Author: Kris Valdez

My cell phone flew out of my hand as the words “STOP, ejected from my mouth. A crunch of metal and glass braking was the response. My thoughts rattled around my head as I worked to make sense of what happened. We’d been hit broadside by a truck without headlights at an intersection with a broken streetlight. 

The culmination of these factors resulted in us being unable to see the navy blue truck as it drove down the highway and made a left-hand turn. My husband was able to move our truck out of the intersection so we didn’t get hit again by oncoming traffic, which couldn’t see us in the dark. 

While I called 911, my fear and anxiety rose as the other driver tried to leave the accident scene. Thankfully, his truck was in equally bad shape and had become undrivable, but it didn’t stop him from moving it farther down the road until the truck quit. 

My kids’ cries had turned to whimpers, tearing at my heart more than the crying. Yet, they were putting on a brave face.

Our truck that we had sent in the last payment on Monday before the accident was totaled. There was no saving it. The truck had done its job and saved our family, but one kiddo came away with a concussion. He and I rode to the hospital in the back of the ambulance. After X-rays and CT scans, we were cleared to go home with some bumps and bruises. 

To this day, I hate that intersection. It’s located at the entrance to our neighborhood, so there is no avoiding it. My pulse races when I need to make a left-hand turn. I worry the accident will repeat itself. The intersection is notorious for accidents, and when our little town has the money, I’ve been told it’s at the top of the list for improvements. Unfortunately, the future enhancements don’t help me with my fear and anxiety.      

Fear and anxiety. Anxiety and fear. They go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or peas and carrots. Or the sun and the moon. Or the water and sand. We can’t have one without the other, except for the peanut butter and jelly when my kids put an empty jelly jar back in the fridge. So then, I only have peanut butter.   

I want to preface this post by saying I am not a licensed therapist. I am not a person who is an expert in mental health. I also did not sleep at a Holiday Inn last night. If you don’t know the Holiday Inn commercial, look here. 

My advice comes from the heart of a person who’s been through a little bit of hell, and I’ve come out singed but still moving forward. I’ve visited numerous counselors over the years. Therapy and I are a little like peas and carrots. We’ve gone well together over the years.  

For me, fear and anxiety stem from a lack of trust. Being hurt by those closest to me over the years had led me to have difficulting trusting. It might be a lack of trust in those around me. It might be a lack of trust of those in authority over me. I can’t be sure if people in authority have my best interests at heart. 

However, the most significant loss I feel is when I don’t trust God. My fear and anxiety are magnified when I try to make things happen in my timing and through my efforts. I fear that I haven’t been a good mom. I fear I haven’t been a good wife. I fear I haven’t been enough for God. 

These fears then translate into anxiety. The anxiety of striving to do better, be more and do more things. My to-do list gets more extensive, and all I feel is exhaustion. Then the fatigue fuels the fear that I’m not doing enough, which leads to more anxiety. It creates a cyclical relationship that is not healthy for me. Aren’t you glad you’re not inside my head? It’s a busy place. 

My anxiety stems from the lies of the enemy. The enemy tries to convince us that we are not enough for God. 

We are enough already. 

I want to say that again, so the people in the back hear me. We are enough for God.

We can come before Him with our battered souls looking for refuge and relief. There’s nothing more we need to do to earn His love. We only need to love Him in return. So be obedient to His Word. And pursue the calling He has placed in each one of our lives. 

In my experience, when I’m stepping outside of my calling and stepping away from God’s will is when I have my greatest fear and anxiety crawl through me. It’s when I haven’t laid down my desires and my dreams at Jesus’ feet. 

This might not be the case for everyone, but this is the case for me. When I feel like God is calling me to do something and I run in the opposite direction because the thing He is asking me to do is too scary. It’s in the running away when God gets my attention. 

I’ve never spent three days in the belly of a fish, but I have spent time being disciplined by God. He doesn’t discipline me because He’s mad at me. Instead, he disciplines me because He loves me too much to leave me alone. 

