Tag: God

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

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

Visualize That You Are Already There

October 14, 2011October 14, 2011 jcladyluv

“See things as you would have them be instead of as they are.”

~Robert Collier

There are people who say that you become what you believe. So it’s simple, right? If you visualize something you want in your life, then you will eventually achieve it. However, it is difficult for a lot of people to believe in things that have yet to be seen; to believe that what you visualize could actually be tangible.

We are told to step out on faith. We believe that through God all things are possible and we stay true to that (for the most part), but we can’t see God either. So just as we blindly trust in God to always be there for us and guide us in the right direction why are we not so trusting in our own instincts and our own belief in ourselves? Why is it that we can’t trust that what we envision for our lives is not what we can actually have?

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Jim Carey said that before he made it big he would drive around and he would visualize what he wanted for his life and he would envision that he actually had those things but that they were just temporarily out of his reach at that moment. That’s an ingenious way to look at things because in reality, nothing that any of us wants for ourselves is impossible. What takes the possibility out of succeeding in our goals is the lack of determination and persistence at going after them because as Jim Carey also noted in his interview, visualizing does nothing if there is no work done to obtain that vision.

When you think about what you want your level of success to be and what you can achieve, you should not set those standards according to what others may be thinking your level should be. Your calling in life has nothing to do with anyone else but what you see yourself doing and what you see yourself achieving. Visualizing your goals and not just the possibilities but the realities can allow you to see that they are right within your grasp, if only you would just reach out your hands and grab a hold of them.

So the next time you start hearing yourself say you wish you could just achieve this or that and you find yourself feeling as if there are nothing but what ifs hanging over your head, just stop and visualize that you are already wherever it is that you want to be and that you already have the things that you wish to have. It’s a lot better then thinking that it will never happen. Until next time…Grab onto the image of success that’s right in front of you instead of the possibility of failure!

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

And Now She Can Breathe Again

October 3, 2011 jcladyluv

“We’re given second chances every day of our life. We don’t usually take them, but they’re there for the taking.”

~Andrew M. Greeley

Today someone has been granted a second chance at living the life that they should’ve been living all this time. In an Italian appeal’s court, Amanda Knox was acquitted of multiple charges that two years ago got her sentenced to twenty six years in an Italian prison. She was falsely accused and then wrongly convicted and now after spending far too much time already in prison, she has a second chance at freedom. Now she can really breathe again.

What will she do from this point on? She’s had this stamp placed on her now that when people look at her they’re only going to think about the girl who went toItalyand was put on trial for murder. For those that still believe she is guilty, she will be known as the girl who got away with murder. She is the girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was thrown off the road to success that she was on and everyone has to be wondering the same thing that I am; what’s next for Amanda Knox?

Many people might say that her life may be forever derailed. I, however, think that this would be the perfect time for her to show the world just how strong she really is. There is an opportunity that can come from this tragedy. There is a story that she has to tell that can help to steer someone else that may soon be going off course. This can be a new beginning for her and a chance for her to use what she went through to enhance her greatness and propel her future.

Perhaps we all don’t share the same hardships and tragic events that Amanda Knox has had to go through but the lesson is still the same. She persevered, and she fought for her future (along with her family), and she never gave up, not for one second. When I think of the little minor things that I have gone through, at least minor in comparison to being on trial for a murder I didn’t commit, I am made to feel foolish. I don’t have the stigmas that she will now have and I don’t have the long road of adjustment ahead that she will have to make. Compared to her struggle, what do I, or any of us for that matter, really have to complain about?

Many times I have wanted to just give up and throw in the towel and I didn’t have nearly as much on my plate as she did. And she never gave up. So why should I? Why should anyone? I am thankful for Amanda Knox having this second chance at living her life and that her family will have the chance to support her in living that life. I am happy to know that there are second chances for those of us that consistently loose our way. I think I’ll take God up on the one he’s always giving me. Until next time…be thankful for all of the second chances you are given to make something right!

