Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Blessed and Bossed Up Podcast. This is episode 201, thank you guys so much for the love that you shared with us on our 200th episode; I’m excited about this podcast and just what's to come. By the time this comes out, we've already announced our giveaway winner so thank you to those of you guys who participated, please make sure that you rate the podcast, write a review so that we can spread the Blessed and Bossed Up love.
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The title of today's episode is ‘For Type A Personalities Who Have Trouble Surrendering;’ listen, this episode is a read for me because I am a Type A person through and through. This episode came about a few weeks ago because y'all know I’ve been very, very vocal about this transition into this new phase of my life. A new mom, balancing that with my growing company, with making sure my marriage is intact, making sure that I’m taking care of myself and my health and well-being is intact. There are so many now more moving parts than I have had to deal with in years prior and so it's an adjustment for me to just make sure that I’m showing up for everything well.
And as a Type A person, it has been very difficult to kind of find my flow and so this episode came about like weeks ago where I was in one of my many venting to God sessions and I’m like “God, how am I supposed to do this?” I’m just talking out my emotions, I’m talking out how I’m feeling, I’m talking out how I’m putting myself down and I’m so critical of myself and I feel like I’m not doing a good job and all of these things. I was literally just pouring my heart out to God.
And he just began to just show me one of the things that needs to break with a lot of us with these Type A personalities is we have to stop thinking that our salvation is performance based and as Type A people we're performance based individuals. We want to see results, seeing results is something that keeps us going and if we don't see them, then we feel like something is wrong and so just having this personality type can work against how we're supposed to be as believers.
Because it's something in us that just can't accept the fact that we don't have to perform for God's love, we don't have to perform for God to bless us, we don't have to perform and be on in order to live out our purpose. Yes, we have to be obedient but obedience and performance is extremely different and a lot of us have this performative nature that keeps us from true relationship with God. That keeps us from having the depth in our relationship with him that we need to and ultimately keeps us from living the full life that he called us to live and so I wanted to talk about that in today's episode because I know a lot of you guys fall into this category right here with me.
And if you're not, if you're a type B person, I mean shout out to you; like my husband is a type B personality all the way so I’d be on edge and he'd be like “relax, it's okay.” Like this morning, I had to go pick my grandmother up and take her back to my house because she decided that she ain't driving no more. Ain't nothing wrong with your girl, she just don't be trying to drive so I go pick her up and bring her back to my house because she's helping with the baby today and she usually doesn't on Fridays.
But I had to go pick her up, bring her back to the house and I had to come to my office because I had to record a video for this influencer deal that I had, record the podcast. We're doing more video content so you guys are seeing on Blessed and Bossed Up Instagram instead of just the audiograms of my face. And then the little waves that are showing the audio and the episode playing, you're seeing my face more because our statistics have shown in our marketing that y'all like to see my face. I appreciate that y'all but listen, I don't be trying to be seen okay, it's a lot of work to be seen, it takes time to put the face together and look half decent to be on somebody's camera.
But nevertheless, I’m giving in to what my team says I need to be doing so I had to come to the office so that I can video record this podcast as opposed to just being at home. The lighting in my house ain't bright for me to be video recording at home then I have to do another video and I have a couple other things that require me being in the office so I’m on a rigid schedule this morning. I had to get up, I had to get the baby together, I had to make sure he's fed, I had to make sure grandma had everything she needed, I had to get dressed to make myself look decent, I had to hightail it to pick my grandmother up.
And if y'all are familiar with the DC area, I’m going from the upper Marlboro area to Waldorf and that's far, it's at least 30 minutes so I go get her, bring her back to my house, high tail it to Virginia where my office is. So, I’m a little on edge because I can't find my shoes, I’m just like “I’m not on my schedule,” I’m like that stressed out y'all, stressing myself out because I can't find nothing that I need. I can't find my slippers, I wear my slippers every day, where are my slippers? Can't find those, can't find this and so my husband was like… he bouncing around the house all chill and in a good mood and he’s like “Tatum, relax.” I’m like, you know what, I do need to relax so I just took a deep breath, I got in the car, I played some Jay-Z, got myself in my little bag to start my day right, but that's our personality, this Type A personality type.
