Inspire! Day 15- Marisol

From Madelynn: Today for Inspire! The wonderful Marisol is joining us. Marisol’s story is so great because she is just getting back on track. She has recognized time is important and what you do with it is even more important. We have been really blessed with great stories shared….I hope you enjoy this one. Meet Marisol…

My name is Marisol Santiago, 35, married to Robert and mother to three wonderful little creatures, Angelica, Robert Jr. aka Bobby, and Isabella. As any busy wife and mom I found myself repeating year after year the same excuse about my weight victories and soon after, fails. No longer can I point the blame on pregnancy and childbirth; for heaven’s sake, my last born is turning 6 in less than two weeks!

This past year has been a very exciting time for me and my family. God has been doing great things in our community and church. As a member of New Life Covenant Church, we were asked to join and help start up a campus commonly known as NLC-Northwest Campus. We excitedly accepted and thanked God for the shift in ministry and the new spiritual goals and opportunities He had set before us. But within the excitement came other factors that I neglected to realize.

One of the awesome opportunities my husband and I were offered was to lead our Campus’ Children’s Ministry. We heard from God and accepted. As we started to set up, build curriculum, the worship team, servant leaders and all the outreaches we wanted to embark on the first year, we noticed that there were some natural stresses that come along with the ministry. Yes, I prayed and found spiritual relief, strength and inspiration from God, but I still felt this odd void during the late night hours or on the drive to church or an event. Keeping up with being a wife, mom, kid’s school/homework and ministry, I became consumed with FOOD! Eating isn’t an awful thing, but it can become an awful filler. It was easier to go through the drive-thru or order in for a meeting with others. Social time among friends, family and church family always involves food and I was making poor choices.

Keeping up with the children and mostly our high-energy worship in Children’s Church was a definite eye opener for me. Sunday after Sunday waking up early and worshipping with the kids was becoming a challenge! Worship felt like “kid Zumba” and I found myself encouraging us all to “take a breath” so we could move on for the next song! And it finally hit me, “this isn’t about the fast-paced songs, this is about me”.

As leaders shared pictures with me from events, I found myself feeling bad instead of giving God the glory for what had taken place. I couldn’t believe I had let myself get to a point where I couldn’t physically keep up with a ministry God had entrusted me with. I felt ashamed, unworthy and just plain tired; too tired for God, my family and ministry.

As of this Monday my husband and I decided to make a change. As a team and incorporating new eating habits with our kids, we are trusting God to help us eat to survive, and not the other way around. Teaching our kids good eating habits and finding strength in God, nourishment in clean-eating and fulfillment in knowing we are doing our best in walking in God’s will.

Will there be tough days? Yes! Can I see temptation on its way as we proceed in this journey? Absolutely! But I have an Almighty God, an encouraging husband, my loving sister Delia who brought to light a cleaner way of eating and the support of friends like Madelynn, it IS possible.

I’m walking this path for God, myself, my husband, my kids, and the Children’s Ministry!

I encourage you to take an honest look at what keeps you busy in your life, your priorities and how you feel physically to accomplish the things that are most important to you. Are you taking away from those things or are you depositing goodness into the goals you have set forth by being in a healthy state of mind and body?

You deserve to feel your best while doing what you were created to do!

BE BLESSED!