Honey, You Just Ain’t Fat Enough!
Over the course of the past week I believe God has been speaking a number of things to me… I’ve got the itch to write a few of my thoughts although I’m confident I could write a thesis if I included all of what I am contemplating.
Have you ever met someone that favor seems to follow? I’m not being arrogant or bragging when I say that for a large part of my life most of what I have put my hand to has prospered. (Don’t tune me out, I’m setting the stage for what is coming later…Understanding what has been the norm will give you perspective for why I’m writing this)
When it comes to work and employment, I’ve almost always been the one who received the “favor” with people of influence and administration. I’ve been the one promoted ahead of seemingly more qualified candidates, I’ve been sought after and recruited by “head hunters” in similar job fields (some even being jobs that I was unqualified for but were offered to me with the understanding that they would help me “get qualified” if I took the job), I’ve been sought out as a consultant by people of much greater renown and influence than myself…blah blah blah…
The point is, for whatever reason, I have understood what it feels like to be on top and have even jokingly told friends that I had a “midas touch”… In the midst of the favor, it was always a bit of an ongoing internal joke realizing that it had to be God because “on paper” I’m really not that special… Just a guy with a decent personality and maybe a slightly “above par” work ethic…
However, after years of successes, I hit a brick wall a couple of years ago that sent me into a whirlwind of, “Atypical” (to say the least) experiences.
Since that period of time, I have had a number of disappointments, discouragements, let downs, frustrations, you get the picture… For those of you gardeners out there with a “Green Thumb”, maybe you will understand my personal analogy of having a “Brown Thumb”.
One of the most difficult and personally discouraging of these experiences was when I signed on with a new company in the spring of 2007. This company had a PHENOM product, an AMAZING marketing plan, an OUTSTANDING compensation plan and seemingly, the sky was the limit for success. I knew with my background, experiences and influence that there was no way I could fail and I believed that in short time I would be among some of the most productive and respected in their sales force. It wasn’t long and I was rubbing elbows with ALL of their top producers, the VP’s, the President of the company… I was being mentored by the TOP guys in the company and in my mind was slated for success on the fast track!
Strangely, things didn’t quite work out the way I had planned… In times past, what was so easy for me to navigate now left me feeling like Frodo trying to walk through the bogs on my way to Mordor with the “One” ring growing ever heavier around my neck…HA! “My Precious!” (If you just said “WHAT?!” It’s Tolkien…Lord of the Rings…Bygones)…
I literally had the VP of marketing for this company tell me once that he had never seen someone work harder without success. (Which he meant as a compliment, but to me was like saying, “Something must be REALLY wrong with YOU if people with half your ambition, talent and skill set can be successful and you can’t…”). It was harsh and I felt like a failure.
This same VP also offered me some insight that seemed so far from logical to me at the time when he said, “Aaron, maybe God is just keeping you from success in this company”… My thoughts at that point were something along the lines of “Don’t patronize me…I don’t need your pity” … but time would reveal that perhaps this really WAS the case.
I ended up leaving this company, with my head down and tail tucked between my legs, but still over the course of the next couple of years, continued to follow this company to watch their trends and see what became of them. For a while they continued to see success, but then something happened at a corporate level that few saw coming. Those who “made the decisions” began to change the way they did business and how they treated their “producers” and in short time the company began to fold. Lawsuits arose, stocks plummeted, and sales crashed! None of this was foreseeable when looking at the company from a product or growth perspective, the problem was “internal” and the companies demise solely rested upon the shoulders of it’s founders.
I had no way of knowing what the future of such an apparently promising company held. But God, existing outside of my knowledge parameters did…
Now I know some will immediately say “So God protected you, but what about the others who got burned”… I don’t know about the others, perhaps there were aspects of what transpired that would have effected things for me far beyond the monetary aspect of the “loss” had I been successful in that company. Perhaps it would have distracted me from a lesson that I have had to learn in that season. Perhaps lives that have been impacted wouldn’t have been if I had been trying to keep a sinking ship afloat… Who knows?!
All I can say is, considering the totality of the circumstances, maybe God was sheltering me from something even though, at the time, it felt like I couldn’t win for losing…
So, why share this story? Because, like me, many of you have been in or ARE presently in seasons where the “success” is seemingly just out of reach and for the life of you, you can’t figure out why! I’m realizing now that sometimes there is a “protection” in the rejection.
In my own experience I was really depressed at my own lack of success…But I’m believing now that perhaps my lack of success had NOTHING to do with me or my ability and EVERYTHING to do with God and his Omniscience.
Perhaps the entire experience has motivated me to greater levels of tenacity where maybe success and then failure in that season would have kept me from reaching for the “REAL” success that God has for me in the next season…
Maybe what I am understanding right now about God is preparing me for the “GREATER” thing, when success in that season would have actually held me back from progress in this season…
It’s true that every persons experience is different, but one constant remains…God knows what’s needed and right for each of us INDIVIDUALLY in order to meet our God ordained potential! That place is where and how that “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose”… This is How and Why that success and failure are subjective based upon calling, election and season…
We are ALL more than we have become when seen through our Father’s eyes… If we continue to trust and follow Him regardless of how things appear, we will see with our own eyes what that really means…
I read in a book today that God wants to get us where God wants us to be more than we want to get there ourselves! If this is the case (which I believe it is), then the only way we can lose or fail is to refuse to proceed or quit altogether…
I had a funny thought today that “Fat, is a matter of perspective”…I’m sure that seems out of place at the end of this blog until you consider the phrase, “It ain’t over til the fat lady sings…”
Sometimes you just gotta look her in the face and say, “Honey, You Just Ain’t Fat Enough!”
If you can dig it, Say WORD!!!
