Posted on Sunday, February 21, 2010

Chasing a Dream…

Hello World!!!

Let’s face it…life can be inexplicably hard…particularly when it comes to achieving your dreams…and to some extent, that is the stuff that dreams are made of…”A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” (Robert Browning) I was inspired when I read a story about a Georgia Olympian who will compete in the bobsled competition this week. Elana Meyers, who is 25 years old, trained for years to compete in the softball competition in the Olympics. However, in 2006, when she was a senior in college, she discovered that softball would be eliminated from the Olympics roster. But this true athlete did not let this major roadblock stop her. Instead, she began training to compete in a sport that she had never done before – bobsledding – and now she has achieved her dream to be in the Olympics are after all….below are some of the more notable quotes from the story.

“I don’t consider myself particularly lucky. I don’t win the lottery. I don’t guess how many marbles are in the jar. I’m pretty clumsy. Anything random has probably happened to me. Timing and faith have helped me. I believe God has a plan — and I’ve worked hard to get to this point.”

“It does take a village to reach some kind of dream, and you have to allow that village to help you.”

“Bad things happen your whole life. All you can do is control what you can control and believe in yourself. Trust in whatever god you believe in. You have to rely on other people and allow yourself to be helped.”

Here is what God, through His Word, says about achieving dreams…

I can do everything through Him who gives me strength. Phillipians 4:13

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Ecclesiastes 9:11-13

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Matthew 7:7-9

I have wanted to be a book author since I was six years old…and thirty years later, I am still working to get my first book published…But I won’t give up…My times are in God’s hands (Psalm 31:15)…and sometimes I get jealous when some writers get book after book published or when other writers seem to get works of lechery rather than works of literature published…YES (eyes nearly rolling out of my head), I know about self publishing…but I don’t want to do it…’kay, thanks…don’t bring it up to me anymore…

Anyway, as I was jogging through my neighborhood yesterday, I imagined myself looking at my published book and signing copies of it for all of my adoring fans… I giggled…it will happen one day…I believe…one day at a time, I feel like going on…

Any thoughts?

Check out Eddie Caine Jr. from “The Five Heartbeats” sing “I Feel Like Going On.” I love that movie…

P.S. Check out Elena’s blog…

Posted on Sunday, January 31, 2010

Pssst, girl have you heard…aka Sins I Still Struggle With…

Hello World!!!

I hope that even though the New Year is a officially a month old as of today, you still have the fresh-faced optimism that a New Year brings…I do…And while it is a New Year, I realized last week that there are some behaviors that I should have left in 2009 but have managed to stay with me in the new decade…

So last week, I reconnected with an old friend that I haven’t spoken with in years. And this old friend gave me some good ole juicy gossip – not new stuff necessarily but stuff that was sooo inflammatory I felt like I had to tell somebody…Now if y’all are dyed-in-the-wool gossips like I am, you know you can’t tell your good ole gossip all willy nilly lest your news be ill received or worse, not responded to at all…So like a cheetah eyeing its prey, I found just the woman I wanted to tell my gossip to…I knew she would appreciate it just like I did…and we would laugh together in glee at the news we were privy to…Well, I said something like, “Girl, when you pass by here again, gone head and stop because I got something good to tell you.” I kind of snickered in a devilish way for effect after my statement. “And if you don’t appreciate gossip, you might not want to hear it.” That my disclaimer. She smiled and said to tell her next week because she was fasting then…Oh well, as we gossips know, everybody ain’t ready to hear what you got to share…That’s cool though. You just got to find another worthy person which with to get in cahoots…

So about an hour or so later, I was on the telephone with another friend. I was reasonably sure this person wouldn’t appreciate the goods either but I tested her out anyway…I said, “Girl, I shouldn’t be gossiping but…” She rebuked me like the devil and told me she was fasting too and didn’t want to hear it…Well, then my feelings were hurt…Well, not really…I knew then that God was trying to get my attention…so I didn’t attempt to share my gossip at Bible Study that night in the form of a prayer request like I can do sometimes…”Well, y’all need to pray for so and so because they are going through___________.” Scandalous, I know….

I guess what is so difficult for me is that I am truly nosy by nature and it has served me well in my chosen career…and journalists are, in fact, paid to be nosy…And I relish it, let me tell you…and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between when I’m doing my job and when I’m carefully trying to ferret out details that are really none of my business…So how do I differentiate between gossip and news? Well first of all, I believe that God has no problem with me reading my gossip blogs…My girl from LuxeTips and I are notorious among our girls for knowing all of the celebrity dish…Some people tune into football…We tune into the celebrity world…I honestly don’t feel there is a problem with that…We laugh about folk’s drama according to certain blogs or discuss who was wearing what at different events…No harm, no foul…I think most celebrities think that if you’re not talking about them, they are not relevant anyway…

But I do feel a pang of guilt when I’m talking about takes on a life of its own and I find myself discussing Jay-Z and Beyonce’s relationship with a passion that I know would better be directed toward my own life…And I certainly know its wrong to collect gossip on people I know like I have some sort of mental file cabinet in my head in which each person has his or her own file…And I am guilty of that…And God is not pleased…I was talking with someone last night and they finally had to cut me off like I was a drunk at a bar…This person had shared some great dish up until that point but even they had enough of my pleas to “Tell Me!”

Since today is Sunday, it’s a perfect opportunity to renew my commitment to live within the will of God…and sometimes, it can be hard to figure out God’s will…But when the issue is clearly addressed in the Bible, I know there is no excuse to act ignorant….