Fullfillment In the Whirlwind

Good morning/afternoon/evening! Whatever time you are reading this I am glad you stopped by. I am so honored to be asked to write a little something for you. I hope to encourage you today to be flexible enough to allow God to interrupt your plans by telling you my story of how I ended up on this site in the first place.

My name is Venus. (really) I am a single mom to two very strong willed children. While they are my daily challenges, they are also my daily blessings. 2008 has been a whirlwind year for me. For the last year and a half I feel God has really been inspiring me with ideas of things I want to do for his kingdom. Well, for a year of this year and a half I felt just plain stuck. I had this vision of what I wanted to do and I wanted to do it right then. With no finances and no idea how or where to begin this wonderful venture, I began to feel frustrated and lost. I began to think maybe this "crazy" idea was just that, a crazy idea.

June 2008: I attended my monthly Faith At Work luncheon. Once a month Christian women get together to hear speakers teach us how to bring our faith to the workplace. That month our guest speaker was Diane Cunningham, life purpose coach. Exactly what I needed at just the right time! But of course, does God do it any other way? That day I won a door prize directly related to the ideas I had been having and I just had to share with her. I told her how stuck I was and she suggested we talk. Before we had our phone session I had started a blog. I was just craving to connect with other Christian women to grow in my faith since so many of my friends are not believers. YET. I had sent her a link and asked her to check it out. http://todayschristianmom.blogspot.com/

She did, and she liked it! When we got to speak one on one she told me I was a writer and suggested I check out a site she was involved with Take Root and Write. She said it was fairly new and they were looking for writers. Well, this had nothing to do with my vision, in fact it was not even in the same category and I have never considered myself to be a writer, or at least a good one, but since I had just stumbled on the site the day before and now here she was mentioning it, I felt God's hand in it.

I contacted the site's creator and had her look at my new blog. Granted I was doing all this not really knowing what I would do if she actually asked me to write for her. Guess what. She did! She asked me to write a column about being a single Christian mom. The introduction to my bi-weekly column was published on 8/8/08. I had heard somewhere that 8 was the number of new beginnings and I thought, " how appropriate".

http://www.takerootandwrite.com/columns_single_moms/index.html

I have to say this has been the most challenging thing I have done in a long time. At first I thought I really had nothing to contribute or anything encouraging to say to other women who are in my situation, have been at one time, or are about to be. I was really nervous about the whole thing until I started getting emails from women telling me they understood exactly where I was coming from!

I am now part of this wonderful on-line ministry I do not think I would have found had God not guided me to it. Each and every one of the women involved has been such a blessing to me words just cannot express. While writing was not the original tool I had planned to use to reach women and bring them closer to Christ, it has still been just as effective. And it has been an even bigger blessing to me and I feel it is just the first step in God's purpose for my life. I am so glad he has a plan for me because if He didn't I might still be just sitting on my own plans. He has a plan for you too if you will allow him to guide you.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.
Proverbs 16:9 NIV

Fort McClellan--Wash Rack, Salute, and a Hug

Fort McClellan, Alabama in the summer time for boot camp was not just hot by the temperature but also in finding that the recruiter wasn't quite honest about what to expect at least in the mind of the recruit. What they left out was how they were going to look like the videos. Well, let me restate that, the recruiter showed great pictures and gave wonderful testimonials, just not the more difficult challenges that would be experienced.

Back in the day (about 35-years ago), a young woman sat in the recruiters office and was shown videos of the soldiers in crisp uniforms, women sitting in make-up classes learning techniques. Then there were the brochures and more pictures of traveling the world, sightseeing and being part of the bigger picture. What young woman wouldn't want to take part in THAT? Especially when the place you currently reside, a city that was THE place to live was now all but dead. Yeah, sign me up.

This is the true story of a friend who proudly signed up to be a U S Soldier. This is just one of the many funny stories of interpretation and what truth really became. You heard a little bit about her in a previous blog, but today I focus on Sargent Worthey's first weeks in basic training at Fort McClellan.

Coming from a line of African-American soldiers--both Air Force and Army, she joined the ranks. With the last name starting with a "W" she was last in line for most things, and at 5' 3"
by the time she got to the quartermaster to receive her uniforms and boots, most of the small sizes for women were gone. She got the fatigues okay, but the boots were a bit too large, so they put her in the men's shoes to try to get a better fit.

"They didn't tell us that those nice, crisp looking uniforms we saw, that we were going to have to iron and starch them to have that crease and stand up look".

"If you really wanted to have the bed that you could bounce a quarter off on, you just didn't sleep in the bed."

"And that makeup class, not even close. They had little classes sponsored by one of the major makeup companies, but not the type of let's do hair and makeup we were expecting."

"After make-up class they sent us to the gas chambers. What a sense of humor, we go from putting on makeup and looking really nice, to choking and gagging, our mascare running."

One day she said she had enough and wanted out. Her unit had a short break and she went immediately to a pay phone way at the other end of the yard. She was talking to the now retired Command Sargent Major of the post, better known to her and the family as "Uncle Ray". And as he was giving her a "hang in there", Worthey turned around to see her own sargent walking towards her. The result was not pretty.

A few weeks later Worthey was taken by some soldiers and told her she was to report to the wash rack. It was one of those places you didn't want to report to. Oneof the worst places you could be assigned! Thinking that talking on the pay phone couldn't have been that bad, but here she was and with an escort. She just followed orders. Behind the buildings, in a back lot was a car and as she approached her escort stopped and she continued on--out stepped "Uncle Ray".

What a difference a salute and then a hug can make to a homesick soldier. She didn't only make it through basic training but went on to be come a top sargent.

Moral of the story? We can all be in a challenging condition. Maybe its not one that we considered could happen because it wasn't what we expected--we might even had hoped for something a bit different. But what a difference one person can make to help us change our attitude and direction.

You make a difference to somebody--make a difference today. Somebody might be in a place of saying I've had enough--are they waiting to hear from you with a word of encouragement?

I'm going to have to tell you about "Uncle Ray" ... I adopted him as somebody I look up to and have a picture of him in his uniform on my desk. A soldier's soldier that never said "quit".