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

Born This Way

September 28, 2011 jcladyluv

“Don’t you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can’t be exactly who you are.”
~Lady Gaga

Just last week a young boy, Jamey Rodemeyer, who was only fourteen years old, committed suicide. He had been taunted and bullied for years because he wasn’t sure of his sexuality and he was different and he just couldn’t take it anymore. He was a huge fan of Lady Gaga, whose main mission through her music is to promote acceptance and being proud of who you are and the differences that you may bring to the table in any circumstance. There is no acceptable reason for someone, or a group of people to single certain individuals out because of who they are and because they don’t fit the general mold that society sets for any one person. There is a reason why God created us all to be different and not to be copies of everyone around us.

We live in a world where appearances are everything and where being different is not rewarded but rather ridiculed and condemned. People whose lifestyles are not the same as others are treated like they are diseased. Those that are unique and creative are made to feel as if there is something wrong with them because their mind thinks differently than the average person’s. Simply put if people do not know what to make of you, then you are too different for them to accept.

Bullying is a nationwide issue. It’s not just happening in one city or even just one state. People are literally killing themselves to get away from those that are bullying them. It should never come to that. Fourteen and fifteen year old children should not feel that they have no other way to escape the judgment of others just because they are their own person and don’t strive to be a carbon copy of everyone else around them.

When someone writes an eloquent book that touches people’s hearts and souls, maybe even one that causes them to make particular changes in their lives, then the words are powerful and meaningful. However, when someone uses their words to pick at and ridicule someone and goes to the extent of bullying them, then all of a sudden people’s excuse is ‘their just words, they don’t mean anything’. So which one is it? Words are powerful or words don’t mean anything? Well coming from someone who knows all too well what it feels like to be bullied, words do mean something. They hold the same amount of power for the negative as they would for the positive, perhaps even more so.

Words can hurt. No matter how many people think that what they say shouldn’t greatly affect someone else’s life, chances are, they do. Sometimes what a person says can shape the rest of someone else’s life. Perhaps those individuals out there that feel the need to condemn someone else for being themselves should take a much harder look inside. Who is it that you are trying to be? Until next time…Be who are, it’s the way that God intended you to be!

“I’m beautiful in my way, ’cause God makes no mistakes. I’m on the right track, baby. I was Born This Way.”
~Lady Gaga

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

What Could Have Been

September 21, 2011 jcladyluv

“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”

~Jan Glidewell

The other night I was talking to Ms. L and I was feeling a little down because I had a lot of things on my mind. I was thinking of all the curveballs that I have been thrown in life. I was doing a lot of wondering about what could have been.

What if I had done what I was supposed to do all the way through high school and had been able to get a full scholarship to the college of my choice inNew York? What if when I did go to college, not necessarily the one that I wanted to go to, and I had been better prepared for college life and had gotten the grades that I should’ve gotten or at least sought help when I was failing? What if I hadn’t gotten in a really bad relationship and gotten so steered off course from what my vision of my life was? What if I hadn’t met a man who I thought was the love of my life and had a child with him which derailed me going back to school until the late age of 27?

The truth is my life would more than likely be at a very different place, maybe even where I envisioned it being. Had I done all the things that I should’ve done in the correct time frame that it should have been done in I may very well already be into my writing career and perhaps even a lot closer to the top of that media mogul ladder that I am now struggling to climb. But in talking to Ms. L. the other night she helped me to see that everything does in fact happen for a reason and that just because the course of my journey has had to change, the vision has always remained the same and that’s what matters the most.

If I had never been directed to Morgan State University (which was not the school I had always wanted to attend) then I would’ve never met Ms. L. and I can not imagine going through this life without a friend as good as her and as supportive and motivating as her. If I hadn’t met the man who I thought was the love of my life, then I would not have my amazing daughter and I can not even begin to say how thankful I am for her and I wouldn’t trade her for all the money and success in the world.

