Hey ladies! What a glorious day today has been. It was refreshing to have a downpour earlier. I am looking forward to cooler days already. By the end of summer break I am ready for fall. It is so hard to believe that September is almost here! Full stop. Where did this year go already?!
We just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary this past week and I am still just so happy to have gotten here. Yah is so good to us! I have been reflecting a lot lately and I am just in awe thinking about where we were back then compared to now. What a blessing it is!
As you are striving to be more Yeshua like, I pray it is getting easier. We all have areas we want to grow and sometimes the list seems so loooooooong! Especially when newer to following Yah or when we are just in a season where it is HARD! Girl, you are not alone!
It can feel so very overwhelming. It does not have to be but we certainly can do it to ourselves sometimes. Building better character, walking as Yeshua walked, following Adonai’s days and ways are just so GOOD. So many of us tend to go from one extreme to another with fixing our flaws, rooting out sins, training our children, strengthening our marriages, getting closer to our Father and becoming more like Yeshua Messiah.
What do I mean?
Well, if you are like me or many of the other women I know a big mistake gets made. In the process we get discouraged, burned out, feel like failures, struggle and whatever else we wind up doing and feeling like massive failures. Then our poor families can often get the brunt of it. Not always, but it can happen unfortunately. We can get crabby, snap or yell at them, be miserable, become disengaged among many other things that can happen when we do not pay attention and control it if any of those things do happen within us.
When I was pretty young, in my very early 20s, I was a relatively new wife, a new mom and a brand new believer all at the same time. I had so many flaws and sins I needed to change. I made a huge mistake which wound up making so much way harder than it had to be. Now, almost 20 years later I have learned along the way that I made a mistake when…
I tried to fix all of me at once…
That just does not work. I got so very overwhelmed and spent a lot of time feeling like an absolute failure. Prioritize and build on what you most want to work on and then work on that. For me, yelling would have been one of my biggest priorities at that time. I was a lot better by then but I still had a ways to go. Patience was another, compared to many around me, I did pretty good but that is irrelevant, it needed to improve too. I wanted to be a better homemaker. I wanted to cook better. I wanted to be a better wife and mom. I wanted to follow Yah perfectly. My list was long. In my effort to do better I wound up setting myself up for failure. It took a long time to get into my groove to accomplish what I wanted. I still have things I am working on, that will never change or go away. I do not personally believe it should, there is always room for growth. I do admit it can get very frustrating and annoying when something I got better in creeps in again. (um, unrealistic expectations much?)
We have to be realistic with expectations we place on ourselves
AND
expectations we place on others, especially our family
As you are working on yourself do not forget to extend grace, mercy, forgiveness and etc to yourself too. You need these from yourself just as much as we need to extend to others. Learn to forgive and repent when need to, apologize when should and never give up.
You will probably notice that as you work on your priorities that other things will fall into place. A couple of examples could be as your anger gets controlled better, you may notice yourself yelling less and having more patience. If you are not the type of homemaker you would like to be you may notice as you work on keeping clutter down that your house is cleaner more than you could keep it before and your overwhelm gets less.
As you work on a little bit at a time it gets easier for a lot of things. That does not necessarily mean you will never struggle at times or never do whatever it is again but you will hopefully have a better handle on it and potentially be able to cope with overcoming even a little easier the next time.
Do not compare yourself to other women. Every single one of us has our areas we need to do better. None of us has it all together. No matter how much it may look like it to others. You may actually excel at something or things that they struggle with personally. This is not a competition. This is where women helping each other is just so awesome. If you struggle with planning, seek out those who are amazing at it. I have a friend who is just wonderful at it. I learned she was not always like that and it is why she worked at it herself, now she encourages others! How wonderful! That is just one example, I know quite a few ladies who are amazing at certain things and that was not always the case for them. Other ladies stepped up and helped sometimes and also put in the HARD work.
Because it is hard work! Building character, growing the fruits of the Spirit
and walking as Yeshua walked is not easy. We walk the narrow path.
The narrow path leads to life!
We can do all things through Yeshua Who strengthens us!
You have got this lady and Yah has got you! As always, get into your Bible and talk to Yah a lot!
Do not give up and remember you and your family are worth the effort. I and many others know how hard some if it can be and we are praying for you.
Here is a podcast episode that you might enjoy that is meant to encourage women.
I am hoping to start posting more regularly again and do my newsletters weekly. I am figuring out a better schedule in my day to day and I think we got it worked out better for me to accomplish this too! If you want the newsletters please sign up below or email me at sharon@torahwoman.com with your first name and your email address.
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