Assuming you are a Christian, God is pursuing you too. God will not force His way into our lives, but when we invite Him into our daily thoughts and feelings, He shows up in a big way. He may not answer our prayers the way we want or hope, but God has a bigger plan for our lives than we can imagine. 

Fear is an effective tool for the enemy. It’s one he’s wielded since time began. And he’s only gotten better at using it. The good news? He is already defeated. He is not allowed to control our minds and our thoughts. If we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts, no other spiritual being can live there. We can push him and his lies out of our lives. Fear and anxiety can have a grip on our lives that seems unbreakable. But we can break the cycle. Here are five steps to put us on the road to recovery:

1. Pray. If you’ve struggled with fear and anxiety as I have, you’ve probably heard of doing this step before. The reason it’s first is that it’s the most critical step in the process. Praying is simply reaching out to God and asking for help. If you’re at a point where words are beyond you, God even listens to our groanings, can understand them, and answer them. He wants to help us in our troubles, but we must ask for help. First, we have to engage with Him. I engage with God by writing my prayers down. I also work to communicate with Him throughout the day. In a recent blog post, I talked about how I train myself to think of God every time I pick up my phone throughout the day. 

2. Pursue. Get into God’s Word. Yes, here’s this piece of advice again. Read God’s love letter to you. It is a love letter. Some of the Old Testament is hard to read or understand. Like why is there so much violence? But the Old Testament is a cautionary tale of why we must always walk with God. When I read the Bible, I see God as giving the descendants of Abraham all the chances to be obedient. God was more tangible and evident in the Old Testament than He might be today. When the Israelites were leaving Egypt, they didn’t have the advantage of the written Bible. They were following Moses. A guy that had been exiled from Egypt for killing a guard. When Moses returned to Egypt to free them, the Israelites didn’t trust him. Moses had to cast a vision for them of freedom born out of God’s will for all of us. They eventually followed Moses because they saw God’s power in the plagues brought onto Egypt. The Israelites could see God at work. He parted the Red Sea to aid in their escape. They followed a pillar of fire at night, guiding them to Promise Land. A pillar of fire! As a former firefighter, God is speaking my love language of following a fire. He fed them daily with mana and eventually birds. The Israelites could see God’s presence. Yet, as time passed, they forgot all God had done for them. We can forget all God has done for us too. We need reminders by staying in God’s Word to witness how God has shown up in the Bible. We also need to track how God shows up in our lives. I keep track of this in my gratitude and prayer journals. Yes, I have quite a few journals I write in daily. When I travel, one side of my suitcase is filled with journals and books. Making the luggage weight limit is always challenging, but it is worth keeping track of everything God has done for me. 

3. People. Get with people. Yes, those introverts in the room are cringing right now. But finding a support system of like-minded people will help immensely with combating fear and anxiety. It could be one other person. It shows us we are not alone. The Bible says in Matthew 18:20 (NIV). “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” where two or more are gathered, the Lord is in their presence.” God did not expect us to do this life alone. He wants us to be part of a community. He wants us to form bonds where He is the tie that binds us. I’m not talking about romantic relationships here. I’ve noticed my friendships with nonbelievers are different than those with believers. It doesn’t mean my friendships are any less, but there is a deeper connection with believers. We have an eternal bond. We know our lives are connected through a loving Savior. We can hold each other up. Ecclesiastes 4:10 (NLT) says, “If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.” Ask God to bring people into your life that will help you grow closer to Him. Ask for friends who put God first in their lives. I’m putting a word of caution here. People are not perfect. We can’t look for them to be perfect. The only perfect person to walk this Earth was Jesus. He alone can heal our wounds. However, some people walk alongside us on the journey to wholeness with God. 