So shout out to y'all that are type B but today, I’m talking to us Type A personality types. I did a little digging, a little research, I did my Google’s to because I wanted to see what did the smart people of the world, the experts, the psychologists, psychiatrists say about Type A personalities. Something that was very interesting to me though was the people who coined the Type A, Type B and I think it has a C and D personality types, were trying to figure out the correlation between personality types and certain health diseases.
And they found out that people with Type A personalities, they are more susceptible to things like high blood pressure and stuff like that because we'd be on edge. I thought that was extremely interesting and honestly for me, it was something that was a bit of a wake-up call like “girl, you need to relax because that's going to cause health issues.” Like, you being on edge and trying to over plan everything and be so rigid with the way that everything has to be is going to impact your physical health and your mental well-being so that was a slap in the face as I was just preparing to record this podcast.
But nevertheless, there were some very key behavioral patterns that I want to point out for people with a Type A personality. So, one of them is, we're competitive. It says Type A individuals tend to be very competitive and self-critical, they strive towards goals without feeling a sense of joy in their efforts or accomplishments.
Interrelated with this is the present of a significant life imbalance, this is characterized by a high work environment. Type A individuals are easily wound up and tend to overreact, they were reading me to fill this one y'all. The next characteristic of Type A people is impatience, Type A personalities experience a high sense of urgency, Type A people seem to be in a constant struggle against the clock. Often, they quickly become impatient with delays and unproductive time, schedule commitments too tightly and try to do more than one thing at a time such as reading while eating or watching television.
Another characteristic is hostility, Type A individuals tend to be easily aroused to anger or hostility which they may or may not express overtly. Such individuals tend to see the worse than others displaying anger, envy and lack of compassion; when this behavior is expressed overtly i.e physical behavior; it generally involves aggression and possible bullying. And the last characteristic I want to hone in on is Type A people tend to get their feelings of self-worth from what they achieve. So I’ve been very vocal on this podcast about my achieving nature and just that conflict between this personality type of mind and living a life that's pleasing to God.
It's a direct conflict, these things that… this competitiveness, this impatience, this hostility, this achieving nature is going against the way that we're supposed to live as believers. I wanted to do this episode because I feel like we have to really hone in on this so that we can tackle some practical things to start adding in to the way that we do life so that we are doing life God's way and not moving by the flesh. A part of moving by the flesh is moving by your personality type.
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A lot of times we think about not doing things God's way, we go straight to the worst sin of the sin but sometimes just giving in to your whole behavioral patterns can be against the way that God wants you to live. And can be keeping you from living with that fullness of joy that's promised to us. So, after I looked into the Type A personalities, I was thinking about surrender, so I’m like “what makes it so hard to surrender, what does surrender mean and where does the difficulty come in for people with my personality type, this Type A personality?
And so I found on gotquestions.org, I really like this site because they just be going in on all the questions and actually, if you click the link in the show notes, I’m going to just copy and paste what they said about this. The question literally was what it means to surrender via God? So, click the link in the show notes, I just copied and pasted it, it’s not from me, it's from them but I’ll write what they said and give you the link to it so that you can go and do more research on that or anything that you have questions about. But I’m going to read a little bit about what they said and it's important that you do click the link in the show notes because there are a bunch of different scriptures to support this.
I’m not going to say all of them but they are referenced in the document. So according to them, what it means to surrender to God; surrender is a battle term, let me actually just relax, let me be more laid back like the Type B folks so that we could just truly ingest what this is saying. It says surrender is a battle term, it implies giving up all rights to the conqueror; it implies giving up all rights to the conqueror. When an opposing army surrenders, they lay down their arms and the winners take control from then on. Surrendering to God works the same way, God has a plan for our lives and surrendering to him means we set aside our own plans and eagerly seek his.
The good news is that God's plan for us is always in our best interest unlike our own plans that often lead to destruction. Our Lord is a wise and a beneficent victor, he conquers us to bless us; that's deep right there, he conquers us to bless us; one more time, he conquers us to bless us, wow! Okay, let me keep going; there are different levels of surrender all of which affect our relationship with God. Initial surrender to the drawing of the Holy Spirit leads to salvation. When we let go of our own attempts to earn God's favor and rely upon the finished work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, we become a child of God.
