Do it afraid.

I have always let what others think of me control my actions.  I have let them control how I feel about myself. I have been married three times.  The first was to an abusive man that liked to hit me for a while, but once I told him I was leaving he promised to never hit me again. He knew I am the type of person that does not threaten to do something; I just do it. So he knew I was really leaving.  But I stayed and he never hit me again, but he was an angry person that liked to yell at me all the time.  We were married for twenty-one years.  My next husband was different because he never yell at me at all.  He would just lecture me for hours on how imperfect I was, and that was a far worse form of verbal abuse than what my first husband did to me.  Now Michael, my second husband, was perfect in his own mind, so the break up of our marriage was all my fault.  But I was devastated, because I still loved Michael and did not see at the time what an abusive person he really was.

Then two months after I left Michael I was fired fro the very first time in my life because I had refused to do something illegal.  With both of the two tragic things happening so close together my self esteem drop to almost nothing.  I spent the next three years proving Michael and my ex-employer wrong. But really I was trying to show myself the good that was still in me.  

Yesterday I was thinking of all the things I would like to do, but was to afraid to try them.  Then came the fish slap. God was telling me to do what I had dreamed of doing and if I was afraid, do it anyway.  I like to scrapbook but my pages are not perfect like the one in the magazines or books. Then God smacked me and said "Does It matter"?  No one was going to see them but me.  Quilting seems like a huge task and I may not make them perfect but you know what?  I am going to make them anyway.