4. Praise. Fear and anxiety shrink when we praise our God. Praise looks different for everyone. One person may sing praise during the worship portion of the church service in a room full of people on a Sunday morning. Another person views pouring out their praise as a quiet time journaling their hearts to God. Other people praise through being in nature, taking in all God has created. The point is God has uniquely designed us for our own worship. There isn’t a right or wrong way to worship as long as it is in keeping with His Word. We need to cry out to God from our bondage and let go of the fear that is locking our hearts. In the Old Testament, we see God allowing His people to be taken into bondage by neighboring countries. God didn’t want to let this happen, but the people had hardened their hearts to God’s leading and instruction. Before you say, well, God doesn’t sound very nice. Why would He put His people through that? He did it because He loved them. He loved them enough to allow them to make their own choices. Choices that brought them closer to God and choices that took them further away. Our daily choices have the same outcome. We either take one step closer to God, or we take one step farther away. When we praise, it takes us one step closer to God. I understand praising God in our fear and out of our anxiety is easier said than done. No amount of my writing skills can wave a magic wand to make it all better. There are times when we need specialized help. This leads me to point number five.  

5. Professional. Seek help from a professional. One of the words used to describe God is the Counselor. He guides our lives. He provides guidance when we ask for it. He places people in our lives to help us draw closer to Him on our journey. Counseling has gotten a bad rap in the Christian community. I’m not sure why some people look down on getting professional help during times of trouble, but God was the one that started counseling. He is the original Counselor. I’ve seen different counselors over the years in some form or fashion. When fear, anxiety, and hurt threaten to swallow you whole, it’s time to seek out a professional.

My heart still races when I approach the intersection of our accident, but it reminds me to lift up a prayer to God for safe travel and a statement of praise when I make a successful left-hand turn to head out of our neighborhood. I haven’t conquered fear and anxiety in all areas of my life, but I use these five steps as a roadmap to victory. So how do you overcome your fear and anxiety? 

Sheets cocooned me in a warm embrace. The sun poked its rays through the gaps in my blind. Yet, the thought of releasing myself from bed did not fill me with joy. I didn’t feel like rising and shining and giving God glory. I wanted a few more minutes of shut-eye. I wanted to enjoy my freshly washed sheets before the day bombarded me with demands. Essentially, I didn’t feel like playing the roles God had given me – wife, mom, employee, daughter, sister, and my most important role of being part of His kingdom.  

Nope. I didn’t feel like adulting.

The sheets begged me to stay in their comfortable confines. My bed was warm and luxurious. The cold wood floor of my bedroom awaited my feet. But, alas, the pull of the bathroom was stronger than the luxury of the sheets. So my day started even if I didn’t feel like it. 

Feelings have a sneaky way of getting in the way of our relationship with God. When we allow feelings to run our life, they mislead us in the way God wants us to go. They can draw us away from the best path God has designed for us.

Consider running your feelings by God before believing them. I journal out my feelings. I write in my journal. Daily. Without fail. There isn’t a set page limit or timeframe I adhere to. It’s about writing out what I need to at that given moment. I do a more extended writing time in the morning and a few lines in the evening to close out my day. It allows me to process my day, write a few lines about what happened, and let it go so that I can rest. But, if you’d like a free download of my journal, grab it here. If you’d like a paperback version of my journal, you can order it from Amazon. 

My journaling is a commitment to myself to write like no one is reading. It allows me to process all the pain and sorrow in my life—more on the pain and sadness I’ve been experiencing in the upcoming blog posts.     

We must include God in our feelings. Unfortunately, I’m guessing we check in with our cell phones more than with God. On average, smartphone users look at their phones more than 344 times a day. A day! Making it close to addiction when we read an email, text, or alert on average every four minutes. I’m not here to speak of the woes of smartphones and attention spans. I am speaking on how it impacts our feelings and our most important relationships. 

I started noticing when I picked up my phone. I grab my phone to escape a feeling I’m experiencing, or I’m having a hard time creating something. I put my phone in the other room to write this blog post, but I’m still getting pings on my watch, tempting me to grab my phone. Curiosity demands to be satisfied. But what’s more important? Should I satisfy my feeling of curiosity or do what I’m called to do? It feels easier to pick up my phone than work through the next sentence. Hence the reason the phone is in the other room. 

