Winning Battles Over Pancakes

I don’t know about you but I, per­son­ally, am a con­stant work in progress. One of the things I’m con­stantly declar­ing war against is fear. It cam­ou­flages it’s ugly face in my life as if it’s “just a lit­tle stress and anx­i­ety”. But in real­ity, it’s not “just a lit­tle”, because it’s real and it takes away from the qual­ity of my life.

This past week­end I had an amaz­ing week­end with Vitaliy. Sat­ur­day morn­ing we sat across from each other, munch­ing on our old fash­ioned pecan pan­cakes with fruit com­pote at a local Alana’s Café that has become a new favorite spot. In between mouth fulls of sweet syrup and pan­cake, I opened up and updated him in on all the hap­pen­ings of my heart and mind. He lis­tened intently and com­pas­sion­ately as he always does. He digested all I had to say and our con­ver­sa­tion turned out to be just as good, if not bet­ter, than the pan­cakes our stom­achs had craved all week.

I sipped on my Mimosa and looked my hus­band in the eyes. His hazel eyes have always romanced me and I never tire of get­ting lost in them. The warmth of his eyes and the com­pas­sion of his voice opened up my heart to accept the encour­age­ment he had to offer me. He shared a lot with me, but one sim­ple truth stood out and I’ve been hang­ing on to it.

Can­dace, we need to wake up each day and say, “Lord, thank you for all that you’ve given me.”

I do have every­thing I need. There is absolutely noth­ing that I need to fear. Con­tent­ment really is a choice.

God used Vitaliy, as He often does, to give me the strength to con­tinue bat­tling. Fear lost a major bat­tle on Sat­ur­day. And to con­tinue the plun­der­ing, I laughed my to-do-list in the face yes­ter­day, took Vitaliy’s hand, and spent the after­noon lay­ing on the beach. On a Mon­day after­noon. Now, that’s what I call winning!