Sincere Faith

A Gift for Mom! 🤍

I have been tested and found wanting in so many areas of my life lately-patience, faith, humility. Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and remember the journey so far. I started a long time ago, naive and frustrated, feeling alone and helpless.

That was 9 months ago, and now I have a new perspective on my journey.

It was 7 months ago that I met Jillian Michaels via DVD and immediately she taught me two things; pain and what I adopted as my mantra-transformation is not a future event, but a present activity.

In January, like every year I was inundated with the resolutions of those around me. “I’m going to eat healthier, I’m going to exercise more”…well I had felt that I had tried that with little success. So, I took a drastic step with the encouragement of my husband. On January 27th, I joined Weight Watchers. It was the hardest thing for me to do, to ask for help especially with something as simple as controlling what I ate and how much I ate. But, I couldn’t do it by myself.

So, I began to force myself to be more active everyday. I would yell at the TV when Jillian’s shrill voice would tell me “don’t phone this in” and “don’t quit on me, don’t quit on yourself.” I suffered injury and scale shifts, disappointments and plateaus. I remember flopping onto the floor and begging to allow myself to buy some pizza and just give up. But I printed her words and kept them near me always, not a future event, but a present activity.

Recently, I have celebrated overcoming my overweight self, and was awarded a free lifetime membership to Weight Watchers. Including the few meager pounds that I lost prior to joining, I have lost nearly 55 pounds. Finally the outside matches what I feel I look like on the inside. I was asked many times what I looked like before, and when I pulled the pictures people would be so polite and encouraging. Yesterday, however, a friend made a keen observation, and until then the achievement that I have enjoyed hadn’t sunk in.

She studied the pictures of me over a year ago, and about 11 months ago. Then she poured over me in person and the picture I chose for my “after” celebration. She pointed to the picture from November, me at my heaviest, and said, “Here, you’re smiling,” and then she switched to the “after” picture and said “here you’re happy.” And it hit me, happiness can be without a smile, and smiling can be without happiness.

I don’t want to live in a world where my faith and hope are hidden behind an insincere smile or a pasted on happy face. I had gotten so good at convincing even myself that I was happy when I was really dying inside, that it was scary to have it pointed out to me, that I wasn’t fooling anyone. And most importantly, I couldn’t fool God. While I thought that I was fooling everyone else, turns out I was only fooling myself.

So many people lately have been posting on facebook about holding their children tight because we never know what will happen. I was reminded this week not to be fake or to fool anyone, especially myself, because each day is a gift, and it’s time to stop pretending.

I have a sincere faith.

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Erin L Pearson Erin Pearson God healthy weight weight loss Weight Watchers

Erin Pearson

Hailing from Nebraska, E.L. Pearson is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Kearney where she honed her writing talents and fed her desire for enchantment through studying classic literature. Her one-of-a-kind writing style reflects this love in her upcoming Prodigal Lost series. Fascinated by her childhood church, her unique perspective was forever changed when she attended a teen revival and accepted Christ as her Savior. Her mission is to encourage and uplift those in perpetual darkness. She seeks out those who feel God couldn’t possibly love them because of what they’ve done in the past. She desires but one thing-to let the world know that no matter the sin, no matter the stain from the past, Jesus is the cleansing power. As her relationship with God has grown, so have her blessings which include a patient husband who is kind and strong, and twin sons who remind her just how much God loves her. Together, they do life together in Kearney Nebraska.

I Lost My Sight at 16—But It Wasn’t the End of My Vision

In: Faith

After my father shot me, I lay in a hospital bed, and my world went dark. I was 16 years old. The injury left me completely blind. But the darkness didn’t stop there. As my physical sight disappeared, something else came into focus—the depth of the wounds I had carried long before that moment, wounds I had never fully allowed myself to see. For years, I had learned how to survive without asking too many questions. I had learned how to minimize what hurt, how to explain things away, how to keep moving forward as if everything were normal. But...

Keep Reading

Ministry Starts Inside Your Own Four Walls

In: Faith

When people hear the word ministry, they often think of missionaries, or the pastor who preaches every Sunday, but in our home, ministry belongs to all of us—even our kids. Growing up, I didn’t think of myself as a ministry kid. Still, when my dad packed our old Astro for the summer and we all piled in, we were on mission. Each kid had a part to play in my dad’s evangelical magic shows (yes, you read that right!). My brother would juggle, my older sister sang, my middle sister flipped the projector slides that shone pictures of Jesus on...

