So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. -Matthew 7:12  

Hello world!! That's right!! I'm back after a prolonged "vacation" from writing! Let's just say that it has been one loooonnnnggg semester and I am looking forward to the Christmas vacation that is just days away. Today's blog isn't going to be about me. However, it is going to be about someone who is near and dear to my heart. One might call her my flesh and blood. It's going to be about my mom! (She doesn't know I'm writing this!!)

My mom is my hero. She is someone who I look up to everyday and I strive my hardest to be just like her. She is selfless. She is caring. She is loving. She is the best. My mom has worked hard her entire life to get to be the successful woman that she is today and she teaches me important lessons on how to be successful just like her.

There is one particular story about my mom that I want to tell the world. On Thanksgiving Day, my mom was the hands and feet of Jesus. We have a neighbor who, during the week, fell and had to go to the hospital to surgery the day before Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving morning, my mom saw my neighbor's wife who had told her about the injury. Immediately my mom told my neighbor not to worry about Thanksgiving dinner, that we had enough food and would bring them over some after her husband got discharged.

I have to admit, the thought to bring them food would not have crossed my mind. I crossed my mom's mind immediately. Right then and there my mom became the hands and feet of Jesus. She went to the Dollar Store and got containers for the food. She made sure that the food was warm as soon as they came home so they could eat it. She walked the food over to our neighbors and made sure that they were alright. That is exactly what Jesus wants us to do.

She could have hogged the turkey, dressing, and delicious coconut cake. Instead she made sure that they enjoyed the holiday as much as we did. Jesus tells us in Mark 12, that we should first love God with all of our being, and we should secondly love our neighbors as we love ourselves. He also says in John 15 that we should love others as He loved us.

I am so proud to be my mother's daughter. There may be sometimes when I take her for granted or talk back, but to be able to see her be the salt and light of the earth. Thank you Mom for being you. I love you most!!

The Pressure to be Perfect

"You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48

As I spend my last night in my childhood home for a while, I am reflecting on the past three months of summer and also looking forward at what the first semester of my sophomore year will bring. This summer brought along stress and times when I wanted to pull my hair out and I'm sure that this new semester will bring the same. The girls who worked for me would tell you that I strive for perfection  and when I don't get it I get angry. That is what this long, overdue blog post will be about.

I am the perfect candidate for a study on people who have Type A personalities. I am constantly stressed and am looking for ways to push myself to work harder. When I don't reach a goal in a set amount of time, I become angry and disappointed with myself. I strive to lead others around me in anything that I do. This isn't something new for me. Ever since I was young, I have always worked my hardest to get good grades and stay involved in various things, be it sports or extracurricular clubs. In high school I was involved in sports, BETA club, National Honors Society, HOSA, student government, and sports medicine.

I am not one to ask for help. I am the one who seeks out people who need help and proceed to give it to them. In first grade there was a boy who suffered from autism. Our class went on a field trip and I was right there next to him the entire time to help him and hold his hand. Getting tutoring my first semester of freshman year was a huge blow to my ego and pride. More recently I got the hotel wrong that I was supposed to go to and ended up blowing up at my mom because I wanted to cover my own mistake.

I am learning that I am not perfect and that it is ok to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. There was only one perfect person to walk the earth, and there is no way that I could ever reach that level of perfectness. God's love is unconditional. It knows no boundaries and breaks down walls that people have built up. I can mess up directions or make a bad grade, but God will still love me. He doesn't care that I'm not perfect because I was made like him.

So, in reflection of this summer, I am going to learn from my mistakes of blowing up on people when things weren't perfect or if I didn't do something right. And in contemplation of the upcoming school year, I am not going to be so hard on myself. That doesn't mean that I am not going to work hard at what I am doing to be the best, it just means that if things don't work out 100% like I want them to, I'm not going to tear myself down.