But, there are times of greater surrender during a Christian’s life that brings deeper intimacy with God and greater power and service. The more areas of our lives we surrender to him, the more room there is for the filling of the Holy Spirit. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we exhibit traits of his character; the more we surrender to God the more our old self-worshiping nature is replaced with one that resembles Christ. I’m going to pause right here, I believe that there's a turning point that we all get to and especially us within these Type A personalities.
After you get to the salvation part and now you're at the level where you're trying to get deeper with God, the level where you want to live a life where everything that you touch prospers. And a life that you're reaping the rewards of obedience to where you have joy, you have peace, you have wealth, you have health, that God is pleased, that your family is blessed, that your children rise up and call you blessed. Like it says in Proverbs 31, that your husband is loved and your marriage is healthy, I think we all get to the point after we get saved to where we want to live a life that resembles the one that God wants for us.
And that's not to say that it's a life absent of trouble or trauma or difficulties, but it's a life that has all of these beautiful things present in spite of, it's a life that has a fullness of joy despite a peace that surpasses all understanding. In spite of a life where we are constantly just walking in the greatness of God because it is him who is operating through us, like this is a life that we want to get to and I believe it's a life that you guys want to get to because you're listening to this show.
I don't know why you'd be listening to Blessed and Bossed Up if you wasn't trying to be about that blessed and bossed up life okay, in my rapper voice, but I believe that this is a space that we all get to with us and this is also a space where us with these Type A personalities. We get to a point of internal conflict and I talked about this last week like that tug of war.
And for us with this personality type in particular, this is another internal conflict that presents itself that we have to consciously overcome to where we have to understand, we have to replace that self-worshiping nature with one that resembles Christ. That's hard because this Type A personality like this competitiveness, this impatience, this hostility, this achieving nature is not like Christ. That's why when the Bible talks about how we are a new creature and it talks about the importance of us renewing our mind and for us with this personality type, it's a day-to-day thing.
Us surrendering last week is not going to work today, it's a day-to-day thing and then moving on to what the passage was saying; it says in Romans 6:13 that God demands that we surrender the totality of ourselves. He wants the whole not a part, do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been bought from death to life and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. Jesus said that his followers must deny themselves and this is another call to surrender and it says the goal of a Christian life can be summed up by Galatians 2:20.
I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Such a life of surrender is pleasing to God, results in the greatest human fulfillment and will reap the ultimate rewards in heaven. So my goal through this podcast is to give those of you guys like me with this Type A personalities, to take us from this personality type to being more like Christ. In Galatians 5:22, it gives us the characteristics that we should embody because of the God who works on the inside of us and I’m going to read it in the message translation.
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It says but what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard. Things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity we develop willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart and a conviction that a basic holiness permeate things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. So this scripture is also the fruit of the spirit and it'll read that way in other translations but I love the way that the message translation lays it out because I believe that this exemplifies the fact that these gifts, these fruits of the spirit are contradictory to the fruit of our personality types.
I believe God wants to prune us, the Bible says that he prunes us so that we could bear much fruit so this is a part of the pruning process; for those with this personality type we have to understand that our fleshly nature is contradictory to the way in which we're supposed to live. And we have to put the proper tools in place so that we're not giving in to who the psychologist say that we are but we are truly examples of Christ and we are truly modeling behaviors that make us look like Christ because that's who he says that we are. He says that we are made in his image so we need to look as if we were made in his image and not in a Type A personality workup.
This isn't even in my notes and so I know it's Holy Spirit; a lot of us we've looked to so many personality assessments to figure out who we are, we've taken every single personality assessment to figure out our traits our characters. I mean I have as well, I’m right here with you; we've taken so many of these things to try to figure out who we are. So, we've placed our identity into what psychiatrists and the smart people of the world has told us we are and have categorized us to be as opposed to going to the father to get our identity from him.
