We’re officially two days past our guess date (due date). We’re in uncharted territory now, not knowing when the baby will choose to arrive. That’s something most people don’t know, by the way. The baby is the initiator of all major events. The baby sends a hormone signal to the mother to announce its arrival in the beginning. This hormone signal tells the mother to keep the egg and to cease flushing the system every month. At the end of pregnancy, when the baby’s lungs have reached full maturity, the baby releases another hormone signal to the mother to announce it is ready for birth. So despite all the inducing that doctors do these days, it’s based on the desire for convenience and rarely upon necessity.
But that’s not my point in writing tonight. While we’ve been anxiously awaiting our new arrival, I have been acutely aware of the fact that I have not done everything I wanted to do to prepare for this baby, and I am getting the opportunity to prepare now. Had the baby come when we hoped (end of November), I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get some important things in order, or to experience some of the joys I have recently discovered.
Just an hour ago, I laid my hand on my wife’s belly and began to listen to the Lord. I wanted to hear from Him about my child before he/she was ever born. I have a strong sense that the baby is a female, but we won’t know until the birth day. I will be ecstatic over either a boy or girl, so don’t take that to mean that I’m “hoping” for a girl. As I lay beside my wife, I began to write a few things that the Lord shared with me. Just a few words about my child which I will share with that child some time in the future.
If you’ve never prophesied or listened to God speak over your unborn child, you’re missing out. If you have the opportunity, please do it. It’s amazing to hear God share mysteries with you about a person you’ve never met. Especially when you don’t even know the gender of the child. It was a precious time to me of listening to God speak. I would very much like to do it again if I have the opportunity before our baby is born. Then again, I’ll be praying over this child all the time, and asking God to share his thoughts with me about him/her.
Hearing God speak over your child is a major pleasure. It’s a quiet, simple pleasure, but it’s a major pleasure nonetheless. These are the kinds of things I hoped to do before our child was born that would have been sacrificed if we had rushed the birth and induced labor to fit our schedule rather than God’s.
Popularity: 5% [?]
I just finished reading one of Neil Patel’s QuickSprout blog posts about becoming famous. I like Neil. I have always liked Neil. He’s definitely made a name for himself at a young age, and he’s probably one of the more successful social media marketers out there. But personal branding? This is where our ideals go their separate ways.
It’s largely based on what I would guess are vastly different spiritual beliefs. I don’t know what Neil believes and I don’t pretend to. But I can read his blog posts and know that we believe different things. Personal branding is important to a degree, but it is also a disease.
If you read that post, you’ll find that he is blogging specifically to people who want to be well-known, a.k.a. famous. That is his target audience (and yes, I have read many of his posts, so what does that say about me?). Yet during the post, he talks about being yourself and not trying too hard. Seems contradictory. If a person was really just being themselves, they wouldn’t be reading about a “how to” blog about becoming famous (a.k.a. “personal branding”).
I may or may not ever be famous. I’m okay with that. I have a natural desire to influence others for good. I want to teach. I want to inspire. I want to clarify where there has been confusion. I want to impart clarity and purpose to the people I meet. This is very difficult to do when I am still discovering my purpose and still clawing my way toward clarity.
I blog, and I blog to have an impact on the world. Being famous for fame’s sake is an empty goal. Paris Hilton is the perfect example of a person who is famous for fame’s sake. She has no marketable skills except that she is popular. Popularity is a commodity now that does not seem to require any justification.
I’m not going to be a snob here. And I’m not downing Neil Patel either. I would gladly learn social media marketing tips from him if I had the opportunity. But we’re different types of people. Marketing is not my career goal. It’s a means to an end. Marketing allows me to practice and hone my writing and other communication skills in preparation for my REAL dreams.
I don’t want to peddle other people’s stuff for the rest of my life. Sure, there is a level of satisfaction that I enjoy each time I successfully promote someone online. But it’s a temporary joy, and the real payoff comes from setting a goal and accomplishing it - something which anyone can do in any job anywhere. In other words, NOT a lifetime achievement.
…Back to my point. Despite all my internal junk, I still ascribe to the notion that promotion comes from God. He sets authority figures in place, and he promotes people into new positions of authority, recognition, influence, and power. I know this, because he just promoted me. He gave me an excellent job with an excellent company. It is the perfect situation, and I wasn’t expecting it. I was looking in a slightly different direction, but threw out my resume to them anyway. When they responded positively, I decided to give an interview a shot, though my expectations were very low. Turns out that out of 5 interviews, this was the job I wanted most. And God gave it to me.
