Tag: God

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Smiling Through the Not Knowing of It All

June 4, 2012 jcladyluv

“Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.”

~Author Unknown

You ever have those days where you sit and think about all of the things that are just not going the way that you expected them to. Where you are not where you thought you would be and you’re tired of trying so damn hard because it all seems like it just might be for nothing.

Today wasn’t a bad day for me necessarily but I had a conversation with someone who was talking about how much they doubted themselves at what they’re purpose was at one point in time and how they finally decided to move out of their own way and get hustling even if no one else believed in them.

It’s the way I used to be and the way I would love to be again but I just had that slight feeling of ‘what’s the point’ after having that conversation. I believe in me but to this very minute I still feel like I’m the only one that seems to believe that I am good enough at what I do to ever make a decent living at it. Ordinarily there is nothing wrong with being the only one who believes that you’re good at what you do, for a while that is.

The only thing is that with being a writer, there has to be someone else that believes you’re good enough eventually if you ever want to make a living at it. I don’t just mean the one person here and the one person there that comes around so sporadically that you can’t really call that a decent living, I mean the steady stream of people that are willing to take a chance on the belief that you have in yourself.

Well when I have one of those days, where I just want to throw in the towel on it all and simply give up I try to listen to music that motivates me and gets me back in the right frame of mind again. One of the best songs for me to listen to when I feel like giving up is Kirk Franklin’s ‘Smile’ because the lyrics of the course are just what I need to hear.

I Smile. Even though I hurt see I smile

I know God is working so I smile

Even though I’ve been here for a while, I smile.

Smile. It’s so hard to look up when you’ve been down.

Sure would hate to see you give up now.

You look so much better when you smile, so smile.

How can you not smile after hearing such lyrics? How can you want to give up after hearing those lyrics? How could you not feel motivated to do what God put in motion for you to be doing? After hearing that song everything seems to be put back in focus again. My purpose seems to be back front and center, where it should have always been.

The fact is that I would not just be letting myself down if I was to toss my dreams aside, but more importantly I would be letting God down as well. I just have to remember that just because I am down right now, just because I am not where I want to be right now, doesn’t mean that God isn’t still working on me and my life. I guess I keep forgetting that I am not the only one who believes in me and my gifts, because God believed in me first.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

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http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Approval Ratings

May 31, 2012May 31, 2012 jcladyluv

“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”

~Judy Garland

Today I got this feeling around me like I was being talked about. I almost felt like I was back in high school again, when people would talk about me and my insecurity level would rise. But then I realized something strange, well at least strange in comparison to how it was in high school. I just didn’t care.

I mean of course it feels horrible to have anyone talking about you in a negative way, especially when you did nothing to warrant that type of behavior. But oddly enough, my insecurity level didn’t creep in, and I didn’t feel defensive and I didn’t feel the need to say something to somehow defend myself. I just simply didn’t care. I almost felt honored to be on someone else’s mind so much, in any capacity, that they felt the need to converse about me.

For as long as I could remember, I have always been that person that has sought the approval of others. Mostly I wanted my mother’s approval (which I realize I am never going to get), but because I couldn’t have her approval, I desperately needed others to approve of me. It was when I was listening to a sermon by Bishop T.D. Jakes that I realized that I must have somehow, within my journey in this life, gotten to the point where I didn’t need the approval of anyone else. I don’t know how I missed it because that’s a pretty important moment.

He said that “the losing of those who don’t stand by you is the discovery of you” and that “people who don’t know who they are, are always needing validation to feel secure, but when you know who you are, you are safer within yourself, you don’t need everybody in your space to make you feel good about who you are.”

In many ways it feels very freeing when you just stop caring so much about what others think of you and what they have to say about you. My best friend Ms. L. once told me that if people are talking about you then that means you must be doing something right because it’s nothing but the devil trying to put more walls up to keep you from moving forward. I sure wish she was around when I was in high school because I sure could’ve used that bit of knowledge then.

I suppose the devil has been putting walls up in my path for a very long time then, and I have just been foolishly letting him. Now that I am in a place where I don’t need anyone else’s praise or approval I feel more secure within myself and with who I am. I am in no way perfect and I am probably going to make many more mistakes but I am happy with who I am. Even if no one else agrees with my path, it is the path that I have chosen and I am quite happy with it.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

The Life You Breathe Into the Words That You Speak

May 30, 2012 jcladyluv

“As it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

~Romans 4:17

Words have a lot of power. Not just the words that we write down, but also the words that we speak. Not just to other people but the words that we tell ourselves. I was watching an interview between Dr. Wayne Dyer and Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday show the other morning and he was speaking about the Art of manifestation and placing into our imagination who it is that we are and not stressing who it is that we are not.