Because he says that we are made in his image so our image is reflecting of who God is not what these groups that they put us in say and these things are useful. I’m not saying to do away with them completely they are useful; I know I took an assessment a couple years ago. Rest in peace to Chris Daniel, he was on a podcast not long before he passed away and I took his animal assessment and it helped me to understand areas of my personality and it helped me to be effective.
My husband took it as well and so it helped us to better figure out how we need to communicate with each other, how can we work together and it's something that I even keep in mind when it comes to business. Understanding the people, I need to hire people that are going to complement areas that I may be weak in so, me being married to someone that is Type B is extremely beneficial for me because he's able to balance me out and offer a different perspective. If we were both Type A's, we'd probably be at each other's neck 24/7 you know what I mean?
I believe that when you become one with somebody and whether that's in business, whether you enter in some type of contractual agreement with somebody via an employee-employer relationship via a business partnership or with a marriage, these are all contracts. When we sign that marriage certificate that is a contract to say I am legally attached to this person. I believe that when you do become contractually married to anyone in any type of relationship that having someone who isn't the same as you is very important.
Somebody should be in my business who can see my blind spots, that makes the team, the company more effective so me marrying someone who's a complete opposite of me is beneficial because as one we are that much more effective. We can fight back to back against whatever comes our way; he sees the areas I don't see, I see the areas that he don't see. In my company, my team sees things that I don't see and I see things that they don't see and it works together to move the vision forward.
So again, I’m not saying to do away with these personality assessments but it's important to understand where your identity lies. My identity is not in the fact that I’m Type A, that's a characteristic of me that I utilize and I recognize to make sure that I’m effective. And I use that knowledge that I have about my personality in order to operate in life in a strategic manner, but my identity is not in that. Even though this says that I’m competitive and I’m hostile, no I’m not, I have a peace that surpasses all understanding, I have joy because that's one of the fruits of the spirit.
This may say that I’m impatient but no, I’m patient because long suffering, perseverance is one of the fruit of the spirit so I don't care what this personality assessment tells me, my identity is in Christ and my objective is to not hone in on this bucket that the psychologists have put me in. But it's to hone in on the identity that God has given me because he made me in his image. I only have two points for you guys today; I want to give you just a couple practical things for the day-to- day, for those of you guys who fall into this bucket of people. How do we live with this flesh that has these traits that are contradictory to Christ and I have two resolutions for you.
I’m only going to go over two of them because I believe throughout the course of this podcast like we've touched on achievers. I don't really want to touch on hostility because I believe hostility is a result of impatience so we're going to talk briefly about how to overcome that competitiveness and that impatience. So, with competitiveness, in order to combat that so that you make sure that you are being more like Christ in a way that he wants you to live is you have to rewire your perspective of who your opponent is.
I'm going to say that again, as a Type A personality who has this competitive nature, one that the world in the way that the world does business will use or tell you to use to your advantage, this is where we have to use wisdom on how we operate. So, the world will tell you that you should be competitive in business, you should be trying to outwork your competitors, you should be doing this, you should be doing that; it fuels this. Type A people are usually extremely successful but remember we're doing business God's way and competitiveness is not a quality of Christ; who does Christ have to compete against?
Who is his competition? Why does God need to be competitive? Again, who is he competing against? The enemy ain't his competition, the enemy is not his equal; the enemy has to get permission to do whatever it is that he's doing. There is no competition for Christ so if we are made in his image why are we acting competitive? And so what I would tell you in order to counteract this is to rewire your perspective of who your opponent is. So our opponents as humans, is the enemy; God's opponent is not the enemy, our opponent is because he's constantly trying to kill, steal and destroy.
We have to make sure that we're operating to where we understand that, where we can see that; I don't know what episode, I mean there have been 200 of these things but in one of those episodes I talked about the revelation that I got. That the Bible says that enemy walks around like a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour and I realized how loud a roar is and how a lot of times we just don't hear how loud the enemy is. It doesn't say that he walks around like a quiet mouse and silently kills and no, it says he walks around like a roaring lion; he's big and he's loud so we should be able to see him and see what it is that he's doing.