Keep Reading

These Holy Small Things

In: Faith, Motherhood

My 8-year-old-daughter has recently taken up sewing, to my simultaneous delight and chagrin. My delight because I too love sewing; my chagrin because her enthusiasm often outpaces my own abilities, namely, in the undertaking of tedious projects with no pattern. Take, for example, the cloth doll diaper we designed and stitched up together. Granted, the design was fairly basic to draw up and scale. But the minuscule nature of the work, both for my hands and head, was enough to throw me into existential questioning. It was one of those moments when you wonder how the sum of your life...

Keep Reading

Life Lessons from My Grown Children

In: Faith, Motherhood

“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.” – Rabindranath Tagore Quietly communing with a loved one in the early morning hours is such an intimate and precious time. Visiting with one’s grown child when all is dark and still is one of life’s purest pleasures. I remember the conversation clearly. My daughter’s husband, small children, and father were all asleep as we whispered and chatted. She and I are both fidgeters by nature, unable to be still for long. This inner restlessness must be remedied, and we are compelled by biology to...

Keep Reading

My Prayer Is Simple Now: “I Believe; Help My Unbelief.”

In: Faith

I have spent most of my life in faith. Not circling it or analyzing it from a distance, but inside it—learning its language before I even realized I was learning it, shaping myself around it in ways that felt as natural as breathing. I was raised in Christian Science, which is a very particular kind of faith. It’s not really about “believing” in the way most people think. It’s about understanding. Aligning your thoughts with what is ultimately true about God and reality. If you can understand rightly, you can be well. If you can see clearly, healing follows. So...

Keep Reading

Your Worth Is Not Someone Else’s To Measure

In: Faith, Living

Insecurity is something we all carry in one form or another. For me, it has probably always looked confident and outgoing from the outside. But internally, it can feel heavy, complicated, and exhausting at times. And when someone comes along whose behavior reinforces those insecurities, it amplifies what was already there. There was someone I had hoped to genuinely connect with, but it was clear from the start that the feeling wasn’t mutual. From the beginning, their wall was up. No matter how kind I tried to be or how carefully I showed up, it never came down. Their distance...

Keep Reading

Lord, Give Me Faith Like Hannah

In: Faith

Woman walking in field with hand in wheat

Hannah knew what it was like to feel forgotten. She often clutched her empty womb and thought Surely the Lord has forgotten me. She knew the bitter sting of feeling isolated and alone. She knew the anguish of praying day after day after day and seeing no fruit, not even a bud, from her faithfulness. Hannah knew what it was like to feel like the weight of the world was on her, and her hope may have dwindled. Even those around her did not offer encouragement. Quite the opposite—they did their best to sow seeds of discouragement. Yet Hannah pressed...

Keep Reading

God Carries Me Through the Deep Waters of Change

In: Faith, Living, Motherhood

“Ahhh!” My underwater scream garbled in my snorkel tube as the manta ray’s cavernous mouth swept a hand’s distance from my face. My fingers tightened around the surfboard until my knuckles ached. My arms trembled. I jerked my head side to side, searching for my daughters, Mia and Megan. Recent college graduates, they had joined me on one last mother-daughter vacation before launching their adult lives. They floated easily on the vibrant Hawaiian water, relaxed, trusting. I wanted to borrow their calm. Earlier, our guide had explained that the LED lights built into the surfboard attracted plankton the way college...

Keep Reading

Faith After a Rare Disease Diagnosis

In: Faith, Motherhood

My pastor frequently speaks of “kid pain” and acknowledges there’s nothing like it. I can testify to that. After nine months of uncertainty and unexplained issues following the birth of our now 4-year-old daughter, Harlow, we finally received her diagnosis of Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex Deficiency (PDCD), a life-limiting mitochondrial disease with no cure and no FDA-approved treatments. It was heartbreaking. In moments like these, a parent can fall into complete desperation. You go through a range of emotions almost too fast to name: fear for your child’s life; anxiousness about how much time you’ll get with them; overwhelming grief. And...

Keep Reading

What If I Don’t Hear God’s Voice?

In: Faith

There have been many times over the years when I’ve heard others share stories of how the Lord spoke to them or gave them a sign. Seashells scattered along a sandy beach, numbered to represent how many children they would have. A quiet walk in the park, followed by a clear sense that another little one was coming. What a blessing, I think, when I hear and read their stories. I often wonder how much more faith they must have than I do—to know with such certainty that what they heard was truly God speaking. I listen, I smile, and...

Keep Reading