Happy Thanksgiving Crafties! I hope that you're all doing well and celebrating with family this year.
This holiday is special to me for a number of reasons but most of all, it is a day to specifically praise God for the blessings we've received in life and all that is to come. Of course we should be grateful to God everyday but in the rush of this crazy life, we don't really sit down and reflect on everything as we should.
Throughout my life, I've had considerable hardships and various tribulations and still, when I look back on it, there have been so many times that God has provided and intervened on my behalf. Even now that my life has become more evened out, there are some relatively small things that have made monumental changes in different situations. Over the last couple of years, I've really been reflecting on 2015 to present because it's been a real rush.
Prior to 2015, I felt that I'd fallen out of favor with God, however in late 2015 I came across a sermon that completely changed the way that I perceived my relationship with the Lord and I've not looked back. Following that experience, I had a complete stranger to pay for my HiSet testing so that I could get my high school equivalency. I got the highest score in my testing region and received a scholarship which I took to community college in Fall 2016. Fastforward to 2019, I graduated with my AFA in art education with honors, being the first in my immediate family to ever complete college.
With all the different honors accolades and my high GPA, I transferred into a Catholic university where, despite being a non-denominational Christian, I feel at home. The year 2019 was a rough one on me and I went through this stretch of unworthiness; I was delivered from that during MOGSLF, a faith-based conference in Jefferson City during February 2020. During 2020, I was able to take adequate time out for the sake of my mental health and I devoted that time to working on not just myself but also my YouTube channel and brand. On November 30th, 2020, I finally obtained monetization status and I could have cried.
You see, believe it or not, starting a business/brand is incredibly frustrating. During the end of last year, I was feeling the depths of my failures. No one was buying my patterns, my savings were depleted from school books/ tuition, and I was on the verge of quitting and picking up a second job. Even now, there are a lot of little things that bother me about the success (or lack thereof) of Infiniti Crafting Co. However, when things get rough and feel overwhelming, that is when I step back, reflect, and find things to praise God for.
In general, all that has happened over the last 6 years could not have happened without God's grace and the abilities He has written in my little book of life. He has allowed me the opportunities to build on the vision that he gave me in the summer of 2016. At my core, I know that there is a lot more in store for this journey I'm on and I can be grateful for the growth and humbling that this will all bring.
The moral of the story is to try and pick out the positives that have occurred in the long term and the short of your life and spend today being lifted up in the love of the Lord.
