I try not to compare my journey to the journey of others and I try not to be envious of the opportunities that I see other people receive and then just throw away. I know that it is something that you are not supposed to do and it really doesn’t do any good because it doesn’t make your journey any more or less complicated than what it already is.
It gets hard when you see people in the media who seem to be throwing their wonderful opportunities that they have worked so hard to attain right down the drain. But then I remind myself that my path is mine for a reason. It is constructed however God decided to construct it and the obstacles that fall in my path are what God is using to prepare me for the next level of my journey that he already has mapped out.
I just have to keep fighting for my opportunities and removing my obstacles one at a time until I reach the destination that is in store for me. I really have to start remembering not to regret the mistakes or the bumps along the path because those will be the same mistakes and bumps that are going to catapult me to my highest destination possible. I suppose that I should stop wishing for another journey because then I may not like the results that come along with the change.
I realize that I have slacked off a lot lately in my writing. Or at least that is what I think until I realize that I have kept up pretty well with this blog and other articles that I am writing for other blogs and publications. Let’s not forget that I am still in school finishing up a Master’s degree so that is not to be taken lightly. I am really hard on myself. I am my own worst critic but then again I think most of us are highly critical of ourselves. But when do we ever stop to take a step back to really look at the progress that we have made.
I was talking to Ms. L. last night and we were talking about our journey’s and I was telling her that while I know that most people don’t understand certain choices that I have made, and if I am being honest some days it doesn’t make sense to me either, but I feel like the path I am walking is the one that I am meant to walk. It may be unconventional (that would be putting it mildly) and it may not be the most common sense choice (to other people who don’t have to walk in my shoes) but I just know that it is the right one.
I told Ms. L. last night that when I do reach my destiny, when I achieve the purpose that God has for me, it will all make sense and then everyone will wonder why they ever questioned my choices. Truthfully they weren’t solely my mine. They were what I was being guided to do. Knowing who I am and that what God has for me is nothing but good, I have to trust the path that I am on.
I am working on not being so harsh on myself and on the lack of productiveness that I feel is taking place within my work right now. I just have to remind myself to take a step back every once and a while. Survey everything I’ve accomplished, everything that I have been through and the person that I have grown into. I have to acknowledge that everything may not be the way I want it to be right now and I may not be in the position that I feel I should be in right now but I am right where I should be and everything is just as it should be. It’s the way God has designed it to be.
When you think you’re not doing enough, that you haven’t moved an inch, take a step back and just look at where you were compared to where you are now. I guarantee you that, even if it is small, you will see a difference!
“Since the Lord is directing our steps, why do we try to figure out everything that happens along the way?”
~Proverbs 20:24
So last week was not one of my better weeks. I will even admit that things were going so much in the opposite direction of the way I wanted them to go that I had gotten a little bit angry with God (crazy I know, but I can’t be the only one that has) for not allowing things to happen the way that I had expected them to. Of course it didn’t take long for me to realize that that was the wrong attitude to have and to remember that God would never give me more than he thought I could handle.
When I was watching Joel Osteen on Sunday morning (and I did not intend to watch it, it was on a channel that it normally doesn’t even come on) he delivered a message that, once again, was right on time for me and that put everything into perspective. He essentially said that in worrying about your struggles and in getting frustrated about your circumstances you are not trusting God and the fact that he knows what he is doing and that he has already mapped out your entire life, bumps and bruises included. Sometimes God uses our struggles and our tough times to strengthen us and to prepare us for the next level of what he has planned for our lives, for our purpose.
Our wanting to be comfortable and have nothing but constant victory is unrealistic and when I think about it, is probably not for the best. Our struggles and our bad times, that’s what builds character in us. Those are the times when God shows us what we are made of and where sometimes we even surprise ourselves on how well things turn out once you’ve come out on the other side. If we keep fighting the circumstances that make us uncomfortable and that seem impossible to get through we just might miss all of the wonderful things that can happen along the way as a result of those challenges.
We pray for things and when our prayers don’t get answered we get so frustrated and discouraged (this very much includes me) but I have been thinking lately, especially since watching Joel Osteen, maybe those prayers that don’t get answered are God showing us just how much he loves us. There are things that are just not meant for us to have or to experience and God, being the one who sees everything in our future, just might be protecting us by not answering our prayers to begin with.
So while my situation has not yet improved, I am going to start embracing where I am now, and just be grateful for the moment that I am in. I am going to try to remember that sometimes having to be outside of my comfort zone can be a really good thing and it can also be preparing me for the next phase in my life. Don’t fight the divine delays that God is using to prepare you for your destiny. Live where you are, not where you feel you should be!