After I heard the statistic of how many times people grab their phones during the day, I decided to seek out God rather than my phone. Paul, the apostle in the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (NLT), states, “Never stop praying.” So every single time I want to pick up my phone to escape a feeling would mean, on average, I would reach out to God 344 times a day to have my feelings satisfied in Him.

It’s essential to run our feelings to God. He wants to lead us and guide us on the best path for us. He is the one who must be Lord over our lives. Not feelings.

How do you deal with feelings? What reminder do you want to put in place as a reminder? Is it every time you pick up your phone? Let me know in the comments. 

“Pants! You need pants!” I shouted. My eyes glanced outside at the snow peacefully falling, but my insides were boiling enough to melt the new snow. “We are leaving in five minutes for school. Jeans are necessary on a snowy day.”

“They’re too tight. I can’t make it on the stairs to the second floor. I’ll never make it to my classroom.”

He wasn’t running the Alaskan Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race here; he was walking one flight of stairs to meet his teacher. His jeans were baggy on him, which was confirmed by him putting his hands around his hips inside his jeans’ waistband, simultaneously pulling them down.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Keep your jeans on and get your snow pants on, too,” I fumed. Seriously, I thought to myself; it’s jeans. You’d think I’d asked my child to wear a suit and tie to school based on the tears flowing down his cheeks. 

“I can’t do it. I just want a happy life.”

“Don’t we all, kid,” I murmured under my breath. He needed to surrender. My son finally raised the white flag, conceded to wearing jeans, sniffled, then got into the car with his backpack in one hand and a freshly toasted bagel in the other. Wasn’t a cream cheese filled bagel the key to a happy life on a cold, winter morning?      

No sense of victory flowed through me, only defeat. I surrendered to the cruel voice in my head, shouting, “See, you lost your temper again. Way to be the mom of the year.” 

Am I the only one hearing a critical voice when making mistakes and then surrendering to the belief that it’s true? I hope not. 

My voice comes around so often; I gave her a name. World, meet Becky. Becky is the scathing voice pouring judgment down from her perfect perch. Becky’s voice mocks me that surrendering is for losers. “If you’re not number one, you’re the first loser,” she crows. Surrendering means defeat. It’s confirmation of being less than, not enough. Becky is the voice of the world. I was surrendering to the wrong voice.

Reading any parable in Jesus’ ministry, he shows us the opposite is true. Surrender isn’t for the weak loser; it’s for the strong warrior.

James 4:7 (ESV) states, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Guess what, Becky? You’re the voice of my enemy. When I submit myself to God’s authority, the devil flees from me. Surrendering or submitting myself to God’s control comes with a price. The price is giving up the way I want to do things, the way I control my life or think I control my life. It means living in the unknown, doing what I believe God had called me to do while leaving the outcomes up to God. 

Being out of control terrorizes my Type A personality. It’s an illusion I’ve clung to my entire life. I’ve got this. Everything’s fine. All good. Nothing to see here. 

I’m allowing Becky’s voice to criticize me and take me down. See, when it’s all up to me, I take all the responsibility. Good or bad. When I surrender the outcomes up to God, He’s responsible for it all. I’m along for the ride. 

However, I’m not a passive passenger on this journey. God asks all of us to be part of spreading the Good News. The Good News of eternal life, forgiveness, and loving our neighbors and enemies. It’s part of our calling. 

Have you given yourself permission to lay your calling and all that entails down to God? What do you need to surrender? Share it in the comments below so we can encourage you and pray for you.     

Can you feel that? It’s the excitement in the air. There’s a new movement. The movement is about getting back to basics. I’m not talking minimalism here, but it could be an outcome of this journey. The journey to creating the life God intended for you. The life you are meant to live. 

Living the authentic life. 

