Tag: Battles

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I Choose Faith Over Worry

November 13, 2019 jcladyluv

For as long as I can remember I have always been a worrier. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment in time or the day in which I went from a child without a care in the world to one who, even if I didn’t know the word to describe the feeling at the time, filled up on the inside with the worry that I innately carried with me into my adulthood. It could’ve been something I had seen or witnessed and buried in my subconscious so I can not now remember, or it could be one of the many times that I had worried if I was going to get hit by my mother simply for existing that day. Whatever moment it was that turned me into a person who would carry worry into my everyday habits, the habitual nature had been developed long before I knew how the power of Faith truly worked.

I recently read an article written by a friend that revisited the popular children’s Sunday school song In His Hands. The song tells us that God has the whole world in his hand, meaning every last one of us can rest in the palm of his hands. Every battle we face, every test that we fail, every victory that we win, all rest in his hands. Now as a child I did not understand the true meaning and power behind the words in that song but having lived a little and experienced a lot I get more than ever the meaning behind those words.

I have certainly been tested this last year and the funny thing to me is that even in this extremely difficult time that I am having I have never had more Faith in God and his power than I do right at this very moment. I say it’s funny because as I pointed out earlier, I am a worrier by nature and have been since I was a child so I literally worry about nearly everything. Now I’m not saying that my nature of worry has completely gone away because I’m still human, but my faith is unwavering and ever strengthening.

No matter what we face in this world, whatever figurative rocks are being thrown at you, worrying about it is not going to change the outcome. Even if we fall flat on our faces, we are still falling into the loving hands of God’s protection. We are still going to be nurtured by his unconditional love and he will still see us through whatever the battle is that we are being tested by. Not only will he see us through it but he will make us stronger for having fought that battle.

Sometimes I know that it would be nice to be able to see what the outcome is going to be, maybe get a little hint that everything will be okay, but as someone very wise recently told me, it’s not for me to see. God’s got me and that is essentially all that I really need to know. So when you feel antsy and you start to feel that worry creep up inside of you and you start to get impatient with the not knowing where things are headed, just keep in mind that God’s got you and no matter what you’re in HIS hands. Until next time… #BeinFaith #BeEmpowred

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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Battle Tested… Still a Work In Progress

November 4, 2019 jcladyluv

I was talking to someone the other night about the battles that we face and how sometimes I feel like I just want to throw in the towel, throw my hands up, and say to hell with everything. Now of course logically, I’m not going to do that because, shit, I’ve got goals and no matter how much I want to give up sometimes I have not ever been, nor will I ever be a quitter. When I get knocked down I may sulk a little bit, and I may even wallow slightly longer than is acceptable, but I do eventually get back up and prepare myself once again for the next battle. Now in the conversation that I was having the other day we were talking about the saying that says God gives the toughest battles to his strongest soldiers and we both reveled in the realization that God must have some really big things in store for us because we have been going through some tough battles lately.

This year has been a nightmare and I have been struggling. I’m in such a financial free fall right now and I am trying to maintain a positive outlook but it is hard. I came dangerously close to eviction the other day and while I have lined up a couple of clients for the next few weeks it’s still not going to be enough to stabilize things just yet and I am sinking. I was supposed to have some books out by now but my self-publishing efforts, as you might imagine given my current financial state, have kind of fallen to the back burner because I have to focus on keeping a roof over me and my daughter’s head. I do have a few things lined up so there is some comfort in that but it’s not enough to stabilize things just yet.

Okay I started going off course there for a moment. The point of this post was to highlight something I got when I watched a sermon from Bishop TD Jakes about fighting your Goliath’s (battles), and that is that no matter what the battle is that you might be facing right now, you should not allow it to discourage you. Your battle was not given to you to discourage you. It was given to you to empower you. Your battle was given to you to reveal who you really are, who you truly are and all of the power that you have inside of you, and all of the purpose that you have been given.

