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Rejection Sucks! But Life Doesn’t Have Too.

Published on April 6, 2017April 6, 2017 by Roshonda B2 Comments

Rejection is one of the most devastating things that anyone can deal with. As a people when we are rejected; we tend to immediately shut down from life all together, it’s almost as if someone has handed us a death sentence and sentenced us to die – right there on the spot. And if we’re not careful, we’ll carry out that sentence by killing everything that comes within our path – we’ll put a torch to our dreams, goals and aspirations with one match.

While rejection is a hard pill to swallow, it doesn’t have to be your death sentence. Let’s face it, everyone is not going to like everything we do or say, they’re not going to like everything you wear, your opinion, your thoughts on common life issues and so forth. They’re not going to like the way you look or even your personality. People have a tendency to reject the things that they aren’t familiar with or the things that they don’t understand or have knowledge of basically due to maybe how they were raised, their own rejections or how they perceive certain things; they then take that analysis and use it to belittle and/or be demeaning to others whom either don’t think, look or act like they do.

I’ve had my share of rejection in life and it hurts, it hurts really bad because basically we take rejection as saying “We’re not Good Enough” – I have been rejected from getting certain jobs and/or positions, I’ve been rejected for how I look, the way I think, my see the glass half-full mentality, the way I dress, wear my hair. I’ve even been rejected because I have a good personality and get along with a variety of people. And if I had listened to those rejectors, I wouldn’t be here today because I would have allowed them to dictate my every move, including my dreams, aspirations and future.

Just because you’ve been rejected, don’t mean you have to go through life living that way. It took me a while to get over rejection; however, I began to read the word of God – there I was able to see and read what God thought of me (He said in Psalms 139:14) that I was fearfully and wonderfully made and his works were marvelous because he CREATED ME! (think about that). I also begin to hang around positive minded people, because we really are susceptible to our environment. I realized that it wasn’t anything wrong with me, after-all; the world would be a very boring place if everyone was exactly the same – right? Why FIT IN, when you were born to STAND OUT!

Remember these 5 tips, the next time Rejection comes a knocking at your door:

Rejection is a part of Life that everyone experiences – no exceptions.
Rejection doesn’t like “Positivity” so surround yourself with positive minded people.
Rejection isn’t always “Bad”, sometimes rejection is a good thing. If you allow it, it can help us change our focus on the problem and focus on a solution.
Move Forward – Rejection will happen and when it does, don’t allow it to stop you from enjoying life. Rejection is just a bump in the road; not an End to Life.
Just be yourself – There’s no one in the world like you and there never will be, so make the best of who you are and give rejection a kick in the butt. Because you’re here to stay! & with that mindset? you’ll continue to be undefeated by the “R” word and it’s many tactics.

Remember, Rejection doesn’t mean you’re not good enough, it just means that you hit a bump in the road – and as long as we live and breathe; we definitely will hit many bumps and curves. Keep in mind that Rejection, while hurtful could be God’s way of saying “Wrong Direction” If you learn to change your focus even towards rejection, you can and will change your LIFE towards how you allow “the R word” to rule it!

Don’t allow rejection to cause you to jump out of the plane without a parachute – You have control of your own life just make sure your parachute is packed for safe landing.

Do you have a story about Rejection and how you handled it? Tell us about it, it may just appear in a blog post (with your permission of course).

LORD, I need your Help – I Think?

Published on November 11, 2016 by Roshonda B3 Comments

Portrait above is by artist Debi Starr – entitled ‘Uncertain’.

When I was 20 years old (which seems like only yesterday = ) – I started working in a nursing facility, I always loved helping people and always had a heart for the elderly; even at a young age. I used to love hanging out with my Aunt Sally and Great Grandmother growing up because they had so much wisdom; I loved staying at their house although the 100 degree furnace going on the midst of what seemed like 200 degree Arkansas heat was not always good; but I adjusted all because I wanted to spend time with them. So when the Lord blessed me to the Nursing Assistant job working with the elderly, it was a good fit for me. Within the year and a half of working there, I learned so much. Each resident had their own specific agenda in what you had to do to care for them. Some were easy as they could partially help themselves, while others were a challenge. While most people had help on their halls, I sometimes was left alone on mine. But I prayed and God came to my rescue every time I called on him. From the smallest patient to the heaviest, God always gave me the strength and the patience to take care of them; from picking them up to putting them in the bed or giving me the strength to be patient with them when they weren’t in the mind frame to be that way with me. I had one resident whom liked to be in the middle of the bed; most nights I stayed in her room for over an hour trying to make sure she got her wish. I learned a lot of patience in those days.