So many of the things that I have been through are responsible for shaping the person I am today. But in all of that my vision of what I wanted in terms of my career goals and what I feel God put me on this earth to do have never changed. I have never questioned what I am meant to do. Now I may not have answered all of the previous doors that opportunity was knocking at, and looking back perhaps those doors were not meant for me to answer, but I certainly believe that there are still more opportunities out there that I may just have to build my own door to.

What could have been in anyone’s life is not always how things should’ve been and I firmly believe that God knows your path before you even develop a path in your own mind. So who am I to question what could have been when God already has a plan for what will be and the least that I can do, after all he has seen me through and all the talents and abilities that he has blessed me with, is follow the path that he has mapped out for me, not the one that I had mapped out for myself. Until next time…Don’t get sidetracked by the curveballs, just change your plan of how to attack them the next time you’re up to bat!

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

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

On the Days I don’t feel like Smiling

April 26, 2011 jcladyluv

“Too often we jump to the conclusion that something is impossible simply because we cannot see the solution. No one knows enough to be a pessimist.”
~Wayne W Dyer

I try to be optimistic in life because deep down I know that focusing on the negative is not going to help make any situation better. Recently I’ve been having such a hard time with a lot of different things that I won’t burden any of you with, but nevertheless, I haven’t exactly been feeling positive about things. I had a conversation last night with a friend that I haven’t talked to in a long time and every time that she would ask me about some aspect of my life it would happen to be one of the one’s in which things weren’t going so well and I just didn’t feel like faking optimism yesterday.

She got on me about staying positive and stating that she believed that everything was going to turn out good for me and that there are great things in store. My only response was that I wished that I could believe that right now. She didn’t like to hear the negativity because frankly she was used to me always being the positive one and pumping her up but I had to just simply tell her that most days I believe that it’s going to be okay but today (yesterday really) I just don’t feel like putting on the act.

They say you are supposed to fake it until you make it and most of the times I absolutely believe that statement to be true but what do you do on those days where you just don’t feel like smiling. There are days when you just can’t fake it, and you can’t hide your frustration or your doubt and really you shouldn’t have to. I am going to have those days when I can’t pretend that I believe everything is going to be okay. There are going to be days when I won’t be able to smile as if I don’t feel like the walls are crashing down on me.

On those days, where I feel completely defeated, and I feel like there isn’t any light at the end of the tunnel, I think about my daughter. I think about all of the things that I want for her life and what examples I want to set for her. I think about how much I love her and about how much of a blessing she is to me and that things have to come out okay because I have to make things okay for her. I think about the determination that I know I have within me that I want her to gain and learn from. I think about all of the times that I tell her it’s going to be okay when there’s something she gets discouraged about and how just as I tell her to never give up and always keep trying her best, the example I set for her can’t be anything less then that.

On those days that I don’t feel like smiling, I think about how good God has been to me and how he will never let me down as long as I have faith in him and let him do his work. I forget sometimes that not only do I have to put the work in, and put my faith in him, and hand over all of my burdens to him, but I have to remember to step aside and get out of his way and let God do his work. On those days that I really don’t feel like putting on a smile, I have to remember to stop getting in God’s way and just let him work. I remembered that today, and today I am smiling and there is nothing fake about it!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://jayceedurant.wordpress.com/

http://freemynd.wordpress.com/

http://spokenlikeaqueen.blogspot.com/

www.authorsden.com/jimmettacarpenter

Am I All Out Of Miracles?

March 22, 2011 jcladyluv

Faith isn’t the ability to believe long and far into the misty future. It’s simply taking God at his word and taking the next step.

~Joni Erickson Tada

There comes a point when you decide to make the decision that you want to be an artists full time, but you don’t entirely have the means and resources to make that work, in which you realize that there are going to be an insurmountable amount of stumbles and falls along the way. You might have even romanticized the whole starving artists’ concept and thought it might be cool to rise up from the ashes of despair and make it big proving all of the naysayers wrong. You have probably had more than your fair share of tiny miracles along the way that you didn’t expect but were lifesavers when they presented themselves. Well lately I’ve been feeling defeated and like I might actually be all out of my share of miracles.