That really hit me when he said that. No really, I was actually still asleep when the interview was on and I could hear the T.V. in my state of being still half sleep and half awake, but when I heard him say that it woke me up. I quickly sat up in my bed as I heard him talk about how people who constantly say I am depressed, I am sick, I am sad, I am broke, I am not good enough, are inadvertently breathing life into those words and those feelings. I thought to myself, I am one of those people.

Not because I ever wanted to be. Just because I think I spend way too much time professing the circumstances that I am stuck in instead of approaching it in the manner of claiming the end result. Something so simple as taking the phrase ‘I am broke’ out of your vocabulary, and claiming the prosperity that lies ahead of you and that is within your reach could change the journey for any one of us. Instead of reminding ourselves of what it is that we don’t have, or the not so positive feelings that we might be feeling, we have to lay claim to what it is that we want to be true.

It’s not that you should pretend that you are not depressed, rather that you can choose another thought to have. You can make the choice not to put into your imagination something that you don’t want to materialize. If I am feeling like I am just (as I felt all last week) not very much in the writing mood, and I breathe those words into life, then of course no writing is going to get done.

I am going to work very hard to start practicing those words of wisdom from Mr. Wayne Dyer in regards to manifesting what I want in my life by speaking it and making it so. I have to keep in mind that when God said that all things are possible through him, he didn’t mean some things and not others. He meant exactly what he said, ALL. I want to breathe life into much more positive ways of seeing things.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

The Superficial World We Live In

May 4, 2012 jcladyluv

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

~Confucius

Can you imagine living without money? I mean without one penny to your name? No roof over your head. No food aside from what people willingly give you or you can find in the garbage. I’m talking about back to the living off the land days where you’re picking berries and boiling dead animals for food (that is if no one gives you any). Better yet can you imagine living this way and being completely happy about it?

Well I came across a story on the internet about a 51 year old man named Daniel Suelo who claims that not only is he broke, but happily, deliberately, and blessedly broke. I clicked on it because just the thought of it sounded completely insane to me but in reading it I can see the validity of his choice.

Having said that, I can not say that I would make a conscious choice to just give up what little money I do have to my name and go roughing it in the wilderness somewhere (if you know me at all, you know I’m not the outdoor type—not even a little bit). However, I understand his position.

The world, especially in recent generations, is so overly consumed with things and what they can possess and acquire. It’s so bad sometimes that you start to wonder just what lengths people would go to, and how many people they would walk over, just to get their hands on something incredibly superficial. People concern themselves so much with the latest ipad (or whatever new piece of technology is out), or how many cars they have, or having the flashiest car, or the biggest home.

But yet we have a huge problem with children in this country and others literally starving to death, schools that don’t have adequate materials to teach our children to the best of their abilities, teenage girls who think it’s cute and fun to have a baby at the ripe age of sixteen or seventeen (sometimes younger than that). It makes me wonder where our priorities are and does this Daniel Suelo have the right idea (or at least the right intentions).

I may not have some prestigious career (at least not until I make the NY Times Bestseller’s List) and I may not be raking in money hand over fist like a lot of people but I guess when I really think about it, my blessings are worth far more than material possessions. I think there is really something to the saying that the more money that we have, the more problems we see because I think it makes people focus even more so on possessing things they don’t even need.

Maybe we do need to get back to the basics and see the blessings in the simple things, the most treasured things that some people would die to have. There are children in other countries who can’t even get an education and we take ours for granted. There are families starving and homeless yet the majority of this country just focuses on how much bigger house they can get for their money, or how fancier their car can be, or eating the most expensive kinds of food, instead of being grateful that they even have a house and a car, and food to eat.

Now I’m not in any way saying that we should just chuck it all and purposely live in the state of poverty because God only knows that I couldn’t go that simple. However, maybe we should take a look at what it is we truly have and are blessed with before complaining about things that we don’t truly need. Maybe the world would be a lot less superficial if we just remembered how good we had it even when we only had the basics. Sometimes less really is more.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Accidentally but on Purpose

April 19, 2012 jcladyluv

“There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I always hear the phrase, accidents happen, and for the longest time I believed it to be true. Things, little coincidences, just happen sometimes. You run into someone at the store that you haven’t seen in a long time seems like it would be a coincidence. You meeting someone that you may have more than a few things in common with is just a happy coincidence. You having some sort of accident happen to you or a family member, perhaps a car accident, is just a terrible accident that should’ve never happened, right? Wrong.