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
~Jeremiah 29:11
I am not an optimistic person by nature. I have had quite a bit of bad happen in my life and typically when something good happens I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Being optimistic is something that I have to really work at and some days it is a lot harder then others. I wish that I was one of those glass half full type of people but for the most part I am not. It might have a lot to do with the fact that my mother always drilled it into my head that I was bad luck and that I attracted bad things in my life. I guess I’m just now realizing how much of her words actually seeped into my subconscious.
I know that “that which doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” and while I know from experience that this is true, I’m not going to lie and say that it isn’t difficult to have faith that the good (you can’t see) is just around the corner when you’re in the moment where everything seems to be going so terribly wrong. However, I have an abundance of faith in God and in the fact that there is a reason and a purpose for everything that he does within my life. There are those moments when not knowing what those reasons are gets frustrating but I know that God only has good intentions for me and that there is nothing that he would allow me to go through if he felt I couldn’t handle it (and he seems to think I am a lot stronger than I am).
This has (so far) been one of those weeks where I have to work harder to keep that faith that things will work out. I’ve had to keep reminding myself that God has to have his reasons for putting me through this test and take it as just that, a test. I wish I knew what God had in mind but I suppose that right, it is not for me to know, but just to trust that what is meant to be in my favor will work out.
I feel better just writing this post because while writing it I have gained some perspective. Maybe my pessimism will meet my optimism somewhere in the middle and balance itself out to understand that while things seem really bad at this moment, they could be worse. I know that there are good things in my future. I also know that I am not going to always be able to see everything good that God has mapped out for me. It is something that I have to just have faith in.
I know that it is hard not to worry, believe me I know. But we have to remember that it’s all in God’s hands anyway. It is going to work out whatever way he wants it to work out. Take care and be blessed!
I am one of those people who can prepare something to death. I mean I make a list, and then I check over it, I double check and sometimes even triple check. When it comes to writing a novel or an article, I outline, and then I research. I often end up with massive amounts of research in which only about half of it gets used and the rest gets tossed to the side and becomes a reminder of how much time I wasted over-preparing for something yet again.
I know that preparation is supposed to be a good thing and for most people it is but for those of us who can tend to use the preparation process as another stall tactic (procrastination) it can rob us of so much time that would be better spent just jumping into the project and getting started already. When am I going to learn that sometimes it really is better to just dive in (head first) and get it done. I spend so much time waiting for the right moment to come, for the right amount of money (or in most cases, any money), for the right person to partner with, for just the right amount of nerve to actually launch that business.
So much time I waste waiting and never actually doing any of the things I long to do. If I could go back and count how many accomplishments I could’ve been able to cross off my list had I not waited for some unknown right moment I would’ve already tackled most of that list by now and I would be much happier for it. If we could add up all of the countless hours that we have wasted on second guessing ourselves, and preparing everything to the point of exhaustion how many of our endeavors could we have already achieved?
You can never really prepare for everything, especially the curveballs that life throws you that you don’t even realize are coming. The best you can do is deal with things as they come and just go along for the ride. I think that is where I went wrong with this year’s plan. I over-plan and try to over-prepare everything, and worry so much about what money I don’t have to start this business that I have wanted to start for as long as I can remember. I am over-thinking everything, so much so that nothing is being done. I’ve got to just take a leap of faith and jump right in.
No one is every really 100% ready to begin the journey that will lead them into their destiny because the things that are most worth having are never really easy to attain. So if you are one of those people who over-prepares and stands on the edge of the curb waiting for all of the possible obstacles that could block your path before you actually cross the road leading to your destiny, stop waiting. If you stood by to let every obstacle pass you by before taking the chance to walk that road you may find yourself standing on that curb for a very long time. You may not be 100% ready, but what the hell, jump anyway!
I happened to tune into another Joel Osteen sermon (you can view it at the bottom of the post) on Sunday and once again it was exactly the right message at exactly the right time that I needed to hear it. He spoke to people who are having setbacks and feeling discouraged and who are, in a sense, questioning “why do these things keep happening to me” or “why isn’t what I’m doing enough”. It was how I have been feeling for the last week and a half now and I have to say that what Joel Osteen spoke about made a lot of sense.
He said that you can’t isolate all of the different moments in your life and dissect what was wrong in each moment because separately they will look unfair and they will look like some of the worst moments in your life. However, collectively, once all of the pieces have come together, it will all somehow make sense. He used the example of the different moments we go through, good or bad, being the ingredients in the overall recipe for our lives.
