Making Jesus Known
Well, my last few blogs have been mostly music related, but that's about to change. For a while now, I've been a nutrition and fitness coach along with a music teacher, and the experience has changed my life. I've seen not just personal physical growth and change, but mental growth as well. And the mental growth and change has been huge and inspiring. By nature, I am a lazy person. I admit it. I work hard when I have a task to do, but if I can put it off, I will. If I can get out of doing something, I will. So, when I decided to get pregnant, it was a huge commitment for me because I knew that I would put on weight and eventually have to take it off. I was not thrilled. I worked hard through the first half of my pregnancy to stay on top of my nutrition and health. Then, I fell on top of my growing belly while running one morning. That scared me into doing NOTHING fitness-wise from then on out all while confirming that I wanted this little girl in my life more than anything. And that's when my weight started to go up drastically. Getting the weight off after my girl was born was something I was absolutely DETERMINED to do. After the water and birth weight came off, the rest was less than happy to leave my body. I tried a number of things, but couldn't find anything that I felt was worthwhile to do for the rest of my LIFE. I was tired of being so strict, frustrated that the strictness wasn't producing results and ready to just accept defeat 15 pounds above my normal "warning! It's time to start exercising again" weight. And that's when I saw my friend post about her free accountability group. I had some vacation coming up and knew I would need a bigger force than just myself to not go completely off the beaten path during vacation. Well, it turns out she was a Beachbody coach. After going through two of her groups, she encouraged me to try the Shakeology along with the workouts and even try my hand at coaching. I was starting to see results at that point because I was starting to have to be honest about what I put in my body. When I tried Shakeology...I knew I had "found my bliss." Ok, that's the dramatic soprano in me, but seriously, for this ice-cream loving singer, Shakeology helped me fight the urge to eat an entire carton in two days. (ok, one day). From there, I decided to run my own group and encourage other women who were struggling like I had been. I found that I finally had balance in my life. And so I wrote out the 5 most important things to me that I wanted to use this coaching for. At the top of my list: ministry. I didn't know then what God had in store for me. I saw this only as a chance to help friends and family lose weight. I didn't even think that God would want me to use this coaching to help others mentally, emotionally and financially. Fast forward one year to our church women's retreat. I was hesitant to go because I didn't want to leave my husband alone to watch our daughter for 2 whole days. But, after talking to him, we decided that I should go on the retreat. Through the speaker, prayer and own time in quiet, completely shut off from EVERYTHING for an "inefinite" period of time, I felt God speak to me: MINISTER. Use what I had been given to be a ministry and not just a job. I had already felt God leading me into this by putting some key people into my life beforehand. And so, I came home with a renewed desire to just reach people's hearts for Christ. Around this same time, I ran across a friend from college's blog: Rhea Creative. Holly Luiken shared how God had called her into full-time ministry with Young Life in Ankorage, Alsaka. (her blog post: http://www.rheacreative.com/#!Giving-Away-Strands-of-My-Life/c4a/559ae1140cf2585ebcdf86f7) I contacted her and was blown away by her heart for people and intense desire to be used by God however He wanted. And in church one Sunday while hearing about how we are meant to be a community of believers, God brought her to mind again. I knew that this was how He wanted me to minister right now. And so, this month, I am so excited to be able to support her and what God is doing through her in Alaska! Would you consider supporting her with me? There are a few ways that you can do this. First, please pray! Her team is very close to being 100% funded for this year, and that is very exciting. Pray for God to provide a leader for the Diamond High School and Service High School. Please be praying for their team to find/solidify who will be teaching their campaigners Bible study and kick off. And please pray for their financial support to come in. To that end, the next thing you can be doing is parterning with this ministry financally by donating here: https://giving.younglife.org/Views/dp/donate/controller.cfm (Please be sure to specify area AK49 to ensure that it is their region you are donating to). And finally, this month when you join my nutrition & fitness challenge group, I will be donating 10% of my commission to Holly. You may do that here: www.fitsopranosarah.com or by clicking on the Fitness & Nutrition button at the top of the page. This is September! It is my favorite month, and I have a feeling it's going to be a great one! Let's go out and be the community that God created us to be!
