Life is not easy. At least MY life hasn’t been easy….in fact most of my life I felt like was “swimming upstream” always trying to do the right thing and always feeling like I was falling just short of some distant goal that seemed to be perfectly attainable for everyone else, but for some reason I could never reach it. For the longest time I believed that no matter how hard I tried it was just never quite good enough. I felt that my heart was in the right place (or at least I tried very hard to make sure it was), but it seemed that my actions just never measured up to my own expectations and to the expectations of those around me. I strived to be involved in as many dutiful and pleasing events and activities as possible and sought guidance from those I thought to be more “spiritually mature” than I, but in the end I felt like a religious failure.

Tired of living most of my adult life feeling spiritually frustrated and confused, I decided that maybe the way I was viewing myself wasn’t the same way my creator saw me. This is when God led me to watershed. After a lot of introspection, prayer, discussion, and encouragement I came to an important realization. You see, I’ve always believed that I was a child of God and that He had a plan for me, but what I’ve come to realize is that it’s not as important WHERE  or WHAT I am on my spiritual journey as it is WHO I am in Christ.  I was too busy trying to figure out what my purpose was and how I was going to fulfill that purpose, but what I should have been doing is trying harder to figure out WHO God created me to be and how I could use that to glorify Him. I was trying to live up to somebody else’s expectation of what I should be doing. I felt that my attempts at spiritual growth were never good enough and that I always had work to do in order to be worthy of fulfilling some purpose God had set aside somewhere until I was someday, somehow, deemed worthy of my calling. Now, I felt God saying “something isn’t quite right with that assumption” “just focus on what is inside… who I created you to be and let Me worry about the details of where and when you will be asked to carry out My plans for you”.

It was sort of a strange concept at first that God really loves me enough to let me be me and not only is he letting me be me, He really wants me to be the person He designed me to be and He wants me to enjoy all that he has created for me. After truly recognizing that God was speaking to me and accepting what He had to say, I started to feel an incredible sense of freedom! I felt free to not only see myself as one of God’s children, but also to let the world see me hidden in Christ, fully aware that I am definitely not without imperfection but Christ most certainly is. I am thankful and overjoyed to find an authentic community of believers that shares a common belief that we are all uniquely created and individually gifted to do God’s work by caring for and serving others. It has been incredibly educating and rewarding to BE the church. Not only appearing on Sunday to be seen or even just to worship, but arriving to share and celebrate all of the wonderful things God is doing in our life on a day to day basis. There are many days that life is still not easy but it is definitely more purposeful and enjoyable and I thank God that my husband, children, and I have been able to connect to such a genuinely supportive and caring family.