because of the memories attached to the seeds. Some were from flower picking while I was pregnant with our daughter, others were from my thirty-first birthday bouquet that we picked together, with the help of our daughter. Some were from my husband’s cousin’s baby shower, and others were from flowers I received after the surgery that allowed me to get pregnant. Planting these seeds equate a garden of memories, each one beautiful and unique. When I think of it, I am planting more seeds than just sunflowers. This is an opportunity to plant the seeds of faith in our children. The analogy of planting faith as being like planting flowers never dawned on me until today. First, I had to dig rather deep in order to plant my flowers. I had to get around rocky soil, roots, and other obstacles in order to find the best soil. The next task was watering the soil because it was too dry for the seeds to take root. The third task was placing the seeds gently and covering them with the mud I made and patting the earth down. Finally, I watered over top of the rows where I planted the sunflowers and planned to check on them daily. The first task of getting through the obstacles in the soil is much like the word of God penetrating our souls. Due to original sin, and sometimes our own experiences, the Holy Spirit has to till around our heart in order to remove the rocks and bad roots in order to find fertile soil. Watering the soil occurs through receiving the Holy Spirit and eternal life. Planting and covering the seeds is what happens when we tell others about the word of God. The dirt is the circumstances of the world that may cover the seeds of faith that are planted in our hearts. When we plant these seeds and have good soil, we have the opportunity to grow in our faith. With strong roots and the living water, we can grow like my sunflowers and weather the storms of life. I never thought the act of gardening could be so much like my walk-in faith, but this is one of many instances where God’s lessons surround us in every aspect of our day. So, while I wait, and pray, for growth in my garden I will also be praying for growth in my faith as well as yours.

I grew up Catholic, so prayer was the sign of the cross and one of many prayers that were taught to me through my catechism classes. I never deviated from what I was taught. In fact, I couldn’t tell you how to pray if my life depended upon it. The unfortunate problem with that is that it wasn’t just my life that depended on prayer, but my soul as well. It wasn’t until I married my husband and walked away from my Catholic roots that I learned God wanted more than the muttering of words that I was taught when I was seven. God wanted a relationship with me, and to be fair, it’s impossible to have any sort of relationship without conversation. My first attempts at prayer were clumsy because I did not have a templet, other than the Lord’s Prayer, I did not know if there was an order or what God wanted to hear. I fumbled and babbled to God, mostly feeling like I was failing with my words and wondering if He could even answer prayers if there wasn’t an order to them. After a period of time of muddling through what felt like absolute chaos in prayer, I asked my husband and mother in love (mother in law is not the word I use, as you may recall from earlier posts) what should be included in my conversations with God. I was given three elements; praise, confession, and petition. Sounds pretty simple, right? We praise God for who he is and what he has done for us, we confess our sins and ask for forgiveness, and then we ask Him for our needs. A conversation can come from that fairly easily. As my prayer life developed, I found this not only becoming second nature, but I found that I had a lot to praise God for in my life. It’s funny how we can place things in perspective when we look for how to praise God. For example, it’s a dreary rainy day, but with that rain comes blooming flowers. It can be cold and snowy, well, that means my family gets to drink hot chocolate and watch movies together. Is it a hot, sunny day? Who wants to go swimming! The opportunities for praise become endless when we look for them. As for confession and forgiveness, I went from feeling shame each time I prayed to feeling grateful for being covered with grace despite doing nothing to earn it. It is so humbling to approach the throne of God at any time of day and admit that I made a mistake. The knowledge that God will forgive a repentant heart is so beautiful and encourages me to look at my children in the same way. It gives me the desire to give grace to others when they hurt me because I am given grace by God. Petitioning God for my wants or needs might be the most complicated part of prayer for me. I have a difficult time not being in control and laying petitions at the feet of God without picking the problem back up again. The hardest part of faith for me is relinquishing control to God. Believe me, I receive many opportunities, and I fail more often than not. But God hasn’t given up on me, and He will not give up on you. As we move through our prayer journey, there is always so much to learn about who we are in God and his desires for us. I pray that you will benefit from what I have learned about prayer and that you will find ways to grow in God.

How do we place value on a person? Have you ever wondered what makes someone worth more or less? Is there a special formula or boxes that need to be checked universally that calculates an individual’s worth? Is there a specific score that one must meet in order to be seen as worthy? Does that value change? The reason I ask is because I always wondered what would make me worthy in the eyes of another person. What adds or subtracts to my value to society as a whole, and why does whatever I do never feel like enough? I struggle with my self-worth and have most of my life. Being picked on in school did not help, having critical family members made things difficult, and honestly dating made me realize that I was not exactly model made. I spent a lot of time telling myself that I was fortunate to have anyone love me, even if they were not the right fit, because I was not worth a lot to myself. My self-worth was so non-existent that by the time I met my husband, I had a hard time believing that he thought I was beautiful, smart, funny, and truly loved me. For a long time, I thought he was with me to kill time until another woman came along, someone who was more attractive or smarter. I thought he deserved better. He never saw me that way, he even now thinks that I am smart and beautiful, as well as a good mother and wife. It wasn’t until I started reading about who God says I am that I was able to start to feel some stirrings of the positive attributes I have and what I give to my family, friends, and hopefully you who read this blog. The best phrase I ever heard about God is how amazing it is that the creator of heaven and earth looked at all the beauty he created and decided that it needed you. When you think about that, it’s encouraging because God thinks we are special. We are created in his image, and he loves us so much that he gave his only son for us. He gave his only son for you, so that you can have a relationship with him. When you look at it that way, you can feel the love radiating from God. Who else would give something so valuable for us? The value humanity places on us cannot compare to the value God does. No workout plan, diet, makeover, or fashion change can alter who God says we are and the value he places on our relationship with him. You are worthy. You have immense value. You matter. You are loved.

Sometimes, in this life, we meet people, or even a single person, that just sets our soul on edge. Everything about this person causes an inner turmoil that causes us to feel out of control. Satan uses that individual to tempt us into falling away from God’s desire for us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. For the past few years, I have experienced this scenario almost daily. There’s someone in my life who does not care about the pain and chaos they cause. This individual can be self-serving and deceitful, and I allowed myself to be drawn into the trap of anger from what felt like injustice in the world. I spent so many years in anger and bitterness that I began to focus solely on the unfairness of the situation and desiring to have control of the narrative. I used to desire for that person to receive their just desserts, I wanted them to feel even a quarter of what I did. That was the old me. The new me feels differently. I spent so much wasted time in hatred and anger. I allowed myself to fall into a pattern of allowing someone to steal my joy, but not anymore. In fact, I have begun to pray for this person who causes chaos. I have begun to feel sorry for them in a way. I have learned that hurt people hurt people. Those who are unhappy within themselves or their own life will project that and desire it for others too. It isn’t easy to choose to turn away from anger. It isn’t easy to turn the other cheek when someone is bismerching your name. It’s tempting to fall back into Satan’s trap and act out in pain. But do we really feel satisfied with ourselves when we allow that to happen? Do we feel guilt or shame for stooping to a level that Jesus made clear we need to avoid? Is the opinion of the world worth more than the opinion of God? Those were tough questions that I had to answer for myself. I needed to determine what my peace was worth to me. Was it more important to be right or obedient? That can be a tough question to answer in various seasons of our lives. It’s freeing to reach a point in our lives where God’s opinion is the one that matters rather than those in the world. Sometimes, we need a reminder that it’s not our will. It’s God’s will. Everyone in our life is placed there for a reason, whether good or bad, and our job in this world is not to take revenge but to be steadfast in God’s word. Vengeance belongs to God, not to me, and I can not take control of what is not mine.