But again, because of this competitiveness that we have, we're competing against the wrong thing; I’m not competing with anybody else who is doing what it is that God called me to do. If somebody else has a media company and they're developing podcasts I’m not competing against them, that has nothing to do with what God is calling me to do and what I’m doing has nothing to do with what God is calling them to do even if they're similarities. I’m not competing with anybody who's operating in the faith space who may be talking about business; we all should have the same goal which is to win souls for Christ and to get people to do business God's way.
There is no competition, God created them, God created me and I’m going to focus on my race, I’m going to focus on what he has me doing, I’m going to stay at his feet to figure out what he has for Tatum to do next and I’m not looking to the left or to the right. I don't know if this was a quote, a video or something but this was years ago where it was something that was going around where it was a swimmer who was racing. They were in a swim meet, I don't know y'all, y'all know what I’m saying but they were swimming and so the opponent won by a split second.
And the reason why he won is because the swimmer who was about to win looked to see where he was and that has always stuck with me, I don't even remember where, that was years ago but that has always stuck with me because it just reminds me that I’m running my race.
I’m swimming my race, I’m not competing with anybody, I am seeking God and doing what he tells me to do and that's the that on that but a lot of us we get into the comparison, we get to the competition mindset especially those with this personality type. But in order to again counteract that, we have to rewire our perspective on who our opponent is; our opponent is the enemy so if he comes to kill, steal and destroy you’re just going to let him do that? So, if this is your personality type, if this is something that isn't better to you to be competitive, then apply that energy to where it needs to go.
It doesn't need to go to you looking at people's social media accounts and feeling inferior, it doesn't mean that you are upset because somebody else in your field reached a milestone before you, no, it doesn't mean that you're trying to do work. A quote that I used to always say that I had to get corrected on was, I used to always quote Mark Cuban where he says, “Work as if there's someone else working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you.” That fed this competitiveness in me and I was dead wrong because that's not of God. I needed to not work as if someone meaning another entrepreneur or whatever was working to take it all away from me.
I needed to keep that same energy and apply it to the enemy that wants to take it all away from me. The Bible talks about the devil being the God of this world, like he wants you to be one foot in and one foot out with your faith. He wants you to do business your way and not God's way, he wants you to engage in a bunch of new age practices in order to manifest the life that you want as opposed to pray and fast and obey what God is telling you to do. He wants to get you off course, are you going to let him win? I’m about to pump, I’m about to instigate a little bit, you're going to let him win?
You're you going to let him take you off your post, you want to let the fact that you're upset today cause you to not pursue what God has called you out or God has sent you out to do? Are you going to let the fact that your husband got on your nerves, stop you from praying for him? Are you going to let the fact that your kids are acting up stop you from laying hands on them before they leave the house? Are you going to let the fact that you’re mad, meaning that you're not going to show up for yourself? You're going to let the fact that something went wrong in your day cause you not to show up for your clients? So what's up?
One thing I know about us that’s following this Type A personality is that we ain't no punks but what we mess up is we miss aim our aggression. They say that we are hostile but we misaim that hostility against the wrong enemies. I gave the story last week where I talked about how my husband got on my nerves but I recognized the spirit that was operating and how the enemy was trying to fuel getting me out of position. Wisdom allowed me to recognize this so I didn't aim my hostility towards him; I aimed my hostility towards reminding the enemy of who I am.
I’m a child of the most high God, you've been defeated so you're not about to come up in here and try to cause no strife in my marriage and the way that I’ve done that is I’ve been forcing myself to make sure that I am up early but I’m praying for my household every morning.
I’m praying for my husband no matter how annoyed I may be with him, I’m showing up to my business no matter how tired I may be. This podcast is going to come out every single week no matter how tired I may be because God has trusted me with this platform, I’m not going to mismanage it because of how I feel. The enemy would love to make me tired, to make me be quiet, to make me shrink, the enemy would love to put a muzzle on your mouth to remind you of all the people who told you that you weren't going to make it.
So, there's a competition happening here, there's a competition of your flesh and of your spirit but I do want to reiterate here that God has no competitors and because he sent his sons to die on the cross for our sins so we already have the victory. The competition I’m speaking of is not about who's going to win because we’ve already won; there's a war happening but it's one that's fixed in our favor already. But what I’m trying to get you to understand as someone with this Type A personality type is that the hostility that they talked about in our personality is usually a result of that competitive nature. That hostility, that aggression that happens as a result of us being competitive, needs to be applied to the right place.
