Cherie's Testimony

Before I received eternal life, I lived my life trying to please everyone and be a perfectionist in every area of my life.

As a young teenager growing up in a rural Iowa, there were two distinct crowds of kids where you could belong: the "cool" kids that partied or the uncool kids that didn't. Since I was a good student athlete, I had friends in both crowds and felt torn. I thought that I could make everyone happy and be popular if I occasionally hung out with the party crowd, stayed involved with my youth group at church and continue to excel in school and sports.

On Homecoming night of my sophomore year, I was hanging out with the party crowd against my better judgment and was involved in a car accident. I saw my 16 years of life flash before my eyes including all of the most important people in my life. None of them were the ones I was riding in the car with at the time of the crash. After escaping with only minors injuries in what could have been a horrific outcome, I knew that God saved me that night for a reason and it was not to be friends with the party crowd. Shortly after that, God placed role models in my life to show me how I wanted to live my life--to glorify God and use the gifts He has given me to help and influence others. The desires I had to please everyone and be a perfectionist waned as I drew closer in a personal relationship with God.

Now that I have eternal life, it is easier to keep my priorities in perspective--God, spouse, family/friends, then everything else.

Even though my husband works in ministry full time, it is easy to get caught up in the rat race of busy work schedules, keeping up with the kids' activities, and feeling like every working mom is doing a better job at keeping it all together. When I start getting stressed out and think I'm not doing a good job at anything, I go back to my priorities (God, spouse, family, everything else) to see where I need to reset and get back on track.

While I am still a work in progress, it is so comforting to know that I cannot control everything. I have so much peace in my faith that God is in control and Jesus already paid the price so that one day I will spend eternity with them in heaven when my work on earth is done.