If you are feeling low at the moment, if your battle is getting too hard for you to fight, know that even if you are down you are not out. God is with you. God has already given you the strength to handle whatever it is that comes your way. You only need to believe in yourself and in the power that God has given you within. Until next time… #BeEmpowered #BeVictorious

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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Plant Seeds, Water Dreams, and Persist Until Success Blooms

June 29, 2018June 29, 2018 jcladyluv

planting the Seeds of Dreams 2 I’ve been thinking a lot about the time limits we impose upon ourselves when it comes to getting the things we want done. For a planner like me who had her life plans mapped out from the time I was ten years old it is extremely disheartening when things get thrown so far off course that you don’t even recognize the road you’re on anymore. A childhood friend of mine read my blog post the other day about going back to the beginning of a dream and provided some much needed words of encouragement that I needed to hear. He reminded me that just because I have not yet accomplished the things that I thought I would have by now that it doesn’t mean that I won’t. He reminded me that a lot of times the success comes later on in life and he let me know that he still believed in me as he always had since the 8^th grade poem that a group of us wrote together.

True enough, my plans for making an established career as a writer have not worked out quite the way that I envisioned but I’m not completely sure that I would change things. I can say that now because hindsight is twenty-twenty and looking back at some of the things that certain detours in my plan have brought into my life (one main blessing being my daughter) I can honestly say that I wouldn’t trade the experiences that I’ve had or the obstacles that I have had to work through for anything. I think that when I finally do reach the position in my writing career that I am striving for that those same obstacles and experiences will provide a great foundation for the lasting success that I saw for myself from the very beginning.

There are no time limits on when a person can achieve the success that they are looking for in life. We would like to get to the level of success we desire in a hurry and sometimes that can end up being to our detriment because far too often people aren’t really truly ready for the success they are seeking. I think that we’re often tested to gauge whether or not we’re even serious about what it is that we say we want. Will we throw our dreams away at the first sign of a major hurdle? Will we get halfway down the path to our goals and then get so impatient with how long it’s taking that we turn and double back before we’ve even reached the end of the road? Just how important could our dreams be if we run away from them at the first sign of resistance?

I think things happen for a reason, be it good or bad, and we have to be sure that the journey we are on has our full commitment and that our plans of action matches our level of desire. We can’t just quit on the dreams we have because it gets a little harder than we thought it would be to achieve them. They say that the hardest battles come with the sweetest victories so just imagine how sweet the success will be if you don’t give up on the goal just because the storm became too hard to bear. You’ve already planted the seed so just make sure you keep watering the dream!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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Picking the Battles That Matter

January 27, 2014 jcladyluv

Ever had that question in the back of your mind of why when all you are doing is trying to follow through with your purpose, make your dreams a reality, is that it seems every curveball you can possibly think of is thrown at you. It almost seems like right when you are about to reach the peak of your journey up the mountain that an avalanche of obstacles falls right in your path.

It’s almost enough to make you want to stop and rethink the journey and whether or not it is the one that you are truly supposed to be on. You second guess yourself a lot when the challenges seem to be so daunting and never-ending. However, when you look at some of the most successful people in life and go examine the journey that they took to get where they are, it would appear that the one’s with the most difficult challenges on the road to their destiny were the ones who achieved the biggest rewards for their efforts.

I admit that I get thrown off course a lot of the times by the enormity of my struggles and also by people that surround me that don’t always seem to be for me. Oddly enough these aren’t even people in my inner circle, they are people who just always seem to have something to say against what it is I’m trying to do and I let it get to me. Sometimes it makes the struggles feel even more insurmountable because no one seems to understand my vision or what I’m really all about.

I was watching something yesterday and it reminded me that not everyone is going to like me, not everyone is going to understand me or what it is I’m trying to do, but that is because it is not for everyone to understand. I keep getting lured off track trying to somehow prove that I am worthy, that I am important, that what I’m trying to do is important and that it matters. It is said that the enemy (those that are against you) always fights us the hardest when we are the closest to our victories.

As it pertains to my struggles, Joel Osteen once said in his messages that you cannot expect ordinary problems if you are an extraordinary person, a history maker, so to speak. I definitely know that I am not an ordinary person and that I intend to be a history maker so I suppose that means I better get ready for some even more challenging battles ahead.

In life, when you are trying to accomplish so much, there just simply isn’t any time to waste energy on things or people that just don’t matter. That’s not to say that we should be unfeeling or cold towards people in general. It’s just that when you know what you’re purpose is you have to know which battles to choose before wasting energy on the battles that don’t matter.

If the people you are surrounding yourself with aren’t for you and aren’t going to help you along your journey then that’s a battle that you need to let go of. So start letting go of unnecessary baggage today because you’re journey.

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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