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I hope I explained that correctly because I don't want to make it seem as if the enemy isn't equal to God because that is not true but there is a war that's taking place for our lives, for our businesses, for our families and while we have the victory we still have to fight. Because we live in the flesh that wants to operate by the flesh but we have to make sure that our spirit is the one that prevails. When I was pregnant, I told you guys that I was stressing myself out because I was I felt like I was racing against the clock which was my due date. There were things that I wanted to do in business and things I wanted to get done before I got sat down, this was my mindset. And what God began to reveal to me was the tactics of the enemy and how he was using my achieving nature, this Type A personality, how he was using my desire to please God and it was like he was pinning my blessings against each other.
So, he wanted to use the business which needed my attention at that time, he wanted to use that against the baby who was going to need my attention soon and pin those against each other to where I would end up stressed out and hurting myself. If you're pregnant and you’re stressed, that hurts the baby; when I started this off, I talked about how these whole personality types got defined in the first place. Because these cardiologists were examining the correlation between personality types and things like diseases and more specifically heart disease.
The enemy was trying to cause stress in an effort to kill me, to kill my child, to kill the things that I was building; again, he comes to kill steal and destroy. But thankfully, God allowed me to see what was going on so that I was able now to apply that same competitive nature, that same hostility that was being used for the negative and apply it for the positive which was making sure that I claimed my victory. So, with us as believers and I really pray that you guys are following me here and I’m explaining it correctly because I don't want you to go into this fight or any fight that presents itself as if you're working to win because you're not, you've already won.
You didn't have to do anything for that victory, but you do have to make sure that you are actively reinforcing that victory because there is a clash that's taking place between your flesh and your spirit. For those of us with this Type A personality, if we're not cognizant of that we will find ourselves in a place where we're falling into the comparisons, where we are competing in things that we don't need to be competing for or we're out here trying to prove people wrong but that's not what we need to do.
It is effective for you guys because I really want to give us practical things that we can utilize in our lives so that we do resemble more of Christ so that we are living the life that he wants us to live. Again, going against that competitive nature, my solution or my alternative to that for you would be to rewire your perspective of who your opponent is. It's not the other business in your category, it's not the other person who is doing similar things as you; your opponent is anything that tries to get you out of alignment with God. Anything that tries to get you out of position, apply that hostility that they say we have to that.
The next one that I want to cover really quickly is impatience. They say that those of us with Type A personalities are impatient and the way that we can counteract this is that we have to remind ourselves daily that it's established. We talked about this last week on the how to be consistent with God episodes and the week before. I talked about how it's not our job to do the establishing, That's God's job.
It's our job to just seek him and delight in him and do whatever he tells us to do but the his purpose is going to prevail the establishing of those plans is his job it's not ours. Again, we are Type A we need stuff to do right? I think you guys need to write down ‘it's established,’ write it down, put it as the background of your phone, print it out, put it as the background of your computer. Put it everywhere that you can see to where you can allow it to truly seek into your heart to understand that it's established. Relax, relax Type A's and I'm talking to me, relax, it's established.
I remember when I was believing in God to leave my job, for a while it would stress me out like when am I going to be able to leave, when can I finally quit? I’m tired of coming to this job, I know this isn't my purpose, I feel small here, this is not what God has for me to do and so what I did was, I wrote out my resignation letter. I wasn't even safe save at the time but I thank God again for wisdom even when I didn't even realize where it was coming from, but I wrote out my resignation letter and I put it on my wall and every day before going to work I read it.
I didn't read it in a way to where it fueled any anxiety or fueled my impatience in the fact that that hadn't happened yet but I read it to understand that this is the goal, it’s going to happen and if it doesn't happen today it's alright, it's God's job. I didn't have this language back then but again just because I wasn't looking for God doesn't mean that he wasn't already there with me so at that time God was giving me peace to understand that he does the establishing. So I read it every day before going to work and I went to work with a good attitude, everybody loved me at my job, I had great relationships with people at work.
