Goodbye the warfare year of 2024, Hello the restful arms of Christ
Hello dearest friends, Happy New Year!
Whew! I am so glad that this year has come to an end, and I am embracing the fresh year with earnest arms waiting for rest and healing.
This year has been one of the most challenging years of my time on this planet. Let alone, completely uprooting myself from everything I've ever known to a brand new adventure, learning things about myself that are not the prettiest, and the turmoil that I have left unhealed for years.
However there has been glimpses of beauty and light and happiness that also blessed our lives this year as well, we just have to search our bank of memories for them. With this fresh chance of the New Year, or a fresh era, I want to encourage you to prune your dead branches and cut that off, allowing essential new life to be formed around, and inside of you.
Let me explain a few things I have learned about myself this year, some not so great and some not so bad. Let’s start with the ugly ones first.
1. I have an anger problem, or idiotic response…. I get quick to answer and even quicker to speak on subjects that my feelings, respect, or pride has been tempered with. This is NOT something that I want to continue to live with, but breaking a generation curse is one of the hardest things I feel we have to endure. There is one person in particular, that I can think of in my old daily life (heartbrokenly, she has been reunited with Jesus, so it has been a while since I have been with her) My Nana, was the most gentlest, calmest, full of life and love….everything that I desperately am craving for myself. I feel like a huge culprit in my life that makes me have anger problems, is the inadequacy that I feel when I open my social media. The perfect marriage, perfect children, perfect house…. Just perfect hogwash! You do it to so don’t judge me haha, but I start to have a sense of panic and discontent that I am nothing or why does nothing good happen to us. Let me tell you really quick, those are lies and weapons used against you from the enemy! He knows what will make you mad, he has watchers that tell him anything and everything you are doing and how he can cause you to doubt and to just mistrust God. Once I figured this out, I can now pin point exactly what is true and what is not, what is really happening and what is not.
Yes, my husband and I do fight but it doesn’t have to be a complete tear down each time. We can have a disagreement and then respect each other to calm down. But, with the lies on social media that are constantly being fed to us with perfect pictures (they make me happy too, so not all is bad) I am talking about the rubbish of people who act as if they never have bad days or they never struggle with money. But that can be a whole post within itself, but yes, I need to center myself and calm myself. And I am and have learned exactly what is making me so triggered and how to react with grace and just move on to something that delights my soul, instead of trying to act as if I need to save the world. Jesus already did that. I just need to rest in him and do what he has called me to do.
2. I am a struggling perfectionist. I will have here some traits that I have found in myself that have been instilled with me from an early age.
Perfectionism is a personality trait that involves setting unrealistic expectations for oneself or others. Fear or failure, self criticism, obsessive thinking, reassurance seeking, unattainable goals, increased stress, lowered self worth, anxiety, depression and social anxiety.
Let’s talk about this for a second, and this may ruffle some feathers in my personal life, I felt that with being the baby of the family (siblings and cousins) I had to constantly prove myself worth being around and or talked to for the matter. I was put in a private school due to our living conditions out in the country but wanting to stay close to my moms work. At the time, public school was too full so I was put in a Lutheran Private School. Which I loved! But we, as the students, had a higher standard set for us by our parents, teachers, etc. We had a lot of homework. We had a lot of advanced classes. I felt like we had no life outside of school and homework and we couldn’t be kids. So I had it instilled in my brain that I need to be perfect. I had to be on time, I had to go to school everyday to get an award, and If I got a B, I was in big trouble…. When high school came around I went to public school, which I could relax a little a do more activities outside of homework. I put myself on a strict schedule to make up for all the time that I lost, I made variety dance team as a freshman, I got a big role in the musicals each year, I was active in student government because I had to! I didn’t, but in my mind, I had to prove I was worth something, I had to prove I can do it all. I had to fight for my life in the eyes of society.
