Accepting the Unexpected Journey

I’ve had to grapple with the fact that perfectionism is a lonely space. A space where you know you should ask for help, where you shouldn’t go it alone, but something keeps telling you that to ask for help is to accept failure.

When you’re on a constant quest for small victories, small defeats can be crushing. And maybe that’s just what I was feeling. After all, some studies have shown that we need up to five positive experiences to outweigh a single bad experience. While that isn’t the case for every negative experience, the reality that many of us are dealing with is that we are just dealing with a lot.

I sat in an airport in Costa Rica with a crew of teenagers, preparing to return home to Houston after […]

And yet, as difficult as the last four years have been, they have also refined me. It has been painful and uncomfortable and full of loss, but I am a better person than I was four years ago. I believe that we can be a better and stronger country despite what the last four years have thrown at a lot of us. As a country we were able to ignore and deny many of the problems that have plagued us since our birth, but now we are forced to face those problems head on.

I know that after the dumpster fire that has been 2020, it seems foolishly optimistic to make any kind of resolutions for the new year, but maybe that’s why I decided it was time to do so. I’ve never been good at resolutions. I mean, who is? But I like setting semi-achievable goals for myself as I look to the future. My husband likes to call these my “Sarantees,” promises with good intentions that get forgotten in the shuffle. I guess a year will tell.

This year in preparation for Christmas, I’m participating in the #longingforthelight Advent Reflective Photo Challenge. It has been the perfect way to prepare my heart and mind for Christmas, especially with all things 2020 filling my head. This is the final week of Instagram posts of daily devotional thoughts.