We are under the attack of Ice.  O_o  No seriously!  I have been securely in my house for four days due to ice shutting down the metroplex in which I reside.  Kids aren’t outside playing, business are closed, grocery stores have sold out of everything, and the trash man didn’t run.  (That was a pretty anticlimactic ending, huh?  No, you don't understand! Trash pick-up is HUGE… for my nose! LOL)

Anywhoo!  Today was supposed to be the make up trash day, and there was no way I was going to miss it on this good day!  I hit the button to open my garage door, and after a slight hesitation, it rises only for me to see 2 full inches of ice on my driveway.  OK, so now I have to create a strategy to get down the driveway.

And then it dawned on me!  My awesome friend posted a message on Facebook yesterday that taught you how to “penguin walk” on ice. Now upon first seeing it, I laughed as I read.  Little did I know that I would face a hill of ice this morning.  What the hay!  I tried it, AND IT WORKED!   As I traveled down the slope of my driveway I thought to myself, “all I had to do was change my posture and approach in this new situation, and the mission was accomplished!”

How many times have you come to a new situation scared to death and no clue of how to approach it?  We’ve all been there!  Many times all we need to do is seek out wise counsel from someone that’s either been there, or look at our surroundings to find out how it’s been handled before.  I NEVER would have thought to look at a penguin for suggestions on how to complete a daily chore, but I’ll be, they had the answer all along!  Don’t be afraid to ask for help or to look a little silly as you set out on your mission.  You were sent on that mission and towards that purpose with the tools around you or in you to complete it!  You’ve got this.  If you make a mistake, learn from it, pick yourself up, come up with a new game plan, and do it again.  At the end of the day, it’s all about the approach.  Come up with a game plan and go for it!  You won’t fail until to stop trying! 

Stay warm everyone! 

Yep!  It all hit me.  And I’m talking about at one time.  For the majority of my life, I walked the good church kid line.  I didn’t do anything that would bring shame to my family (at least not in public) and I followed the rules (most of the time).  I was the ideal child. 

I mean dang I was Michael’s right hand earth angel, or so I made myself believe that lie through high school.  And then I got to college.  FREEDOM!  I mean I had a BALL!  I lived LIFE, I tell you.  Or so I thought.  Then I ran head into Brickhouse.  Now Brick was like a crack heads nightmare.  It was our young adult program at church.  PLEASE believe that even as I was living life, I was still too scared not to go to church.  I wasn’t completely living the life they spoke about in church, but I was going and I truly thought that covered me….dummy!   But thanks to Brick re-infusing Jesus into my life and a crew of AMAZING friends, I got my life snatched! Even with that snatching I still was holding on to some bad habits, but I wasn’t ready to call them what they were.

Fast forward to a little over a year ago.  Things were going downhill and I couldn’t understand it because I was living for God.  And with that comes a perfect life, right!?!  WRONG!  You see what I missed was living for God meant having those imperfections and bad habits pointed out for treatment purposes.  I mean I began to see little blemishes in my perfect coating of emotional makeup.  That cracked foundation was no longer covering those pimples and acne scars of fear, bitterness, anger, and lack of vision.   I spewed out that I was fearfully and wonderfully made, without spot or blemish, and some parts of me began to believe my own hype because I was "good".  Little did I know that life was about to show me in a pressure cooker situation what I was hanging onto. 

Things got bad!  I was crying because I had to go to a job with a person I knew hated me.  And the bad part was I didn’t know why she hated me! And then, the worst, the job was gone!  And not a week after that “loss”, my grandfather was gone;  Just like he said, “I’m going to get out of here at 90”.  The last grandparent I had and held onto was gone.  It was like the last bit of air was sucked out of my body.  I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary!  I was living for God, still holding on to habits that others saw as normal.  I couldn’t understand why God was allowing me to get hit for doing things that everyone else was doing!  And then it hit me….I needed to change!  I’m not like everybody else!  I’m being held to a standard that some will never experience, and while it can be difficult from time to time, I understood that some changes had to be made. 

After months of anger because I didn’t understand how this was happening to me, a light bulb came on!  This wasn't happening to me, it was happening for me.  These moments of what I viewed as weakness allowed me for the first time in my life to be vulnerable, true, and honest about how I was and my feelings.  This was my opportunity to open up my bag of bad habits and dump them.  It wasn’t an overnight process.  I dumped them little by little, and still from time to time I find another habit to dump.   I walk to my designated dumping ground to meet with the Master Repurposer who takes my trash and creates a treasure.  He’s yet to fail me, and I’m so glad that the year that others deemed a tragedy lead me to the joy that I currently feel.  So one of the lessons I’ve learned in the last year is that it’s better to hand off bad habits for joy, peace, and a life of fulfillment.  Drop those bad habits and pick up the life He has purposed for you to lead!

       So you can only imagine my life as I began to hear more and more reasons from young girls (13-18 years old) as to why they COULDN’T pursue and obtain the dreams they had so intently crafted. 
     After speaking to one student, the power of our own personal thoughts and feelings became abundantly clear.  How many times have you heard someone crush a person’s dream?  And how many times have you thought to yourself “why did they say that!?!”  When thinking about this latest situation, and that of my own experiences, I realized there are times that people speak negatively of your dreams because it is not something they feel THEY would be able to accomplish.  They are so trapped in their old mindset of the norms of society, that a little boy saying “I want to be a principal dancer in the American Ballet Company” seems farfetched.   Truly I want you to think about the last time you had a brilliant dream.  If you encountered a discouraging soul, did you ever stop to look at their confidence level in their own ability?  Probably not! 

     We are so conditioned to become easily offended by others opinions.  What they speak to us is not the voice of God speaking a permanent path in our lives; it is an opinion!  Many times big dreams are recognized as big because we have no point of reference to show us that it can be done. For some, if there is no point of reference, then the dream, no matter how fit for you it may be, cannot be achieved in their minds.  But these small, negative thoughts are meant to be destroyed!  The person’s minuscule view of themselves must be altered, and in some cases eradicated completely!  So the next time you hear that stinking thinking replace it with positive thoughts and plans to achieve your big ideal.  You can do this!  You can do anything you plan and put work towards.  Sometimes, to achieve your goals, you just need to destroy small thoughts!