Just as with baking a cake or cookies, separately the ingredients are just plain ingredients that don’t seem like they would taste like much on their own, but once they are all mixed together, they make something wonderful. If you think about it, a cookie mix, without the baking soda to make it rise, just comes out flat because there is an ingredient missing that was necessary for everything to make sense. When I think of it like that it somehow makes all of the pieces fit. With all of the experiences that we go through in life, we have to know that they are somehow necessary in order for you to get to the next level of your destined path.
Osteen said “God is the master chef and the recipe for your life has already been established. God has planned your days for good from beginning to end and he knows exactly what to add and when to add it. He’s going to put in just the right amount at just the right time so that you can become everything that he has created you to be. God has ingredients coming your way that are going to thrusts you to a new level and he has ingredients that are going to cause everything to make sense.”
When he said that he referenced it to that bad childhood, that opportunity that didn’t come to fruition, that loved one that walked out of your life right when you needed them (or so you thought), that job you lost that you thought was going to be the answer to you prayers, that bad break-up that you are still not quite over, the money that you were counting on that didn’t come through at the time that you really needed it the most. All of these “bad breaks” don’t make sense on their own and they are down right frustrating, but once you do achieve the purpose that you are destined to fulfill, it will somehow all make sense.
I have this passion (aside from writing of course) to find a way to do something about the bullying epidemic that has gotten out of control in society over the last decade or so. But had I not gone through the bullying that I went through in school or even the bullying and abuse that I had to endure from my own mother at home, I might not find myself headed in that direction and feeling the need to be an agent of change in that area. It is because of those experiences that I went through that make me want to do so much to change this world and to be a part of making it better. They didn’t make sense at the time that I was going through them, but they are all starting to make much more sense now.
Each moment is like the ingredient to the recipe of our lives. They can often be discouraging and disheartening but that is because we keep isolating them instead of mixing them all together and looking at the dish as a whole. Some people are bitter on life because they have not waited for all of the ingredients to come together. Final word from Joel Osteen, “God always ends on all is well” so if all is not well in your life that means that it is not the end, keep moving forward, there’s another ingredient coming.
Yesterday I had a day where it seemed like I just kept hitting the wall. Just when it looked like I was starting to get close to that light that lets me know things are going to be okay I felt like another boulder (not a rock) was dropped in my way. I felt like just giving up and I took a moment to cry a little (I’m not ashamed to admit that I cry when I get upset) because honestly I started to feel like things were hopeless.
But today was a new day and with the tragedy that has just taken place in Oklahoma with the devastation of the tornados it really puts things into perspective. I can’t take the gifts that I have been given for granted just because of a moment that seems like it can’t be fixed. I have to be grateful that I still have more moments to fix things. A moment of frustration is not going to keep me from tunneling through to that light on the other side of the wall that keeps blocking me from my dreams and my purpose.
I opened my latest Tyler Perry email today and there on the screen in front of me (right on time as usual) was a message to all of the frustrated dreamers. In essence, he was letting all of the dreamers out there who are hitting that wall know, to keep powering through until we breakthrough to the other side of that wall. That while we are tunneling through that wall, to be grateful for the things that we have to go through on the way, yes even those things that make us want to rip our hair out and scream, because it will be those things that make us stronger and more prepared for when we finally do have our breakthrough moment.
So often we make it all the way to that wall and then we give up right before the breakthrough (just like in the picture above) because we didn’t see it coming. Then we just end up missing our moment, our opportunity and all of the opportunities that were supposed to follow. We (yes me included) have to stop giving up so easily. Just because things seem hopeless at the moment, we can’t just stop pushing through because that light that we are looking for could literally be right around the corner when we decide it’s just too hard to keep going.
Tyler Perry included a prayer in his email for the frustrated dreamers“God, help me hold on, help me to get to what I dream of, help me to honor where I am today so that I can appreciate where I will be tomorrow. In Jesus’ name.” That prayer is something I know I am going to say (on top of my many other conversations with God) so that I can motivate myself to keep pushing through no matter what, until I get to the other side of that wall. I know I can make it and I’m not giving up, you shouldn’t either!
It is always good to have someone in your corner. Someone who reassures you when your confidence is beginning to waiver and who is going to stand beside you come hell or high water. Everyone deserves to have that kind of support. Typically you are going to find that support within your family and your very close knit friends but what do you say to those who are supposed to be your family and don’t have your back. How do you respond to the people who are supposed to always believe in you telling you that you won’t make it?
I try to figure that out because I have several of those in my family, people who consistently let me know that they don’t think that I am going to reach my destination. I tune them out most of the time but when you hear people talk about not knowing where they would be without their family believing in them it seems sad when I look at my family and think I don’t know where I would be if I were to actually listen to them. Yes I actually do know. I would have given up on my dreams a long time ago because that’s what they’ve always wanted me to do.