I’m not as idealistic as I used to be. I’m not telling you that you don’t have any personal responsibility in the realm of initiative. Not so. As a matter of fact, you have a very important role in taking the initiative. Though I’m not the ideal, here’s how I handle decision making and professional growth:
1. I blog. Sounds simple, but the fact that I have multiple blogs out there has been very beneficial to my career. I talk about whatever I want to talk about in some of them, and in others I intentionally cover topics directly related to my field of expertise. These professional blogs serve as an online portfolio.
2. I read. Simple again, yet I pour over the Web, mostly via RSS feeds on my Firefox browser. I have somewhere between 50-70 blogs set up in my RSS feed reader right now. By reading these blogs, I stay in touch with current events and shifting thoughts / ways of doing things. In other words, READING HELPS ME STAY RELEVANT TO MY INDUSTRY.
3. I network. You’ve read this in every “how to” blog out there. Network. Just do it. It’s easier to do online than in person, especially if you’re an introvert. You can appear to be much more professional via the written word.
4. I pray. You won’t get this one from those personal branding blogs. Honestly, I’m not a super Christian, but I do get impressions from the Lord (similar to what you might think of as intuition) because God promised us all that his sheep hear his voice. He speaks, and those of us who listen can hear him. This is what that “personal relationship” with God is all about. It’s about taking your cares and concerns to him and then listening for that still, small voice to respond.
5. I listen. Definitely not a pro here. I’m referring to listening to God’s voice, leading, etc. God speaks to everyone who believes and accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior. Many Christians don’t know to believe that, because it fell out of tradition in Western culture shortly after the Catholic church became a major political power on the earth.
I could add, “I do with excellence” as a number six, but I think that should go without saying. Whatever you do professionally, do it with excellence. You are creating, every time you put your mind to something. You are creating something with your personal stamp on it. How do you want to be known? Your reputation will begin with your work ethic, your ability to communicate and get along with other people, and your attitude / approach toward life. This isn’t stuff you can fake. It is genuine, and you don’t accomplish “being yourself” like a task. You rest. Being genuine is a state of rest, that you don’t accomplish. You release cares, worries, and fears. You give them to God and choose to let him take care of them.
Giving your cares to God is not something that comes naturally to us. It takes practice. You don’t automatically trust him for everything. You expect him to be as faulty as your biological dad is/was. That’s where you develop your initial perception of God. But over time, as you choose to trust him and give him your fears over and over and over and over again, he will make your paths straight. Delight in him, rather than in your own personal success or fame, and he will give you the real desires of your heart.
Popularity: 6% [?]
So many things are going right for me and my family. I’m blessed beyond my expectations. You wouldn’t believe how God has met some of my deepest needs lately. I’m not even sure that the reality of it all has registered in my head yet. Still kinda reeling from the shock.
And yet, I still crave comfort. Without getting overly analytical (okay, who am I kidding? overly analytical is my job), it would seem that more money and updated gadgets and lost pet found still don’t somehow amount to comforting me on the inside. I feel more snuggled and surrounded by comfort on the outside, which is really nice, but it makes the lack of inner comfort all the more obvious.
Before God pulled the trigger on a major blessing in my life in November, he made sure that someone told me to be still and know that he is God. The point was that I had been frantically flailing around because I didn’t trust him to take care of me. I felt that the only way my life was going to improve was if I made it happen.
For several days, I woke up each morning and, after I was awake and alert, purposefully spent a few minutes being still and just acknowledging in my heart and mind that he is God. It is an exercise of remembrance and exercising faith. It’s not easy at all. My instinct was to feel frantic and focus on my problems. I’m no expert at it now, but God did answer my biggest prayers quickly.
Like I said, I’m no expert, but I learned to try something and learned something about God. He’s not so horrible as some of us think. He doesn’t require us to bend over backward in order to earn some little crumb off of his table. All he asked of me was that I practice something I still need to grow in, and he blessed and rewarded me for choosing to take the time to do something imperfectly.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Somewhere along the way, I hope God plans to comfort me in such a way that I don’t need food or sugar or gadgets or popularity in order to feel comforted.
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