The perfectionist in me had to win, I had to be the best and perfect. Do you know the havoc that wrecked on my younger self and causing a lot of pain I wish I could take away… I have now enveloped a sense that if I can’t do it perfect I shouldn’t even try anything. If I get off on my to do list and I don’t get everything checked then I have massive failure thoughts because I just set to high of goals. Hence why my blog and YouTube channel haven’t had anything on them in a very long time because of this feeling of failure if I am not living my life as I did.I am slowly learning that I don’t need to perfect or have a fear of failure, I just need to try my best and see what happens, I don’t need to have it all together, I can leave dishes in the sink, but this is something that is really hard for me to break.
3. This is one for everyone. I am a sinner, and so are you. This is something that we all will never get away from, until we die. But this is not all bad because you get to bond with Jesus in a way that you never thought possible. Something different that I have been doing is reading a book instead of just reading the Bible for my morning coffee date with Jesus. In one of the books I am reading
He goes further into the Bible Verse
He always lives to make the intercession for them Hebrews 7:25
In other words, Jesus is praying for you, every single day, every single second. There is nothing that he is not fighting for you. He wants you to join him in heaven, he knows you are a sinner but that makes him love you even more! Everything that you hate about yourself, he loves those parts the most, he loves you for you. There is nothing that you can do that he will not be pleading for you in the court of heaven.
“Our sinning goes to the uttermost. But his saving goes to the uttermost. And his saving always outpaces and overwhelms our sinning, because he always lives to intercede for us.” - Dane Ortlund.
Therefore yes, I just dragged out some dirty laundry for you. I have some new goals for this year that I think are attainable for myself.
A New Era
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A New Era 〰️
Developing a gentle and quite spirit. (This one may take a lot of work but I want to make it right)
If it can be sold, it can be made (embracing the life of slow living again)
Letting my husband lead (letting him lead our home to heal him as well. Locking up my alpha wolf inside that needs to be cooled off)
Paying with cash and cash budgeting (I feel like I spend less when I only have cash to use and my card for bills and or emergencies)
Waking and sleeping with the birds ( I am a morning person, I love to watch the sunrise, and have my own time before the world wakes up. I have gotten out of this habit but I am making it happen again)
Learning to work with my brain and body, not against it. (Seeing what works for me and how to keep it up)
Romanticizing my life where it as currently, yes we currently live in a camper but we are hoping by this end of 2025 we will have a perfect little farm for us. And let me be clear, this was by choice to sell our old home, we found that we can be happy with less and we have more freedom.
Diving deeper into my faith with God. I have a strong faith, but I have areas that I need him to fill more.
Start painting again, I am not a great painter but I want to better myself with practice and learning how to paint things that bring me joy instead of trying to copy another’s art.
Finish my ebook. It takes time, but I need to be focused.
You don’t need to wait until its a new year for you to change your life, or to better understand areas that need a little polishing and fixing. You don’t need to wait to have it all together to start on your dream life, or living in your purpose. That was a hard pill to swallow for me this past year because I was always making excuses on why I couldn’t write on my blog (because I haven’t made a ton on money on it yet), so I needed to do other things that would give me more of an accomplishment. I couldn’t film because I needed to have everything perfect (the perfectionist in me) I needed to know and how to get the best angle and footage for anyone to watch it. I couldn’t sit down to work on my hobbies because the house needed to be picked up or the laundry needed to be folded, which ended up not getting folded for 2 weeks and me overthinking every little thing because its not perfect enough or the situation isn’t right.
That is no way to live my friend, it is harmful to do to yourself over and over, letting the enemy tell you, you will never add up to what is required of you. Letting him make you believe you will never be enough, (and for some people you won’t be, and you don’t need to be) that you will never succeed unless you have x,y,z…..
The best advice that I can give you as a friend through a screen, learn the enemies lies, that faster you learn that, the quicker you can go and make the proper battle outfit to just get through the day. You may not be enough to people in your life, the people on the internet, the people who think they can control who’s in and who’s out. But you are ENOUGH for God. You are enough for your husband, and you are enough for your children. All you have to do is focus on God, his word and his calling in your life, and focus on healing yourself in ways that make your garden flourish, and God will tell you over and over again, all you have to do is trust in him.
On that note, I am wishing you a wonderful start to your New Year, your healing, but sending you nourishing rain for your garden.
Love,
Taylor