I used to believe that but somewhere along this journey of my life I have come to know that there is no such thing as coincidences and accidents. If you were to believe that things in your life happen by accident, or coincidence, then that is to say that you don’t believe that there is a plan that God has already laid out for you before you were even born into this world.

I meet different people all of the time but they don’t all stick, they don’t all get invited into my inner circle. But the ones that do, the ones that have been there no matter what, I know that I did not meet them by accident and there was no coincidence in those meetings. They were placed before me, by God, because he knew that I needed them in my life, and perhaps that they needed me too.

I have come to realize over the years that there is a reason for everything that happens in your life, and that they don’t just accidentally happen. I have been in several car accidents in my life, two in which I could have died in. I know that technically they are deemed car accidents but I in many ways see them as signs. Maybe they were to wake me up to the fact that, although for a large part of my life I thought I was just here by mistake (mostly because my mother told me that I was one) and that I had no good to share with the rest of the world, I am in fact here for a reason.

My best friend, Ms. L. and I met coincidentally, or so I always thought. We were in college and one night I went into the T.V. lounge and she was sitting there watching T.V. We struck up a conversation and began to hang out, initially meeting in the lounge almost every night, and then trading time in each other’s dorm rooms.

Two girls, from two different types of backgrounds, with two totally different levels of self esteem and confidence; one who was (or at least appeared to be) very sure of herself, and one who was still lost trying to figure out what version of herself was the right one to let the rest of the world see (that would be me).

We couldn’t have been more different, but oddly enough we couldn’t have been more alike either. Looking back now, on what I thought was a coincidence I see that we were always supposed to meet. I can’t even imagine my life without her in it and there are so many benefits of having her as my best friend and knowing she will always be in my corner no matter what, and I in hers.

I don’t believe that I met her by accident, nor any of the other people who I deem to be significant in my life. Much like Ms. L., they all drive me, to be better, to be more consistent. They make me want to be a better friend, a better person, and force me to see in myself what they see in me.

The thing is that you never know what the reason is for any one particular circumstance that you are going through. And you won’t know until you have seen your way through those circumstances. There is a reason, or rather, a purpose for every turning point (good or bad) in your life. And nothing ever happens by accident.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Structuring Ourselves In Order to Sustain His Blessings

April 17, 2012 jcladyluv

“Your real strength, your guts, your tenacity, your staying power, your discipline, is in the things God did for you when nobody was looking.”

~Bishop T.D. Jakes

I realized last night that my post yesterday was a little unfinished. I don’t think that the message that I was trying to convey was finished yet. I was reading Ms. L’s blog post this morning and realized that there was more I needed to say. She spoke of having doubts in her mission and her purpose with what she is trying to do with her company and her new magazine, PIEhole, and in reading her post I thought all of these doubts sounded all too familiar for me.

I hadn’t realized that she was experiencing this much doubt. I always see her as so well put together and it just always seems that she is fearless and ready to take on the world. I started thinking back to the Bishop T.D. Jakes sermon that I listened to yesterday and the particular part that I wanted to convey to Ms. L. in her time of doubt, and what I have to get through to my own mind as well, is that greatness takes time.

“The best miracles in your life take time; can not be driven by hunger, or need, or necessity. Sometimes you have to get yourself structured and in order so that you are ready to receive the magnitude of what God has for you. Just because you have a driving need does not mean that you can disperse with the order and the time and the structure that is necessary to hold the weight of what God is going to do. Some people are so busy trying to get what God has that they don’t provide the structure that is necessary to sustain what they have been given.”

This quote struck me when I heard it in his sermon. It hit me like a ton of bricks because I thought about the fact that I have not necessarily built up a stable structure. I have not yet gotten the order that I need to have to sustain the kind of structure that I need. It makes sense that God would want to hold onto the overflow of blessings that he has stored up for me until he sees that I have built up a stable enough structure to hold the weight of those blessings.

I am still working on the order and my structure and perhaps I should stop rushing God along to give me what he knows that I am not ready to sustain. “Until you can be thankful for something that is not enough, then what you have can not be multiplied into what is more than enough.” Perhaps my time would be better spent preparing my structure and being thankful for the things that he has already blessed me with and seen me through instead of just waiting for him to do what he has in his plans to do for me.

So that’s what I’m going to continue to strive for and work on. I am going to be building up my structure and getting my ‘house’ in order and enjoy and be thankful for what God has already blessed me with on an everyday basis. He has blessed me with so many things in my life thus far, among them a purpose, knowledge of how to go after that purpose, and the ability to carry out that purpose. I know that once he feels I am ready for the overflow, my cup will runneth over.