In the creative world, we rely a lot on the favor of others and more importantly on the miracles that God provides us with. It’s not like other fields and industries where things are more certain and definitive. For us creative types it is more of a, go where the wind blows, kind of thing. I have went for quite some time now, not really knowing how things were going to work themselves out, just knowing that they would. I have had many moments where I didn’t know what was on the other side but I could see the bright, or sometimes dim, light at the end of a very long tunnel. So what do you do when you can’t see that light anymore and the length of the tunnel has become indefinite?

There are moments when I’ve looked at those bills that come in the mail, and the activities my child can’t do, or the clothes that she needs but I sometimes can’t buy, and I’ve wondered, is God going to leave me hanging this time? Of course I already know that the answer to that question is no but every now and then I feel like maybe I have asked for one too many miracles and one of these days God’s going to get tired of me burdening him. I feel like I should have all of this stuff figured out by now and I should be able to go a long period of time without begging him for his favor.

Logically I do know that through God all things are possible and I realize that God’s love and his favor is limitless and that the miracles that he provides us with are endless. . If people are going to make anything happen in this life the best thing that they could do is to have faith. Faith that things are going to be okay and that God is not going to put you through anything more than what you can handle. Faith in yourself and in the talents and gifts that God has given you and the purpose that he has given your life. Faith that you are not going to really ever run out of miracles so long as you keep reaching out your hands to receive them. From one starving artists’ to all the others, treasure all of your miracles and even when you are doubtful of yourself and your talent, step out on faith and let God do all the rest.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

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

http://jayceedurant.wordpress.com/

http://freemynd.wordpress.com/

http://spokenlikeaqueen.blogspot.com/

www.authorsden.com/jimmettacarpenter

Still Standing

February 21, 2011 jcladyluv

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot.
— Eleanor Roosevelt

When I started writing this blog post the other day I was questioning everything from whether I am really as good of a writer as I think I am, to if I really had enough strength in me to do what I believe I am destined to do. I was beginning to feel as if the tunnel that I am in is getting longer and darker with no light at the end. It felt like all of the walls were closing in on me and that I was going to be suffocated underneath the rumble. I was completely defeated, feeling all out of my share of miracles and the devil had a tight grip on me. I had almost surrendered. Almost.

And then I had a conversation with my best friend in which she said something that reminded me that I already knew all of the answers to the questions that I had and that the one thing that I am not is a quitter. As I was talking to her I got a link in my e-mail to her latest blog post, The Vision Cannot Wait, which was just the icing on the cake of what I needed. It reminded me that what I believe I am destined to do is a part of a vision that I have had for myself since I was six years old. In twenty four years I had never let go of that vision and I was not going to let the devil take my vision away now.

The devil is always busy but it seems like he’s been really working on me a lot lately. He has been throwing every obstacle at me that he knew would stop me dead in my tracks. Picking away at any part of me he knows to be vulnerable. Plucking away all of the petals of a purposeful flower, holding it back from its full bloom. I have been up against so many walls lately, hell it seems like my whole life has been an obstacle course. But lucky for me, the devil is no match for God.

God has his way of stepping right in when you feel yourself sinking under. Just as you throw your hands up to tell him that you can’t take any more, he is already there relieving you of your load. He may not come to rescue you before the storm passes, but he will never let you drown. While I know that I shouldn’t, there are times when I forget that. There are times that I forget the strength that God instilled me with. I just have to keep reminding myself that those walls that are blocking my view of that light at the end of this tunnel won’t always be there.

I have faith that if I just keep putting in the work and jumping over all of the hurdles that come along that my vision will become a reality. There is a reason why I am still standing, still surviving, still dreaming, and still pushing and its called purpose. That phone call from my best friend reminded me of the strength that I sometimes forget that I have inside. My determination to see my vision become a reality is stronger than any attempts the devil makes to take it way. If nothing else I am a survivor and this storm too shall pass and I will still be standing when it does.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

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

http://jayceedurant.wordpress.com/