Don’t give up. A personal story.

by Hadarah | Oct 27, 2022 | Motivation

Take life one step at a time

A few weeks ago my husband and I were having a conversation. We were talking about life, balance, and the goals we have set for ourselves and as a couple. He said to me, “A little bit of water every day makes a garden grow.”

A simple statement, but wow, it rang so real and so true. In the past several months we’ve seen areas of our property that started out as completely dry and parched land go from compact dirt to beautiful soil that is now bearing much fruit. Praise Yah! It’s the measured, steady, balanced actions that we take in our lives, both spiritually and in the physical realm, that lead us to where we want to go. I share this just to remind you, if you have goals you want to reach, don’t give up.

“A little bit of water every day makes a garden grow.”

We often underestimate the impact we can have over time if we just keep moving forward. When I look back over my life, I realize it’s the challenges I approached with small simple steps that have led to the most lasting change. I’ll share a personal story here that I hope inspires you.

My journey to health and healing

At the end of May in 2021, my husband and I got pregnant for the first time.

You may not have known this, as I have never talked about my personal health here on the blog, but at the end of May in 2021, my husband and I got pregnant for the first time. I still have pictures of the pregnancy test on my phone. You can see it above. I actually took about a million pregnancy tests lol. It was such an exciting time! All I ever wanted in life was to get married, have children, and raise them to know and love our Elohim. Sadly by the time July 2021 rolled around, the excitement had passed. My body spontaneously had a miscarriage at home. We never even got to hear a heartbeat, there was just an empty sac with no baby on the way.

Time for Change

This event triggered me to make some major changes. I know miscarriages happen to a lot of people, but for some reason, I never believed a miscarriage would happen to me. It was time to reevaluate my health. At the time, I thought I was generally healthy. And compared to most people, I probably was. Sadly, most of us grow accustomed to having less than optimal health. We accept the way we feel as normal even if we are actually sick or have symptoms of disease.

This may be TMI for the men who are reading, but I’ve had multiple fibroids in my uterus since University. I was fully aware of them since that time, but because the doctors said not to worry about them, I never did. I grew accustomed to having the fibroids, and as they grew inside of me, I just accepted the symptoms that came along with fibroids as normal. I never considered how allowing these benign tumors in my uterus could affect a future pregnancy.

I completely changed my diet and lifestyle.

Right after the miscarriage, I completely changed my diet and lifestyle. Without getting into all the details, I started becoming more mindful about reducing stress, and getting enough sleep. I learned that fibroids grow under the influence of too much estrogen, and that among other things, abdominal fat actually produces excess estrogen. I started eating more and more fresh fruits and veggies until I was eating a plant based diet. I cut out animal foods (except for Lamb at Passover) because they all carry their own set of hormones too.

Perfect is the enemy of the good

Slowly but surely, since July 2021, I lost nearly 50lbs. Praise Yah! The journey was far from perfect, but perfect is the enemy of the good! I just stayed focused on eating healthy and losing 5 lbs at a time. Finally, I’m at a healthy BMI and have been maintaining a healthy weight for several months. Because I made the changes so slowly, it feels like real and permanent change. It’s been a little over a year and I went from 204lbs down to around 155lbs. About 5 inches around my waist disappeared, and YES, the fibroids are shrinking too! So grateful to Yahuah!

In December this year 2022, Yahuah’s will be done, I will find out from the doctor just how far on this health journey I’ve come. I’ll be getting another ultrasound to see how much the fibroids have actually shrunk. My prayer is that they’ll be gone, and that Yah will have all the conditions become right so we can start trying to grow our family again. But I share all this to remind you that change doesn’t always happen all at once.

The most lasting changes happen when we take one simple step at a time.

The most lasting changes happen when we just take one step at a time. I never set out to loose 50lbs. I didn’t even realize I had that much weight to loose. Every time I reached a new 5lb goal on my journey, I praised Yah, and made the decision not to go back to where I came from.

Stay focused on progress

So today I encourage you, stay focused on progress, and DON’T GIVE UP! Just take life one step at a time. A little bit of water every day will make your garden grow. Don’t be too hard on yourself, or too extreme. If you drown yourself with a flood of things to do, or you set a goal too high to reasonably accomplish, do you think that will help you make progress? Small consistent steps day by day will get you to your goals. Whether they be spiritual or physical.

I need to apply this same principle to making music. Up to this point, I have simply just not been motivated to work on my next recording at all. If you’ve been part of this community here at Set Apart Heart since it began many years ago, you know that singing and songwriting comes fairly naturally for me. It’s a gift from Yahuah. Sadly, I’ve allowed the idea of having to become my own recording engineer to cause me in some ways to turn my back on making music. I’ve been spending all my free time in the garden because it’s safe, peaceful, calm, and everything feels natural and very very good. There’s no judgement there. But is that what Yahuah really wants?

If I face reality, the truth is, I’m just afraid of not being good enough.

The truth is, if we never challenge ourselves, we will never grow or get any stronger. I’m actually pretty good at learning new technology when I sit down and focus. But I have to sit down and stay focused! In reality, I’m just afraid of not being good enough. My previous recordings were all so clear, well balanced, and professional sounding. I fear that if I have to do it all myself, I will never measure up.

Perfect love casts out fear.

It’s time to let go of fear. 1 John 4:18 reminds us that perfect love casts out fear. So instead of trying to make a perfect recording, why not focus on perfect love? Yahuah, in His perfect love, would never punish, or be displeased with me for making a less than perfect recording. So truly, what is there to fear? Even if the recording is not technically perfect, Yah knows I’m doing my best to praise His name and lead others to do the same. So whenever the next album is released, it will be released in complete, full, and perfect love. Perfect love is always beautiful. There is no need for me to fear.

So my goal is to keep working at learning to record a little bit every day – without trying to be perfect. The same energy and focus I put into my changing my lifestyle that led me to have better health and healing in my body, is the same energy I will put into making music for the kingdom. Yahuah’s will be done, the next recording will eventually come.

What goals do you have for your life? Your health? Your spiritual growth? What can you do today that will get you a little bit closer? Leave a comment below. As a community, let’s keep on growing together. See you in the comments!

‘And for this reason do your utmost to add to your belief uprightness, to uprightness knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control endurance, to endurance reverence, to reverence brotherly affection, and to brotherly affection love. For if these are in you and increase, they cause you to be neither inactive nor without fruit in the knowledge of our Master יהושע Messiah.’

Kĕpha Bĕt (2 Peter) 1:5-8

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