*(And Ms. L., your cup is already nearing the edge.)*

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Somewhere Hidden In the Scraps

April 16, 2012 jcladyluv

“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://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Being Broken Down To Be Blessed On the Way Back Up

April 10, 2012 jcladyluv

“God never intended for you to go through something and get nothing out of it.”

~Bishop T.D. Jakes

Sometimes I have days where I feel encouraged and empowered. My writing flows, my productivity is better then average and I feel like I am going to get to my destination. Then there are other days when my writing is not going as smoothly, there is no productivity and my destination seems further and further away. Those are the days that I just feel broken down. I try to think of the wise people who tell me that it’s not going to always be that way but the message never came across to me as clear as it did the other night when I was watching Oprah’s Next Chapter where she did a sit down interview with Bishop T.D. Jakes.

Now anyone who knows me well enough (either personally or through this blog) knows that I am spiritual but I am not necessarily terribly religious. Meaning I don’t necessarily believe that I have to go to a building (i.e. church) to get the word that God is trying to communicate to me. But every once and a while I will see and hear a Pastor, Preacher, or in this case Bishop say something on television that will make me wish that their church was within my reach so that I could go get that message in person.

On Oprah’s Next Chapter when Bishop T.D. Jakes told his congregation that “The blessing is in the breaking; that, which refuses to be broken refuses to be blessed; It is the breaking of life that produces the blessing of life.” I felt as if that message was meant for me. Now I know I wasn’t even there, and this was after all a repeat on TV so it wasn’t even live, but yet I felt like I was directed to watch it for a specific reason; because it’s what I needed to hear.

I always see my breaking points as my own little personal failures but I suppose the truth is that they are the foundations for my future successes. They are the models of what I need to look at so that I know not to repeat the same process that got me to that point in the first place. They are lessons for me to learn from, not mistakes for me to forever regret.

Bishop T.D. Jakes also said “The most blessed people I have ever met in my life have gone through something that broke them.” In essence, adversity breeds success and a multitude of blessings. If you look at the most successful people, they didn’t get to that place without having to be broken down at some point in their lives. Why should I be any different? Why should I expect to get to the level of success I know I am destined for without having to go through the trials and tribulations to get there?

The words I heard him speaking were so powerful and so profound and while I realize this is not the first time I have heard that message, this is the first time I have believed the words as I said them to myself. Building up any business that you want to have takes a certain amount of tenacity and drive. However, when it comes to building up a business that is centered around your love of writing and your sense of purpose, it takes guts, and courage, but most importantly belief in yourself and in the very words that you speak. The words you say are very important and you never know who your particular message might touch, giving them the strength to not stay broken so that they won’t miss their blessings.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Visualizing You Are Already Where You Want To Be

April 4, 2012 jcladyluv

“Attract what you want by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled.”

~Neville Goddard

I was watching Dr. Wayne Dyer on PBS last night and his program, Wishes Fulfilled. I got a lot out of the three hour motivational program (and dvr’d it so that I can go back and get more out of it later). He said things that I in some ways already knew and realized but sometimes hearing them from someone else, from another perspective, changes the way you receive the information. When his program opens he has a statement on the projector screen for the viewing audience that states “If you would like to accomplish something, you must first expect it of yourself.” Makes sense right?

I know that if you succumb to the negativity that builds up around you, you are going to eventually project that same negativity into every facet of your life. This week is about me getting my fire back that I once had and somehow lost. It’s also about getting back to that person who didn’t always let the negativity surrounding her overtake her. It’s about getting rid of that mentality of being so fearful of everything that she never enjoys what good could be happening in the present moment.

I thought that I would be in a certain place at this point of my life and because I’m not there yet I’m doubting every decision I make, every decision I don’t make, every opportunity that I take, and especially the ones that I don’t take. People always say to go with your gut when making crucial life decisions, but lately I’ve realized that my gut instincts aren’t what they once were because of that damn fear. It’s keeping me from seeing myself in the state that I want to be in and I know that if I don’t begin to see myself in that place, I might never get to that place.

Dr. Wayne Dyer said that people who say that they will believe something when they see it have it all wrong. He said that you will only see it when you believe it, and he’s right. I mean after all, if you can’t believe in and see it for yourself then how is anyone else going to be able to see it?

So instead of continuing to wish that I was more of a success, and agonizing over why I’m not, I need to act as if I am at the level of success that I want to be at. I should imagine that I am already in that place where my company is not only up and running, but it’s going strong. I can see it now!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”