My Story, His Glory: A Family Built on Faith

By Sherry Cortez

Many people have asked me, "How can you live this life? How can you smile? How do you persevere?"

My answer is this: my husband and I have been willing to fight the fight of faith. This was the very foundation that we built our family on. The trials I wrote about when I started my writing do not compare to the ones that would come. I neve

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Jan 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637694039

Sherry Cortez

Sherry is a proud wife, mom, and grandmother, having been married for forty-five years. She has spent her life fulfilling her desire to inspire and encourage others in the Lord through her own experiences. She has been a teacher, retail manager, nutritionist, martial arts program director, and business owner.Through it all, she has seen God's goodness and gives Jesus all the glory in the trials her family has been able to overcome.

Book preview

My Story, His Glory:

A Family Built on Faith

Sherry Cortez

My Story, His Glory: A Family Built on Faith

Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2021 by Sherry Cortez

Scripture quotations marked

kjv

are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission from the author. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780.

Trilogy Christian Publishing/TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-63769-402-2

E-ISBN: 978-1-63769-403-9

I dedicate this book to my Heavenly Father, who is the loving and all-seeing Lord of glory.

Secondly, I’d like to dedicate this book to my loving husband. I am so grateful for God answering my prayers as a young girl. The Lord blessed me with a husband who loves and lives by the Word of God. He has continuously and passionately taught our family what it truly means to live and walk by faith, no matter the circumstances or trials we faced. One thing was for sure, whatever we faced, we faced it together with Jesus as our anchor.

Lastly, I would like to dedicate this labor of love to my precious children, Ponciano, Armando, and Charity. You have been the sunshine in some of the darkest storms of my life. I’m forever grateful and blessed that Jesus gave me the most amazing gift of being your mom.

This Place I Called Home

As with all great stories that begin with Once upon a time…, their endings always read and they lived happily ever after. Although my journey does not end with the pages of this book, I KNOW that with a continued and steadfast faith in God, I too will have a happily ever after. It will not only be in this life but in the life to come as well. So, without further ado, let me share My Story, His Glory with you.

My story begins in the small far away state of New Hampshire, where there lived a little brown eyed girl named Sherry. I grew up in a big two-story white house which was bordered with a large open porch in the front and an enormous window where the sun would shine through. Mornings were quite warm and cozy by that big window. You could view the most beautiful big oak tree that grew tall in the middle of our front lawn, a tree I spent many days climbing on and sitting in the crevice of its thick branches while gazing at the sky. I enjoyed soaking up the sunshine and the whispering of the leaves as the wind would gently blow. I would admire the sprouting of tiny new acorns and watch the squirrels scurrying all around and jumping from tree to tree. The air just felt better up there closer to the clouds.

I grew up in a very domesticated home. My mom baked delicious homemade breads, pies, canned pickles, and relishes. She made and bottled her own ginger root soda pop, as well as homemade ice cream and jellies too. In the wintertime when we had freshly fallen snow, she would amaze us by making a maple syrup candy recipe. While the maple syrup was still warm, she poured the gooey substance over a pan filled with snow. It would immediately harden into long streams of yummy, chewy taffy. Along with all of her talents, she was also an amazing den mother for my brother’s Cub Scouts’ troop. I was always excited to sit and join in on some of the craft projects her and my dad would come up with. When I turned seven, my mother happily supported me in being in the girls’ Brownie troop as well.

My dad was a hard-working man that started each day bright and early. My favorite part of the day was when he came home and greeted my mom with a kiss, followed by a tight hug for me. Immediately following the loving hugs, he would hand me his big black metal lunch box, and I would open it with so much anticipation. He would always have a surprise, usually a left-over peanut butter cracker or a small box of candy or a candy bar. It was not so much the food inside that made me race with excitement, but simply the assurance of knowing that he thought about me each day.

He always wanted to surprise me and put a smile on my face, and yes, it sure made me feel special. Then after our nightly greetings, my mom would run my dad a warm bath. I would run upstairs to get him some clean white socks from their dresser drawers. I was always excited to do everything I could to payback those smiles he so often put on my face. We were a family that ate dinner together every night. When I was a little girl, I hated to eat peas, which was probably because they were those BIG mushy ones. What I loved to eat and still do is potatoes, any kind of potatoes! To help me through my pea dilemma, my dad told me, "You should always eat what you dislike the most first, so

you can enjoy the rest of your meal. He would tell me to just mix a few peas at a time into your potatoes and you will hardly be able to taste them," and much to my surprise, it worked! I would continue until my plate was cleared, and all these years later this is still how I enjoy eating my peas and potatoes. What a great way to teach a life lesson as well. I have carried this seemingly simple but very valuable lesson that my dad taught not only in respect to your plate, but to your daily life and work as well. Take care of the things you like the least first, and the rest of your day will be more relaxing and enjoyable. It is a lesson that I have taught my own children.

