DESIRE IS JUST THE BEGINNING
You’re special but not except. Yep, that’s where we’re starting! Coming straight through the front door with this one.
There is a process attached to whatever dream you’re pursuing. And by process, I mean really hard shit. I tried to use another word here but shit fit best. I’m a writer so just trust me on that.
No one is immune to adversity. No one is immune to things going wrong. Not even prayer can keep you from experiencing difficulties in life. Believe me, I tried. Your prayers, your beliefs, and your relationship with whatever higher being you believe in can help sustain you but none of that will exclude you from the process.
As you pursue your dreams + desires, things will go wrong. Money will get low. Resources will be scarce. People will abandon you. Relationships will end. Your circumstances will shift. You will fail and come up short over and over again. You will wrestle with whether you have what it takes or not. Things won’t go the way you imagined or fantasized about. And you’ll find out you know far less than you thought you did.
But guess what? All of this is normal. Despite how you might feel, you didn’t make a wrong turn or even a bad decision. This is just what happens when you get intentional about a pursuit - a bold pursuit with big payoffs and big rewards.
Adversity is actually a good sign that you’re probably onto to something that has the potential to change your life. You see whenever we dare to do something different, there’s a force that comes to test how committed we are to it. It’s true for all of us. It comes to prepare you for the destination.
The hard times show up to help shape you, to get rid of all the stuff that can’t go where you’re going. They come to confront your shortcomings, expose your inconsistencies, and reveal your incorrigible tendencies that will undoubtedly interfere with the success your trying to achieve. Bringing all these things, that sabotage your efforts to surface, so they can be removed, cleansed, and renewed. All of this is to ensure that when you get there, you’ll also have what it takes to stay there.
Be careful what you ask God for. Because if you’re not ready to properly manage it, your prayer, your asking, is an invitation for God to prepare you for the thing you desire. – Myles Munroe
Success is deliberate. You won’t just stumble across it. So, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Be ok with failing. Fail. And then fail again. Being careful to separate the failures you experience from your identity. You are not it. And it is not you. It’s simply an experience. An experience that can push you forward with more wisdom and moxie, more clarity and confidence, if you let it.
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in the past was assuming my circumstances would always remain the same. . .That I would always have that salary, always be a single mother, always be broken, etc. Here’s what I was missing: (1) That God was always working and moving on my behalf (2) And that I was growing + evolving with each hard thing that I overcame. Even when I didn’t see or feel it.
I believe the same is true about you. Now is not the time to shrink or fold. Don’t adjust that big, audacious dream you have to fit within the boundaries of your current circumstances. God is bigger than that. You’re better than that.