I can't help but feel like a loser, but I will never give up trying to be a winner!!!!

Happy Saturday to each of you...I pray this day is filled with much joy and laughter and if you are celebrating St. Patrick's day today that you please be safe and do not drink and drive...it is not worth the risk!!!

This morning in prayer as I sat here watching the sun come up over the mountain I felt God's robes of love wrapped around me with his still quiet voice telling me that things are going to change for me very soon, that his plan is in motion and that he is going to reveal a big and wonderful blessing to me very soon. I became filled with anxiety and soon found myself sitting her with tears rolling down my face and a new hope filled with eager anticipation as to what the blessing will be...I will wait patiently for it is the lesson God has been hurling at me over and over and over again the last few years and I, for a lack of better words, have been blindly and deafly stupid in catching what he hurled! I have had time and time again the lesson of patience and I can never seem to master it, when I want something I want it now!!! I have learned that it is in God's time not mine and I have learned that I have to sit and quietly wait or I just have to keep on repeating the lesson, finally...praising his name I think I have gotten it! I have passed the test and am now patiently waiting for the next step!

Many of you know that I feel that I have been a failure in my life, I have loved passionately but have lost in love several times, I have struggled financially and continue to struggle to this day, I have been hurt beyond belief and I feel that at the age of 51 I should not be living in a box apartment, as most people my age are now paying off their homes and settled in to a nice life. I feel as if I am a let down to my family as they all have achieved in their lives and are making their way nicely. I feel like I cannot find what it is that God needs me to be, I feel that I am letting him down and I feel that I will never dig out of the whole I am in, I have many things in my life that are blessings and are the things that keep my heart beating, I have an amazing daughter who is all I ever dreamed she would be, I have a beautiful grandson that is healthy and extremely smart, I have a husband that most women dream of having, he treats me like a queen even though I feel very undeserving of his love and kindness. I have God who loves me unconditionally. All I want in life is to have a place to live that will afford me to see my daughter on a regular basis and watch my grandson grow up, Wayde and I have already established that our love for one another is strong and can withstand any obstacle, as you all know we have been through so much "bad" and our love has never waivered. I read the following story and was amazed how it touched me...it made me realize that as long as there is breath in my body that I can still achieve what God has planned for me, so until then I will keep on typing along in the hopes that if you have feelings of inadequacy that it will bring some insight and hope back into you!!!!

The loser who never gave up! 

 When he was a little boy his uncle called him “Sparky”, after a comic-strip horse named Spark Plug. School was all but impossible for Sparky.

He failed every subject in the eighth grade. He flunked physics in high school, getting a grade of zero. He also flunked Latin, algebra and English. And his record in sports wasn’t any better. Though he did manage to make the school’s golf team, he promptly lost the only important match of the season. Oh, there was a consolation match; he lost that too.

Throughout his youth, Sparky was awkward socially. It wasn’t that the other students disliked him; it’s just that no one really cared all that much. In fact, Sparky was astonished if a classmate ever said hello to him outside of school hours. There’s no way to tell how he might have done at dating. He never once asked a girl out in high school. He was too afraid of being turned down… or perhaps laughed at. Sparky was a loser. He, his classmates… everyone knew it. So he learned to live with it. He made up his mind early that if things were meant to work out, they would. Otherwise he would content himself with what appeared to be his inevitable mediocrity.

One thing WAS important to Sparky, however — drawing. He was proud of his artwork. No one else appreciated it. But that didn’t seem to matter to him. In his senior year of high school, he submitted some cartoons to the the yearbook. The editors rejected the concept. Despite this brush-off, Sparky was convinced of his ability. He even decided to become an artist.

So, after completing high school, Sparky wrote Walt Disney Studios. They asked for samples of his artwork. Despite careful preparation, it too was rejected. One more confirmation that he was a loser.

But Sparky still didn’t give up. Instead, he decided to tell his own life’s story in cartoons. The main character would be a little boy who symbolized the perpetual loser and chronic underachiever. You know him well. Because Sparky’s cartoon character went on to become a cultural phenomenon of sorts. People readily identified with this “lovable loser.” He reminded people of the painful and embarrassing moments from their own past, of their pain and their shared humanity. The character soon became famous worldwide: “Charlie Brown.” And Sparky, the boy whose many failures never kept him from trying, whose work was rejected again and again,… is the highly successful cartoonist Charles Schultz. His cartoon strip, “Peanuts,” continues to inspire books, T-shirts and Christmas specials, reminding us, as someone once commented, that life somehow finds a way for all of us, even the losers.

Sparky’s story reminds us of a very important principle in life. We all face difficulty and discouragement from time to time. We also have a choice in how we handle it. If we’re persistent, if we hold fast to our faith, if we continue to develop the unique talents God has given us, who knows what can happen? We may end up with an insight and an ability to inspire that comes only through hardship. In the end, there are no “losers” with God. Some winners just take longer to develop!

By CAPT J. David Atwater, CHC, USN