In my early years, I grew up in a home seemingly void of strife. I never heard my dad or mom speak to each other in a harsh tone. I never even heard them raise their voices one to the other. I think that is unusually good for about twelve years of marriage. Some of the biggest life lessons I took away from parents’ examples and teachings over the years were the importance of loving the Lord, respecting one another, especially your elders, and always telling the truth.

One day when I was still young, I remember my mom and I were in the den standing in front of the back window. My mom bent down low and looked into my eyes as though she could see straight through me. As she pointed out the window, she said to me, You see that big tree out there? There is a little birdie in that tree, and he is always watching you. Whatever you do, you never want to lie because that little birdie talks to me and he will always tell me the truth. Do you understand? I shook my little head yes, wondering all the while if that little birdie really talked to her. My mom was trying to instill the fear of God in me and the importance of telling the truth. Little did she know the little birdie truly would be watching over me all my life. There is a song sung by Lauryn Hill and Tanya Blount that some may be familiar with, and it has a verse that so reminds me of this memory and its impact on my life. It says, His eye is on the sparrow and He watches over me.¹ Truly, I am and will forever be grateful for the Lord’s grace and His all-seeing eye.

Seasons of My Childhood

WINTER WONDERLAND

Winter in New England was definitely a winter wonderland. We did lots of snow sledding and rode wooden toboggans down huge snow-covered hills. My dad took the hood off an old car he had and flipped it upside down. He attached a rope to it for us to hold on to which gave the whole family room to sit inside and ride down the hill in a giant metal saucer. What a blast that was! The snowbanks would be so high we would burrow tunnels through them and on occasion we made forts out of blocks of snow. Ice skating was another fun activity which I started doing when I was little. I received my very first pair of ice skates for Christmas one year. They were white double-bladed skates that were all trimmed in red piping. We enjoyed many years of skating for hours on end. We would build fires and roast hotdogs and even placed bottles of Pepsi in the snowbanks. Another fond memory was when we would bring my grandfather’s home-built huts out onto the frozen lakes. We would sit in the huts ice fishing until our buckets were full of fish.

My grandfather had a sixty-acre farm in the heart of Maine. This was the place where I was blessed to be able to watch first-hand the making of homemade maple syrup. I would go with one of my uncles or my grandpa to put a metal spout in the side of a maple tree. They would then place a bucket on the ground for the sap to run down into. A few days later, we would return to pick up the bucket, which at times would already be blanketed with snow. They built a fire under a big metal trough, poured in the sap, and let it simmer over the fire until it thickened. The aroma that filled the air is an aroma that I will never forget.

I have a few of my favorite winter crafts and goodies that I made as a child that I would love to share. These traditions bring me back to my childhood and to raising my children as well. Sometimes, it’s the simplest things like making angels in the freshly fallen snow or singing Christmas carols in the cold that warms your heart. It’s a feeling from a memory that just brings you back home.

Winter crafts:

Ornaments made from Styrofoam

Garland made from needled threaded popcorn

Candy cane and pipe cleaner reindeer ornaments

Red and green construction paper garland

Snowman scene made from cotton balls

Christmas wreathes made from wires hangers and plastic sandwich baggies.

Holiday goodies:

A sheet cake decorated like an old town winter wonderland

Maple syrup to pour over snow

Congo squares

Whoopie pies

Rolled out scrapes of pie crust formed into mini cinnamon sugar treats.

Spring and Sunrise Service

Easter was my favorite part of spring, which was partly because I loved going to the sunrise service at our church. My mom would wake us up early in the morning while it was still dark to take us to a little brook near our home. She told us that if we went to the brook before the sun rose, the water would be clear and pure. She claimed it would turn into holy water. In order for this to happen, the water would have to be bottled before the sun came up on Easter. After we returned home from our expedition of capturing our priceless liquid treasure, we got all dressed up in our Easter best and arrived at our church just before sunrise for an outside service. The sun would rise high over the tall pine trees as our pastor spoke about Jesus and His great resurrection. After service, we were all invited inside where the ladies of the church prepared a great Sunday breakfast for all to share. We sat at long tables covered in white linen tablecloths, and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the air. There were towers of homemade biscuits, fresh scrambled eggs, mounds of ham and bacon, and all the other fixin’s that make for the perfect Easter country breakfast.

I recall a time when I was about five, and I had won a Sunday school contest for bringing the most people to Sunday school. The prize was a large, white family Bible engraved with gold