After a little over a year, I decided that while the experience was great – I wanted to further my career in the office world and never looked back on those days but the valuable things that I learned during that time, never left me. Years later; my mom took very ill and those same skills that God blessed me to learn; came in handy for me as I have used those skills and talents to take care of my terminally ill mother. But most recently I found myself forgetting those tools when my mom was put in the hospital; this was not her first rodeo to the emergency room. My mom is bed bound, and is unable to walk and depends heavily on the care of the family to take care of her. Since she’s been in the hospital the nurses have alleviated some of the work; they come in when they can to assist but lately I’ve noticed they’ve been very short staffed and when my mom goes to the bathroom on herself she has to sit there until someone decides to come in and change her. This past Saturday, the inevitable happened and mama needed to be changed – I called the nurse’s desk and they said they would come but 45 min later and they still hadn’t come to assist. My mom was getting agitated because she didn’t want to keep sitting in urine and feces and who would…

As I stepped out the room to go and get the nurses’ – I was told “Well, she’ll have to wait” because they were short staffed (again). As I went back in the room and looked at my mom’s disfigured and stressful face; I began to pray to the Lord to perform a miracle and gather up some nurses from somewhere because I couldn’t change my mom by myself she’s extremely heavy and I just couldn’t see a way of me doing it all alone. As I got my towels and garments ready to change her, I kept looking at the door – hoping that the nurses would suddenly appear – But they didn’t….What do I do??????, How am I going to do this??????And that’s when the Lord had to remind me of the position I had so many years ago as a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) – I watched God during that time, help and give me the strength Samson to do things that people still today wonder how I did – all alone. The same God that came to my rescue then, was the same faithful God that was ready to come to my rescue now; you see I was standing there in a panic asking God to send help for something that he had already equipped me to do a long time ago. It was there all the time, I just had to activate it. Once I calmed my mind and asked God to assist me, I turned my mom over with no problems and cleaned her up; by the time I got finished and got her positioned – The Nurses came in. Sometimes God wants us to use what we got – I had a friend on this week to say “God has already equipped us with talents and gifts – we just have to use them”. The jobs we work on (present or past) and the things we go through in life are all experiences for us to help someone or even improve our own life. It’s okay to ask God for help, but God also wants us to tap into the resources and gifts that he has already placed in us – Your help is there on the inside of you and most times God won’t come in until you begin to use the gift that he has placed inside of you. Yes, I needed to call on God for help but he had already equipped me for the journey, a journey in which he knew I would need the experience he allowed me to go through all those years ago.

Are you calling on God for Help For Something that He has already given you the ability and the tools to accomplish? Look real close, because he just may be waiting on you to use it before he sends help.

When God Hears & Blesses: But we’re still Blinded By It.

Published on October 24, 2016 by Roshonda B6 Comments

Are you making the Best use of the resources that God has blessed you with? Most of us have asked God for things and as the bible tells us, If our ways are pleasing in his sight then no good thing will he withhold from us (paraphrasing) but you can read it for yourself (Psalms 84:11).

God rejoices when we ‘do right’ and is willing to give us our hearts desire, but what about the times when we ask and don’t receive? Now I know some things that we ask for are not received because we ask ‘amiss’ meaning; James 4:3 (NLT) says – And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. So that’s the reasoning why most of us (including myself) don’t get most of the blessings we pray for because we are asking for them with the wrong ‘motives’ in mind.

Outside of those types of ‘missed’ blessings, there are blessings that God does allow us to receive and he gives them to us but if you’re not looking closely, following specific directions or reading the right signs, the blessing could be sitting right in front of you but because it’s not wrapped in shiny wrapping paper with a bow as you were looking for it too You’ve become blinded to that blessings and begin to think that God didn’t hear you at all. He Blessed you with it, but you just don’t realize it.

Being blinded makes us miss on the smallest details concerning the blessing that God has for us due to the fact that the blessing may come with resources that’s intended to help us before the BIG Blessing arrives. For Instance; About a year ago I got the epiphany to start my own magazine company, It was something that I felt so strong in my spirit to do but had ‘NO’ magazine experience to the first. Yes, I’ve always loved to write but have never been published or recognized in any format for it. Well, in order to have a magazine company you first have to work for a magazine or have some type of experience in that area; I on the other hand wanted to shoot straight for the stars. So I began to pray and tell God what I wanted to do.

About a month later, sitting at home; I got the urgency to browse for jobs – the urgency was not to not browse for jobs within my current career field but I felt a push to apply for writing jobs; in which felt really weird to me because it was definitely out of my comfort zone – as I began to type things into the search engine, I came across an ad that was looking for interns to write for a magazine, so to make a long story short after applying and completing a ‘writers resume’ (something I’ve never done before – Thank God for Google!) I submitted it, within a day got a call and the following week there I was writing for a magazine. God is Good! But what if I had been blinded to the nudge within my spirit to take that chance all because it didn’t feel right or was out of my comfort zone. What I came to find out is that the nudge was God providing a resource for me, God knew that I wouldn’t be able to start a company without first having some experience – in which we all need in order to move to our next level. If I had allowed blindness to take over, I would have missed out on the resource that God was providing in order to get me to the next level. He’s even blessed me to partner with another site and do some writing, Ultimately we have to believe that ‘All things work together for our Good’ (Rom 8:28).

You see, a lot of times when we pray for something we look for God to bring it already equipped for us to just walk into it; not realizing that we have to do a couple of things first in order to per-fect it. A person that’s looking to start a business, may not be business savvy at first, but God heard you and sent ‘out of the blue’ a free business event to town that will give you the basics of the how’s, to’s and what’s of a business – but due to blindness you overlook that and continue to pray that God allow you to start the business. The blessing provided was the event in which God sent to town in order to brush you up on a couple of skills so that way he can bless you to the business that you desire (Do you see where I’m coming from?)

Don’t become blinded to the small details of the blessing that God has in store for you. Sometimes we have to crawl before we walk. If you feel you may be blinded to the things that God has already laid out before you; then starting today ask him to open your eyes to see what resources and/or blessings you’ve not yet discovered due to blinded eyes and take advantage of the resources that God sends first to prepare you for the real Blessing to come.