Every goal that you go after is always easier to reach if you have a few people standing in your corner. Not a lot of people, just two or three is good enough to help remind you that you are strong enough and to keep you from turning around and running away from the dreams you have for yourself. I know that I may not have family that is standing in my corner, praying that my successes are made a reality, but I do have at least one really good friend, my best friend, who I know will always be there.
We may not always get to have the crowd of believers that we want around us but then again do we really need a big crowd? Sure it would be nice if everyone was as sure of your choices as you are (most of the time) but truthfully you can get where you going without that big crowd. You want that support system in the corner standing by but the most important person that you need in your corner is you.
You have to fight for that dream and you have to do it regardless of whether you are fighting with that big crowd, or you are fighting for it alone. No matter who I have or don’t have in my corner, I know one thing. I have me (and of course God) and that’s all there really is. So no matter how large your corner is expanding make sure that you remember that no one can fight for that dream you have like you can.
There are some days when you just feel like you can’t climb out of the hole you’re in. When the walls start to close in more and more and it starts to feel like you just can’t breathe. I know that everything is not going to always go your way because that would be unrealistic to think that it’s supposed to work like that.
I know what people say about nothing worth having ever being easy. I also whole heartedly believe that when all is said and done God is not going to bring me to a place that he doesn’t feel I can’t pull myself out of (with his help of course). Having said all of that, it doesn’t make it any less stressful and challenging to actually have to go through all of the trials and tribulations that it takes to get to the destination that I am meant to get to in the end.
There are some days when I feel like I don’t have a support system and like I don’t have anyone in my corner and some days that feeling hurts more than others. I feel like I’m walking on this entire journey all by myself. Perhaps that’s how it’s supposed to be but it sure does feel lonely at times. I guess you have to know how to walk alone but it sure would be nice to have a walking buddy at any given point on the path. Then I have to remind myself (and keep reminding myself repeatedly) that I am not the only one walking this path because God is with me, leading the way.
There are those who don’t have to constantly remind themselves that they aren’t walking by themselves on the way to their destination because they don’t have so much worry and they don’t get afraid of being left to go it alone. Then there are those like me, who are terrified that I won’t pick the right door or the right path, and that I won’t make precisely the right decision. I get worried but it’s not because I don’t believe in the path that God has for me, but rather because I don’t want him to give up on me.
I get to the end of that rope and sometimes it just doesn’t seem like it’s long enough. I keep forgetting the things that most people never forget, that I am never walking this path by myself because there are always those second set of footprints in the sand. So if you are anything like me, afraid that you will somehow not be able to pull yourself up and like the rope you were handed just might not be long enough, just remind yourself today that you are not alone on your journey. God is always there leading the way, you just have to trust that he will never guide you in the wrong direction and he will always be on the other end of that rope to pull you back up.
Yesterday the April issue of Write 2 Be magazine came out and in my letter from the editor I wrote about springing into action before too much time has passed and you realize that you haven’t even accomplished half of what you set out to achieve this year. As I was uploading the issue to the site the news about the Boston Marathon explosions broke in on the TV and I just shook my head at the actions of someone who was obviously busy doing the devil’s work. It made me saddened for those who were injured and certainly for those killed but I also felt like my message of springing into action was even more relevant.
None of us know what is going to happen from one day to the next and waiting around for the eventual time that is going to come for you to achieve those goals might just result in you wasting time that you may not have to waste. We have to stop living for some time period that is a year or two from now and live for the moment, for today. We keep putting things off and biding our time until someday gets here when you’re finally going to get moving and attack those goals, those dreams, with the determination and drive that should have been there all along.
For the ones at the marathon that died yesterday, particularly the eight year old little boy, they won’t get a chance to wait for someday to get here. Their someday is gone now and while there is nothing that we can do to bring them back, there is something that we can do to honor them and to honor all of the lives that have been taken way too soon from their eventual tomorrow. We can stop waiting for someday, or for a year from now, or even months from now. We can start living out our dreams and serving God’s purpose NOW! Not tomorrow, but right now.
They say that there is no time like the present and when I was younger I really didn’t get the depth of that saying. However, as I have gotten older and as I have seen terrible things happen throughout this world I understand what that means. There’s no time like the present because that’s all there is, is the present. Live as if today was the last one you had. I don’t mean live as if you’re going to die tomorrow, but rather enjoy your life today, enjoy the opportunities that you have today, take advantage of the goals that you can achieve today, and be happy today. None of us knows what tomorrow will hold. All we have is today!
Write 2 Be 