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<\/a>Through it all however, I\u2019ve had the God of the mountain with me through the valleys. This journey of life is not one that I would want to take without God by my side. I pray that you have peace in your life because you\u2019ve asked God to join you as well.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I find my choice of repeat blog posts interesting this morning. It seems I am at a crossroad with Full Measure of Joy<\/em> again. I am finding it difficult to put the effort into writing a daily blog as I once did since going full-time at church. No decisions have been made yet\u2026I need to spend some time with God and allow Him to do His work and share His vision. So until that time, I\u2019ll still be writing every day and sharing my thoughts with you. It is one of my greatest joys.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My Failures<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I have accomplished so much in the past 12 months. I write an inspirational blog every day. I moved my blog to a beautiful new website. I have an e-published book.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But, I have had a difficult beginning to the New Year. I was feeling sorry for myself. Yes, I write an inspirational blog every day, but I rarely hear from others, so I have no idea if I am making a difference in this world. Yes, I have a beautiful new website, but I lost all of my followers from the original blog site. Only one person followed my move. Yes, I have an e-published book, but I\u2019ve only sold six copies of the book.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And to make matters worse, someone who I have mixed emotions about has a published book and I was told about it\u2026again. So add jealousy into the mix and I found myself in a pretty bad way a week ago.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I felt like a failure.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I picked up two books to read. One was Made to Crave<\/em> by Lysa TerKeurst. If you have read any of my blogs, you know this is a book that has made a huge impact on my life. I certainly needed an attitude makeover and I knew this book would help with that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The other book I chose to read was a book I\u2019ve had for two years. It is In the Blink of an Eye <\/em>by Michael Waltrip. Michael is my favorite NASCAR driver and I bought this book before going to the Daytona 500 in 2011. I took it to the race track each time we went in hopes of getting an autograph. I never saw him. So the book was placed on my shelf upon my return to Colorado.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Until last week.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to Michael, he started 463 NASCAR Cup races before he went to victory lane. I couldn\u2019t even begin to tell you how many laps he made around the great race tracks of our country before winning a race. But it is a lot. Thousands.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Suddenly, my year\u2019s failures didn\u2019t seem nearly as large. Michael Waltrip had inspired me. Surely I could keep going without all the baggage that I had picked up along the way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And here\u2019s the crazy part. When I started writing my blog a year ago on January 30th<\/sup>, I hadn\u2019t set any goals. I just wanted to write. I didn\u2019t care if people read my blog. I just wanted to write about God. So I have been successful at it. I have written about God every day for nearly 365 days.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My first blog post was a reflection on fear. I conquered the fear of writing and offered my words to the world. I have been successful at that as well.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I have grown closer to God and have deepened my relationship with Him throughout this year. I have been successful in that regard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So you see I am not a failure. At least not by God\u2019s standards. I offered Him my writing when I started my blog. And He has honored my gift with some great insight into His world. God has opened my eyes to concepts and ideas that I had never thought of before. God has been in the middle of my blog from the beginning. That makes me and my blog successful.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the final paragraph of my first blog post.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve conquered this fear of blogging. You may not agree with me. You may not like my style of writing. You may never return for \u201cDay 2\u201d of this blog. But I know that whatever tomorrow holds, my God will be with me. And because of that truth, I have nothing to fear.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From the beginning I wasn\u2019t sure who would read my blog, but I did know that God would be following my blog and that He would be with me each day. And He has been.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So I will continue to hold onto Moses\u2019 words to Joshua and believe He is doing the same for me, because God has made this promise to believers throughout Scripture. \u201cThe Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.\u201d<\/em> (Deuteronomy 31:8 \u2013 NIV)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My fear is gone. My discouragement is diminished. My feelings of inadequacy have vanished. I am facing this New Year with a new resolve. To write about God every day and not worry about being successful by the worlds standards.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What have you resolved to do?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Grace and peace be yours in abundance,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Donna<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a week I\u2019ve had. I\u2019ve been sick (either with a very short cold or a severe case of allergic reaction to the junk in the air). I\u2019ve missed two days of work. My son turned 33 on Friday and my daughter turns 30 today (this just doesn\u2019t seem possible!). My emotions have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_s2mail":"yes","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3762,22,4664,34,12,3386,296,20,15,3770,17,18,25,14,21,4136],"tags":[942,191,127,1738,4359,1737,3239,1736,4680],"class_list":["post-4869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abide","category-believing-god","category-choose","category-craving-god","category-discovering-god","category-enjoy-god","category-experiencing-god","category-hearing-god","category-knowing-god","category-listen","category-obeying-god","category-pleasing-god","category-praising-god","category-seeking-god","category-trusting-god","category-walk","tag-deuteronomy-318","tag-fear","tag-full-measure-of-joy","tag-in-the-blink-of-an-eye","tag-lysa-terkeurst","tag-made-to-crave","tag-michael-waltrip","tag-my-failures","tag-what-a-mighty-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4870,"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869\/revisions\/4870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullmeasureofjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}