I wasn't the type of employee to act like I had better things to do and I didn’t want to be there; I had a great attitude and I had great days most of the time even though I wasn't happy and I knew that I wanted more i still allowed myself to just chill, just chill, okay. I allowed myself to just chill and I believe that a lot of us… you aren’t going to like me with this one; us as Type A people, we have to stop fueling our impatience with planning. Another one of those moments, we fuel our impatience with planning; we try to plan everything out trying to say that we preparing “well God, I’m just preparing for…
No, no, no; you are fueling, you're impatient, you're trying to be busy, and you’re putting yourself on a hamster wheel as opposed to resting in God's timing. As Type A people, we're planners by nature, we're going to be prepared because that's who we are so all of this extra that's going on, it’s just something that's fueling your impatience and it’s working against what God is trying to do for you in this season. I see a lot of people who are anxious in their single season because they want to be married and they’re doing all of this to be prepared.
They are on every fast about finding a husband, they are on every single course about finding your husband and being prepared for your husband, they have read every single book about being a wife. At this point, you are ready to walk down the aisle; you did every single thing that every married person and told you to do and you're just fueling your impatience.
I’m going to be real with y'all for a second, I wasn't one of those people; I was believing in God for a husband, but I was cool on waiting for one, I was living my life and I was having a good time. I liked being by myself, I still like being by myself, that's who I am and so I wasn't anxious in this area of my life. But what I realized is that after I got married I was like “man, a lot of women do all of this work to be…and I’m not talking about people who are engaged or I’m preparing to be married with somebody.
I’m talking about people who are totally single and not dating anybody exclusively and I just saw so many women doing all of this stuff and I was thinking I was like “man, that's a lot of work.” And you're going to do the work all over again once you find the man that God has for you because you're doing all of this work to be prepared to be a wife but then you got to do more work to be prepared to be his wife. You might as well just live your life because that's a lot of work.
I was thinking about when me and my husband were engaged I was in therapy with my mama, I was in therapy by myself and I was in premarital counseling with him because I had to learn how to be his wife. So many of us at this point, if we could marry ourselves we might as well because we have learnt how to be a wife without a husband. Alright, I’m not even going to get into that, let me backtrack; all I want to say is don't fuel your impatience with planning, enjoy being single, if you're believing in God for being to be married.
Yeah, there are things that you can do to prepare, if you want to learn how to cook learn how to cook, if you want to make sure that you got your house prepared do that, but y'all know, we know the line when we're doing too much. I ain't got to tell you where it is, you know where it is, it's different for each of us; we know the line when we're doing too much so I don't get to that space or identify that line so that you don't get to that space where you're allowing that planning to just fuel this impatience, rest.
And to wrap this up because we're coming on time, Ephesians 3 is one of my favorite reminders when it comes to remembering that it's established and I’m making myself calm down and I’m going to read it in the message version.
It says, “There is an opportune time to do things; a right time for everything on earth, a right time for birth and another for death, a right time to plant and another to reap, a right time to kill and another to heal, a right time to destroy and another to construct. A right time to cry and another to laugh, a right time to lament and another to cheer, a right time to make love and another to abstain, a right time to embrace and another to part. A right time to search and another to count your losses, a right time to hold on and another to let go, a right time to rip out and another to mend and it just goes on and on and on.
In verse nine it says “but in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does?” I’ve had a good look at what God has given us to do, busy work mostly; true, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time, but he's left us in the dark so we can never know what God is up to whether he's coming or going.
I’ve decided that there's nothing better to do than to go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life, that's it. Eat, drink and make the most out of your job, it's God's gift; I’ve concluded that whatever God does that's the way it's going to be always, no addition, no subtraction. God's done it and that's it, that's so we'll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear; whatever was is, whatever will be is and that's how it always is with God.
I love the way that that broke that down at the end because I believe that's the mindset that we as Type A personalities need to have and that's what I want to leave you guys with. Whatever was is, whatever will be is and that's how it always is with God and we can rest in that. So, for all of us Type A's, let's just take a deep breath so we could practice chilling. So, breathe in and breathe out, thank you guys for listening to another episode of the Blessed and Bossed Up Podcast and I will talk to you next week.
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