A Journey To Balance

Alright, get it together...arrange school materials, prep ministry tools, clean the house, start up dinner, make appointments for my parents. These are all the things that I try to have done before the kids wake up, oh and let's not forget to pretty up before hubby gets home. Oof! How can I find balance for all of my emotions, roles and responsibilities? God sure had an interesting way to show me how to balance life and appreciate what is given to me. I can very much start from the beginning, a baby girl born into a young family, the mother being 18 years of age, raising a child while still growing into adulthood herself and a father, age 22 trying to keep his family afloat while at the same time dealing with his own addictions. These were my parents. It was not until a tragic event through my little brother that gave my father his first ever encounter with God. This changed my family forever. Fast forward to present day. I am a wife to a wonderful husband, a mother of three little ones and a part of a great church that I can proudly call my home. I serve at Commitment Community Church in which I hold a ministry called Mozen which is Hebrew for Balance. However, the journey to balance and appreciating the blessings given to us daily was not an easy one. For starters the lack of stewardship with our finances lost us our townhome and brought us to a position at life in which we had to humble ourselves and depend on our family to help during those trying times. In those eight months of living with my parents, three months into it we found out we were pregnant. Oh how fear and faithlessness took over my heart. “What are we going to do?! We have no home, no money, nothing to give this baby right now!” When the time came to give our parents the news it was terribly heart breaking. There was no happiness or acceptance for this new baby on the way because of our financial situation. We went ahead with a little family trip to Chicago to have my two children meet their great grandmother, and the unthinkable happens, I begin to bleed. As we are on this vacation trying to make the best of it for the sake of our two children, our hearts were hurting from the anguish and disillusionment that a miscarriage was going to happen. As the days were passing, the bleeding got worse. As I laid down next to my daughter, I would plead with God to not allow this miscarriage to happen. With pain in my heart and holding my stomach, I hear God clearly say, “I Have Purpose With This.” So I let go, and in obedience said “Thy Will Be Done.” Our last day on our vacation, I ended up taking a visit to the hospital, July 1, 2016, it is finished. A lot of pain came from letting go and letting God in this situation, however what the Lord had showed me as purpose came after breaking the news to the family. As I witnessed their reaction to the news, God would play back in my head all of the moments we gave up and lacked faith that He was in control. I would sense the overwhelming feeling of the disconnect and loss God felt at those moments we didn’t fully trust Him. “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” Hebrews 12:11 Needless to say, God added the necessary weight I needed to endure and find balance. Throughout the time of living with my parents we got really good at praying, for instance instead of praying for the material things we thought we always needed, we instead asked God to make our hearts new and more like His own. This kind of selfless prayer taught my children how to ask God, using faith. December 1, 2016 the children received their first Christmas present early. They had been praying about having their own room for Christmas. After the eight month of living with my family we now move into our new apartment. Needless to say we never experienced such a blessed Christmas like that year. A few weeks after Christmas, January 2017, my husband suffers an automobile accident that made our vehicle a total loss. Fast forward a few weeks, my son comes home from school with an art project, shows it to us and starts explaining to us what his teacher describes as a “Good Fortune Talisman”. The art project was a hamsa evil eye which with a little research we new it to be an object of satanic origins. All this coming from a reputable choice school. We immediately gave our son a quick history lesson on idol worship and had him dispose the art project. This made us, along with not having a car, deeply consider homeschooling. Eight months later we have our third child only then to suffer another automobile accident with our other two children in the car. Both times God preserved me from being in the vehicle while pregnant. Things were looking bitter sweet with all of 2017 car-less and with a court case, however, we could still count the blessings from all of it. A few days after Christmas 2017 we were gifted a car and by January 2018 we were officially back on the road with our own vehicle. In biblical numerology the number 8 represents new beginnings so, let’s recap: • Got married 8/11/07 • Resigned from work 6/8/12 • homeschooling 8/8/17 • My 3rd child, Mirai Jair Colón is born 8/12/17 • At 8 years of age, my first born Eagan gets baptized 1/23/18 @ 8:52pm • From March to December is 8 months living with my parents • My husbands first financial increase on the 8th month living with my parents, we move out • After one year with no vehicle we get gifted a 2008 Chevy Cobalt and is officially registered on the road on January 2018 • In 1/23/18 Mozen Mommy Ministry is re-branded and re-launched and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You may think this is a bit much, but in God there are no coincidences or mistakes. “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked will perish.” Psalms 1:1-6. We experience growth in many ways that we can’t even begin to fully explain in under 1,300 words however it’s safe to say that God’s hand is always at work in our lives and is only just getting started. In conclusion, I would like to leave you with this, balance is not obtained by merely getting all your ducks in a row but rather fully surrendering all of the above and beyond to a God that holds the weights in hand that brings balance. Proverbs 16:11, A just balance and scales belong to the Lord; All the weights of the bag are His concern.