Hello World,

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten really personal on this space but since it is a New Year, the time of the year that many of us reserve to reassess our personal and professional goals, dreams, resolutions, etc., I have decided to let you into my head…

I have LOTS of dreams, but two are most important to me….one is personal and one is professional and only God and my husband know all about them right now and they will remain that way for now…

However, back in 2008, I also had LOTS of dreams and similarly to what is going on in my life now, two of them – (one was personal and one was professional) surpassed the rest…As I shared in a previous post in 2013, but did not share then, “I wanted to meet and get married to the man God kept for me, and I wanted to be a published author.” In 2008, it seemed nothing I did got me any closer to my dreams, but as I look back, God was leading me to the realization of my dreams…I just couldn’t see it then…

So let me take you back to 2007-2008…I was 34 years old and had gotten reacquainted with a man I dated in college. We had a lot a fun when we dated in college but we just didn’t work out as a couple. However, we had kept in touch here and there over the years, and we decided to give it a try again. Being the storyteller that I am, it seemed like the perfect ending to a long and winding story. College fun turns into lasting love…But that is not what happened…For all of the things we had in common and all of the fun we still had, he was not a churchgoing Christian man and that was a deal breaker for me…He was not an atheist, but he just didn’t think it was necessary to go to church…Nothing I did, said or prayed changed that so we broke up, and I was heartbroken…

So I did what made sense for me to do right then…I turned my pain into profit and pitched an article to UPSCALE magazine about why black men don’t go to church…An editor liked and approved the idea, and I happily tracked down sources for the article…One of those sources was Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, the author of book “Adam! Where Are You?: Why Most Black Men Don’t Go to Church” Now, here is where the story gets kinda spooky or super spiritual depending on how you look at it. I read his book before I interviewed him, and I was shocked to read one of the illustrations in his book about someone who was looking for a black man in church. This illustration featured a woman named Jackie who was 34 years old and had made all of the “right moves” but was still unable to meet the right churchgoing man…Hello, my name was (is) Jackie, I was 34 and I had felt I had made all of the “right moves” and still hadn’t met the churchgoing man of my dreams…I knew then that the interview was one of those pebbles that God throws down on your path to let you know that you are moving in the right direction…After I interviewed Dr. Kunjufu, I told him I was a lot like the “Jackie” in his book and even he was surprised that we shared some of the exact same qualities…In fact, he later e-mailed these words to me – “I enjoyed our interview, and I believe God has your husband waiting for you!” By the way, my article was published in the August 2008 issue of UPSCALE magazine…

Meanwhile, I also felt stalled in my professional life…I mean I had some wonderful things going on…I had secured freelance writing opportunities that made it possible for me not to have the traditional 9 to 5 gig and I was profoundly grateful, but I had wanted to be a published book author since I was a little girl…And it seemed that every door I tried to walk through to make it happen was eventually slammed in my face…In 2007, I had gone to a writers conference in Philadelphia and had attracted the attention of the senior acquisitions editor of my DREAM publishing company…He enthusiastically took my book proposal and promised he would be in touch soon…He kept his promise and within a couple of weeks, he e-mailed me…I thought it had to be good news because only good news comes that fast…but it wasn’t…He e-mailed these words to me – “I read over your book proposal, My Journey, but my marketing department tells me that this is a hard kind of book for them to sell nationally, and so I have to reject it. Sorry.” I bet he wasn’t as sorry as I was…I was salty about that…

But I also realized that if I had gotten the attention of the senior acquisitions editor, I had something to offer even if it wasn’t quite right yet…At that same conference, I had pitched my book “My Journey” (which is what the book was called then…What a boring title!) to someone else in the publishing industry, and I had used the words “after the altar call” in the pitch…She told me I should rename my book “After the Altar Call.” Also, at that same conference, I learned about having a “platform” and why every nonfiction author had to have one…By the following year, I decided I was going to be the next blogger who turned it into a book…After the Altar Call was born in September 2008…

It would take TWO MORE YEARS before these two dreams would come into fruition… By 2010, I had dated more men but those relationships hadn’t worked out either…But there was a guy at my church who I knew I had a crush on me, but he wasn’t my usual type so I never took him seriously…by then, I thought well, I will give him a chance…That guy revealed himself to be my husband in 2010…Also, after two years of blogging, it occurred to me that if my story and platform weren’t enough by themselves maybe I should include the stories and platforms of other women in a new book proposal for After the Altar Call: The Sisters’ Guide to Developing a Personal Relationship With God…That was the key that unlocked a door that had been previously slammed in my face…I secured a book deal that year…

So how do you achieve your goals, dreams & resolutions in one year?

Well, there is good news and bad news…In my experience, some of the best goals, dreams and resolutions can be achieved in one year, but it usually takes years to get there…But the good news is if you trust in God and in His timing, you will receive God’s best for you…It goes back to my favorite verse:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Any thoughts?