Yes, it’s time to make a declaration. Time for making changes. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s resiliency. Making the most of what God has gifted us. Not only has 2020 shifted my priorities, but it’s also provided a bold new direction for this blog. The blog’s gone from Not Prefect, but Present to Living the Authentic Life. I’m thrilled you are taking this journey with me. I’ve been writing around this topic for years but calling it by different names. Instead of writing circles around it, I’m declaring it. God wants us living with authenticity. 

My goal is to teach and equip women how to live their most authentic lives for God. If this resonates with you, welcome to the Living the Authentic Life tribe. I’m gently be calling us out to live the authentic life. To stop hiding behind the figurative mask. We’re all wearing a literal mask in public these days. I’m taking this journey right alongside you.   

Trust me when I say that I do not have living the authentic life all figured out. I still fall into old, comfortable patterns that don’t serve my goals or intentions. Some days I take the easy way out. I’m working on getting into the habit of asking myself, how is this activity or action leading me closer to my goals? 

The Netflix marathon of NCIS I held yesterday did nothing on my walk to growing closer to who I believe God wants me to be. Instead, I checked out, and I’m embarrassed to say, I fell asleep during one episode, and during the rest of the episodes, I was playing a matching game on my phone. Not exactly a recipe for expanding my horizons.  

I admit. It was an easy route. As humans, we gravitate towards what’s comfortable. Part of living the authentic life is working through troubles. God doesn’t call us to a comfortable life. I used to bristle at this statement. I felt I was already working as hard as possible; why wasn’t God making my life easier? Nope. He said it would be harder. 

James 1:2-4 (NLT) states, “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”

The verse doesn’t even say if you have trouble. It’s when you have problems. God doesn’t want to give us a more comfortable life. My selfishness and provide reared its ugly head when I thought that life is already hard enough, there’s no relief in sight, and now you’re telling me to consider it a great joy? 

Really, God?

Why does God tell us there is an opportunity for great joy in our troubles? I’ve found in my life there is a difference between joy and happiness. Joy comes from God; happiness comes from my attitude. Which one has a never-ending supply, and which one relies on me? Joyfulness comes from God. Happiness, well, comes and goes based on our circumstances.  

Continually connecting with God makes feeling joyful an easier process. I’ve been locked in a battle with my ex-husband over custody issues, child support, and child-related expenses. I fully expected a positive outcome and for God to show up, proving how slighted I’d been over the years. The slighted part is from my perspective. Not God’s. 

That positive outcome? The opposite happened. 

My ex-husband was given more custody, child support was a simple mathematical calculation, and the reimbursement I was expecting didn’t happen. It was the opposite of what I declared in victory during my quiet time. It was the opposite of what I’d been praying for throughout this year-long ordeal with the courts. I was angry at God. I was mad at the outcome. Once again, it proved that God didn’t care about what I’d been praying for throughout the process. 

It was all a lie from the enemy. 

I wept when things said about me weren’t true. I could prove it wasn’t true. In writing. 

Guess what? 

The court mediator is there to make a deal. They don’t care who is right and wrong or what is said about the other person. While I was angry at God during this process, He was beside me. Weeping. He saw my pain, but I believed the lie that He didn’t care. The lie that he wasn’t orchestrating this process. Nothing comes at me unless it has allowed by God. I forgot that amid my troubles.   

When trouble comes our way, it reveals our real character. It puts on full display where our foundation is placed. The decisions around my ex-husband only recently were finalized, and it remains to be seen how God is working this together for my good. 

What this experience showed me is that my relationship and reliance on Jesus is not as strong as it should be. I didn’t step back and say the situation is in God’s hands. I stepped in and told God what should have happened. Essentially, I took God’s place. Nothing good comes out of stepping into God’s shoes. 

I wasn’t living the authentic life He called me to because I thought I knew better than the One who created me.

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We’re getting the blog back together. It’s like getting a band back together. Only this is writing, not music and it’s me getting back on the blog bandwagon after an unintended two-year break.  

