I have not been fully honest with you.
I’ve been thinking about faith a lot lately. And how hard it is to “see something before you actually see it.”
One thing that rankles my chain is when people tell me to believe but never tell me how. We see people’s successes and hear the highlights of their wins but we never get the inside scoop on how they got there.
The tears,
the disappointments, the sense of failure, the maturing, all the things it took to get there. A lot of these faith journeys are easy and yet so hard because they call us to be better, and better requires denying ourselves.
As I go through my season of learning to release control to God, He calls to my memory seasons when He asked me to see it before I saw it.
And I realized something. I have not been honest with you about the journey that birthed my first book: “In Search of the Pink Flamingo”.
Today, I want to share my faith story to encourage and inspire you, but mostly to remind myself of what faith and that faith journey look and feel like.
Here goes!
Feeling not-good-enough...
I always knew I would write a book. Not because I aspired to it. Not because others told me I was a good writer. But rather because I had a weird knowing. Do you know what I mean?
Truth be told, I did not believe I was a good writer. Every time I submitted a piece of writing, it got rejected by the professionals. It left me doubting my gift. So, I never took writing
seriously though I found it to be very cathartic.
It was no wonder that during 2021, God told me point blank “Don’t let Me do to you what I did to Saul.”
This is a direct reference to Him rejecting King Saul and giving King David the kingship.
Why did God say that to me, you ask? Simple! I was being disobedient.
He gave me two ideas for blog
posts that I sat on for two weeks. That day, He reminded me of the people connected to me writing what He shared with me. His statement jerked me up so badly that I galvanized into action immediately.
The results? Many people reached out to thank me for writing those two posts. They needed them.
That was the day I learned that my writing was not about me. But I still did not take it seriously.
Now back to the book journey. I promise you; it’s all connected.
The First Call: Trusting My Plan
In 2020, an independent publisher reached out to
me. He saw a business post I made on LinkedIn and was impressed with my writing. He wanted to talk about me writing a book.
I preened at his praise but was also pretty unmoved. I didn’t see anything great about the post he mentioned but the people-pleaser in me didn’t know how to say no so I found myself on a call with him.
We talked and I got excited. Our
conversation reminded me that I have always wanted to turn my blog posts into a book. My excitement waned when I heard the cost to work with this guy.
I did not have that type of money!
And frankly I did not want to write a book badly enough to pay that sort of money.
I did not
tell him that. It was easier to promise that I’d think about it and then ghost him. That’s exactly what I did. Honesty was certainly not the best policy for me then.
The Second Call: Trusting God's Plan
In February 2021, I experienced my second burnout. I went to God about what to do and He gave me one
instruction: “Leave your corporate job.”
The control freak in me went berserk. The only words that came out of my mouth were: “Sally say what? Lord, I’m not doing it.”
After all, I only had 3 months of savings. There was no way I could sustain myself. The arrogance, right?
I looked around me and for the first time acknowledged how deeply unhappy I was with my life. There I was with an ever-present smile on my face and yet, I screamed internally and longed desperately for someone to see me. There was dealing with my second burnout and feeling depressed about the future.
I was tired. Deeply tired. So, I decided to give God’s plan a shot. What’s the worst that could happen? I had tried it my way and look how that turned out.
I agreed to leave my job by the end of March 2021. But only after telling God, “Lord, you have three months to get things together.”
Plot twist, it did not happen in three months. But a shift
started within me.
By July 2021, I met the woman, I knew was gonna work with to write my first book. There is that knowing again. I don’t know how I knew; I just did.
I was so certain that I told her, “I’m going to work with you one day. I don’t know when, but it is going to happen.”
August 2021, at the three-month deadline, I ran out of money. I had clients but I ran out of money.
One Friday night, I paid rent, and my bills then looked at both my Jamaican bank accounts. They had $500 each (that was less than $10 USD).
As I stared at the accounts, a righteous indignation rose up inside me as I told God, “I am not
comfortable with this! My bank accounts haven’t been this low in years. You have to fix it.”
Years later, my reflections showed that I fell into that state because of disobedience. I struggled with God for months about an instruction He gave me for my business. I felt inadequate and ill-equipped to handle what He told me I should do.
It did not matter what He said to me, I remained gun-shy. I did what everyone else
said I should do. It was easier because they’d already done it. They seemed to know best, and they had a lot of opinions about how I should do things.
I wasted a lot of money and time down that road. Pursuing everyone else’s opinions about the things that God called me to, instead of owning my voice and relying on Him to show me how to do the thing He designed
for me to do.
It would take another four months for me to say yes to God fully. But even then, He made a way. By the Monday, He told me to check my bank account. I ignored Him (got busy doing other things) until Thursday when He prodded me repeatedly.
I opened my account to the evidence of God’s provision. I cried when I discovered that a client had paid me earlier than planned.
Months went by and I still
didn’t get the number of clients that I thought I needed. I battled feelings of disappointment. I questioned God constantly. My ability to hear Him got murky. I distanced myself from Him because I felt unseen. I felt like a failure. I tried harder and nothing seemed to work. And I felt alone. I had client work that paid my bills and covered my savings and tithing but it wasn’t the amounts I had hoped for and expected.
I look
back now and thank God that I wasn’t as successful as I wanted to be then. My success then would have hindered me from stepping fully into how He had created me to serve my clients and give them what they need. It’s a joy to serve Pink Flamingo business owners as the Client Success Experts.
I share that part of the story to tell you that my financial situation in December 2021 was precarious. So, I was shocked to hear God tell me in early December, “Chanel, the time to write the book is
now. Tell Aleathea (the publisher I knew I would work with) that you will work with her starting January 2022.”
