“Miracles always begin with recognition of what you have; if you don’t recognize what you have, you can never multiply what you have not recognized.”
~Bishop T.D. Jakes
There are some writers that will always tell other aspiring writers that they are never supposed to throw anything away. That whatever you create should be held onto. There are those scraps of paper that you set to the side whenever your idea doesn’t pan out the way you thought it would.
There’s that opening scene that you decided that you weren’t crazy about once you had completed it. Even the novel that you, for some unknown reason, stopped working on halfway through it and have just set to the side never to be seen again for years, possibly decades. I firmly believe in never throwing things away but not just for the sake of holding onto things and not being able to let go but because you never know what treasures lie in those scraps of paper that you are thinking about throwing away.
Those scraps of paper may not have been right for what you initially intended it for but they might be perfect for some other project down the line. That scene may not have fit that particular story but could find a home in the next one. That unfinished novel that is still sitting and collecting dust may just be waiting for the right time for you to be ready to finish it and it could be the next great novel the world is waiting to read.
Last week I wrote a post that mentioned some segments from a sermon given by Bishop T.D. Jakes that was featured on a particular episode of Oprah’s Next Chapter. I had only captured certain pieces of that sermon on the show but this morning I went back and listened to it in its entirety and got so much more out of it then I did before. His specific message was on saving the scraps (our past burdens) and it was centered around a passage from the bible taken from Mark6:42-52.
In his sermon he said that “The miracle is not in what you lost, the miracle is not in what you have consumed previously, your best days are not your yesterdays, your miracles are in what you have left. If you discard it, ignore it, don’t use it, don’t value it, don’t learn from it, don’t understand it, you will lose the battle before you because you did not learn from the battle behind you. – That which remains is more valuable than that which was lost.”
He talked about us taking our scraps and using them to enable us to power through and forge ahead. To use them as our learning tools that eventually become our blessings. “Your power is not in where you are, your power is in where you’ve been” and if you don’t recognize and hold onto the place that you were once at you can not truly appreciate the place where you are now.
Bishop T.D. Jakes closed his sermon by saying to those who have been broken, that the problem is that you have not considered the scraps that God has given you. If you had considered the scraps then you would already know and trust that you are safe. That it is not what you go through, but rather how you perceive what you go through.
I am very aware of the fact that I need to learn how to appreciate the scraps of my life instead of continuing to try and bury them. True gratitude comes in the appreciation of the fact that those scraps have been the reason for more than my fair share of blessings. Like it or not those scraps are what makes me who I am. They’re what make you who you are too.
When you look back at the things that you have been through and on the lows that you have been in, you have to know that God would not have put you through those things if he did not have a plan to bring you to higher ground. Your blessings are hidden in what you’ve already experienced and been through, in the lessons that life has already been teaching you. Your blessings are hidden in the scraps of it all.
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310
Write 2 Be 
I have been writing most of my life. As a teenager, I’d look at my childhood writings and think how silly of me and throw those things in the trash. I had a very harsh attitude toward my scraps. I think I must have written two or three of my best poems in my early teens and these I also tossed. I was embarrased that I had expressed my feelings and the phases I had been passing through, one was a possible divorce between my parents, which later did happen and the other was on jilted love. I wish I had them today, because now I realize how relevant they are. My teenage daughter likes to write, especially poetry, and I have been telling her for years that she must not keep them on paper, but put them on the computer for safekeeping and never ever throw anything away no matter how foolish they might look to her at the time. Our scraps, like you say, define us and are a necessary part of our future. Thank you for this post.
God bless,
Tina