After a long hiatus and putting together what I want this blog to look like in the future, my advisory team, consisting of my friends and family, decided to take the blog in a new direction. It’s based on what we’ve been through, how we’ve grown, and how we’ve learned to be more authentic with each other and being authentic with ourselves when we’re sitting alone with our thoughts. I want to create the most authentic life I can.

Being authentic means being true to ourselves and how God has created us to be. 

First, I want to cover what being authentic isn’t on this blog. It’s not about airing the dirty laundry of my life in the full view of my readers without purpose. It’s not about dissecting grievances about what is going on in my life for no reason. It’s not about writing and publishing whatever jumps into my brain and pushed through my fingers on a keyboard. 

Now, hear this. Please. This blog is about opening up my life and my struggles with you. Guess what? This does mean airing out some of the dirty laundries of my life for a reason. It does mean dissecting my grievances for a purpose. Here’s the difference between moving from venting and complaining to teaching and healing. I plan to use my mistakes and struggles to encourage you to live the authentic life God wants you to live. Showing you the truth of my heart will hopefully speak to strengthening your authentic heart. 

I hope you will come along on this journey with me. It’s one that’s taking me a time of reflection and consideration with my Creator figuring out how to live my most authentic life. My hope is you’ll learn from my discoveries and my mistakes so I’m changing this blog to reflect the growth that I’ve taken over the last few years.

Here’s a sneak peek about what we’ve going to be delving into together:

• Mindset matters and it could be what’s holding us back,
• Living the authentic life every day with God and what that looks like, 
• Being intentional by keeping track of what’s important in our life,
• Impactful daily affirmations in our lives. 

My goal is for this blog to be a resource when you need to add a little pep in your step. A positive push in the direction you need to travel to be your best self. It’s about creating a community of connections with others to find and live our true selves. 

What do you think about the new direction of the blog? How are you struggling to live your most authentic life? What does it look like for you to live the authentic life? 

Let me know in the comments below or if that feels too open, reach out to me through my email. 

Welcome to June. It’s the month of weddings and celebrations. The invitations for these events come in all shapes and sizes. Most invitations provide an indication of what type of event it will be.

Fancy invitations with gold foil writing will probably mean an extravagant wedding. A destination event might have a fun font with different colors to show the playful atmosphere which awaits the guests.

However, there is one invitation that is all about you.

God has an invitation engraved with your name on it.

The table is set, candles are lit, and the enticing aromas of your favorite foods are wafting in from the kitchen to the dining room.

Created all for you.

Waiting for you.

All you need to do is merely accept the great adventure God has waiting for you.

God has more planned out for us than we could ever dream or imagine.

Oh, how often I have sold God short because I don’t believe He will do what is best for me. I think He’s holding out on me.

The lie that God is holding out on us is as old as time. It’s the lie Satan used to steal Eve’s heart from God.

In a way, God is holding out. He’s waiting for me to step out in faith. He has called us all to do something special in His kingdom. He understands our doubts. He understands our fear. He understands our need for reassurance. What He doesn’t want from us is, not me God. Please choose someone else. He has set before us the desire to do something radical for Him. God can only fill that emptiness we feel. The void begins filling by being obedient to Him.

God’s invitation to step out of our comfort zone isn’t easy to accept. There are things I believe God has called me to do which I don’t want to do. I think these requests are beneath me. Then I hear the whisper of God’s voice, “Are you willing to surrender your pride to please me?”

Part of this adventure is to surrender. When we accept the invitation to step into all that God has laid out for our lives, it means we must check our ego at the door and tear up the claim ticket.

We must give everything over to God to live the life He has invited us to live with Him.