My brain shot to the money side of things. I did not see how to make it happen. I did not even know what cost to work with Aleathea. I was sure it was expensive. Despite all this, I said yes to God.
Aleathea and I already had a call booked so I waited. During that call, I shared with her what God had told me to say. Much to my amazement, she had a program starting that January. (She is a busy lady, so this was uncommon).
I told her I was in and asked her to share her payment link. Then I waited for God to provide the money to finance the work He assigned me.
God's Provision: My raven arrives…
Here is something I am learning about trusting God’s plan. His provision doesn’t always come in the way we expect it to. In 1 Kings 17, He causes a drought and then sends Elijah to the Brook Cherith.
Elijah can be
fed by fruits from the trees. Yet, Elijah doesn’t have to climb trees or make fishhooks or anything like that to feed himself. He drinks water from the brook and God sends ravens to feed him.
I thought I’d need another client to be able to pay Aleathea, but God had other plans. He did not give me another client, but He did make provision through a client.
During our first January meeting, a long-standing client told me that she wanted to increase what she paid me to a certain
amount and asked if I could work with her for more hours. The amount she suggested was a 28% increase on what she was paying me.
And here is the cool thing. The percentage increase was exactly the amount I needed to pay Aleathea’s fee over 6 months.
I started working with her that January. By August 2022, the first draft of the book was finished. I take
zero credit for what “In Search of the Pink Flamingo” became. The book I had in mind is not the book I wrote. The Holy Spirit wrote it through me. And Aleathea polished a diamond from the rough.
Aleathea’s gentle guidance was exactly what my fledging confidence needed to write the book God inspired me to write. She challenged me when I wanted to hold back.
Between her and the Holy Spirit, a book like I never imagined emerged over the course of a year.
The Battle: A Fear of What Others Think…
The night before the book’s release, anxiety and fear about what others would think brought me to my knees. It was not surprising that I fought an intense battle against the very thing the book was
about…
As I laid in bed that night, I confessed. “Lord I’m anxious about the release of the book to the public tomorrow. You know I’m a private person. I worry about how people will react to the stories you led me to share.”
The Lord reminded me of the woman with the issue of blood. Coincidentally (not!) I’d watch that episode in The Chosen series just a few days before.
After being sick for 12 years, she was healed in an instant because she dared to believe that her healing was possible by touching the hem of Jesus’s garment.
That night, the Lord showed me something specific about her story.
She was amid a crowd when her healing happened, but it was deeply personal. No one would have known if Jesus
hadn’t called attention to it.
It was done in secret and could have stayed that way.
And yet, He called it out. And when He did, something strange happened.
The Bible said that the woman told her story and the miracle of her healing. And then Jesus pointed out her faith.
Today, that woman’s story, miracle, and faith continue to change the lives of millions.
I was much like that woman. I struggled for 20+ years with people-pleasing, a deep need for control, and perfectionism.
And that sucked the joy and peace out of me though I wore a huge smile every day and bent over
backward to serve others and keep people happy.
It robbed me of my relationships, self-worth, and sense of self. It put me in a spiral of coping mechanisms and behaviors that ate at my soul constantly.
I was dissatisfied and unhappy without a clear understanding of why. Until I decided to touch the hem of Jesus’s garment by giving Him a week to still
my constant anxiety….
One touch. Only a thread!
That one touch changed everything.
The night before the launch of “In Search of the Pink Flamingo”, the Lord told me one
thing. He said, “I inspired you to write this book. Your story is not for everyone but the ones who it is for will be changed by it.”
His words ran in my heart as we released the book the next day.
Then it came to life.
Two weeks into the book’s release.
A year into the book’s release.
18 months into the book’s release.
Even today!
The testimonies and tears come. People thanked me for writing the book and sharing my story so openly that they saw themselves in it. People rededicated
their lives to Christ.
People bought extra copies and shared them with others.
People even paid for copies to be donated to strangers.
Within two weeks, we had readers across 4 continents and counting…
The book journey
took on a life of its own…and eventually became way more… tied to a mission and ministry that had never crossed my mind…
I will end here today and pick up this story in another email.
The Point…
The journey of faith is not always straightforward. Trusting God’s
plan is not easy especially when you spend so much time being in control. There are hills and valleys. There are things you think you know. There are things you think will work out one way, but they don’t. There are a lot of steps you don’t know… In fact, as God told me in 2020, “If you knew the journey I was taking you on to get to the fullness of what I promised you, you’d run screaming”.
The journey to writing “In Search of the Pink Flamingo” taught me so much about myself and our Heavenly Father. I had plans but God has better plans. Plans that are not just about me.
By faith, I put myself in God’s hand. He did a miracle in me.
God refined me. I saw myself afresh. I fell in love with Him. I fell in love with me. I fell in love with people. And I fell in love with life.
God is truly a redeemer who restores all the pieces the locust stole (or as I like to say – the pieces I gave to the locusts).
I could have never imagined there was so much life in my story… for me…for others. I could have never imagined that God would take me here. And now, He is using that story to change lives as people learn about and experience the power of God’s one touch.
I’m also learning to move when God says move (and an even harder one, standing still when He says to stand still). Faith is
not seeing all the pieces but choosing to trust that the One who told you to move will provide the pieces you need.
I will end here today and pick up this story in another post.
Because that act of obedience…trusting God’s plan…started a journey that changed me. That challenged me. That
challenged things I thought I knew. And when I stepped into it, sometimes reluctantly, that faith journey opened up multiple pathways…and missions beyond my wildest imagination.