We must give everything over to God to live the life He has invited us to live with Him. Share on X

The adventure won’t be straightforward. Sometimes the best adventures are the ones which are the toughest. Growing up, taking vacations were a luxury and not often done in our family. Don’t feel too sorry for me, we had a swimming pool in the backyard, so it was like we were on vacation every day of the summer. This particular summer, my family planned a trip out west. Little did my parents know it would fuel my love of the mountains. The mountains kept calling to me after this trip, and I answered by going to college in Utah, then settling in Colorado in an attempt to be an adult.

On this trip to beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park we rented a motorhome. In my small child perspective, this vehicle was massive. I eagerly packed my belongings in the nooks and crannies allowed me. As we set out, the mountains of the west filling our windshield and the plains of the Midwest in our rearview mirror, we looked forward to the adventure ahead. An adventure it was.

The motorhome broke down in Gillette, Wyoming. Not precisely the spectacular venue we were hoping for on the trip. For three days, the motorhome sat in a mechanics garage while we spent our time reading or wandering the streets of Gillette. The wandering didn’t take long, so we mostly plowed through the pile of books we brought allow for the long hours on the road.

While this wasn’t the adventure we had planned and I’m sure my siblings and myself complained more than once about being bored, it was this detour which provided the best stories from the trip. We laugh about it now, but at the time, it was uncomfortable, stressful, and not the fun time we had anticipated. However, we still talk about it at family gatherings with fondness and laughter.

The adventure God takes us on is sometimes the same way. He needs us to grow closer to Him before the fun stuff starts. We need to become the light to lead others behind us on the path we’ve already taken.

In 2 Corinthians 2:14, it says, “But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume.”

We are to lead others along our adventure. The adventure could be a cautionary tale, or it could be an inspirational triumph. Either way, we are to share the Good News which God has called us to share.

Have you accepted the invitation for an adventure from God? Why or why not? Share it in the comments below to help others.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

You are a warrior. I am a warrior. We are warriors. It might not be self-evident when our image is reflected back to us in the mirror. But you my friend, are a warrior.

There are many things we battle against in our lives. It could be an unexpected illness, a marriage we didn’t expect to crumble in ashes around us, or an enemy we fight against unseen.

All of these events can knock us down, wondering where to get up, let alone move forward. It’s in these moments where we need to choose between being a warrior or allowing the enemy to defeat us and keep us down.

See, the enemy of God is also our enemy. When we become a Christian, we inherit eternal life, enter into forgiveness and grace, and receive mercy we don’t deserve.

Something else comes along with this fantastic, awe-inspiring package. It’s an element of not so awesomeness.

We receive an enemy. An enemy we need to fight against readily.

I want to point out immediately; we do not have to fear this enemy. Jesus has already defeated Satan on the cross at Calvary.

This enemy has plans to bring us harm and take us down whenever there is a chance. In John 10:10 (NKJV) it says, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.”

Our enemy pulls no punches. He knows the exact arrows to sling at our soul to pierce our hearts. There are times where this piercing stops us; pushes the air out of our lungs with the force of the whisper. It says, “You’re not enough. You’re not worth the effort. You have nothing to say or contribute, therefore, stay silent.”

The enemy wants to keep us from God’s best for us. He uses these lies to hurt us to the point where we can’t move toward the goal God has put before us. While the enemy may knock us down, God has already provided a way for us to get up again.

The enemy wants to keep us from God’s best for us. While the enemy may knock us down, God has already provided a way for us to get up again. Share on X

How do we get back up again?

We fight the lies of the enemy with God’s Truth.

When we hear that we are not enough, read 2 Corinthians 3:5 (NLT), where it says, “It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God.”

When we hear that we’re not worth the effort, read Matthew 6:26 (NLT), where it says, “Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?”

When we hear that we have nothing to contribute or say, read Ephesians 4:29 (NIV) “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

God provides an answer and rebuttal to every single one of the enemy’s lies. Leaning into God and trusting what He’s given us whether it be trials or blessings is for our best, will make us better warriors for Him.

On this Memorial Day weekend, celebrate all warriors, including the one in yourself.

Do you see yourself as a warrior? Why or why not? Share it in the comments below to encourage others.