The Confident Woman: Start Today Living Boldly and Without Fear (14 page)

Anyone who tries to keep all the people happy all the time will never fulfill their destiny. Consider the story of the woman from California who kept two bottled water coolers in her kitchen. It wasn’t because she was extra thirsty or on a health kick; it was because she couldn’t say no to either water company when they called! She was afraid that the salesmen would say bad things about her if she said no.
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Maybe you don’t have problems saying “no” to telemarketers but maybe you do struggle with saying “no” to your friends, or your family, or your church family, even at the detriment of what you feel God is calling you to do. People are not always happy for your success and even well-meaning people will try to stop you from making progress. You must know your own heart and what you believe you are supposed to be doing and do it. If you make a mistake you will know it soon enough; when you do, don’t be too proud to say, “I was wrong.”

“Step out and find out,” is my slogan. I hate to see people shrink back in fear and be so afraid of making a mistake that they never try to do anything. I know a young man who quit a good job to go into music ministry. It was a bold step and he did everything he could to make it work but it just didn’t (at least not at this time). However, I am proud of him that he was bold enough to try. At least now he won’t spend the rest of his life wondering what could have been if only he had tried. I think it is better to try and fail than never to try at all. Sometimes the only way we can discover what we are supposed to do with our lives is to try different things until we see what works and what fits right in our heart.

People give us all kinds of advice, most of which we do not ask for. Listen, and as one minister said, “Eat the hay and spit out the sticks.” Take anything that is helpful and good but don’t let the opinions of other people control you, because as Henry Bayard Swope said: “I cannot give you the formula for success but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.”

God uses men and women who are set on obeying and pleasing Him, not those who are controlled by the fear of man.

The Apostle Paul made it clear that if he had tried to be popular with people he would not have been an apostle of Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:10). King Saul lost the kingdom because he allowed his fear of man to cause him to disobey God (1 Samuel 13:8–14). God took the kingdom away from Saul and gave it to David, a man after His own heart. David did not let people control him as Saul did. David’s own brother Eliab showed disapproval of him but the Bible says that David turned away from Eliab and continued on with what he was supposed to do (1 Samuel 17:28–30). We should turn away from the people who try to discourage or accuse us instead of allowing what they say or think to affect us adversely.

God uses men and women who are set on obeying and pleasing Him, not those who are controlled by the fear of man. We all want to be liked and accepted but we cannot let that desire control us.

I cover this subject in great detail in my book
Approval Addiction
which came out in 2005; it is a complete guide to overcoming an off-balance need to please people and I wrote it because for years, I tried to be my idea of the perfect Christian, trying to please everyone and pleasing no one and I struggled and suffered for it. Unless you listen to God and follow your own heart you will live an unfulfilled and frustrated life. Anyone who allows other people to control them and guide their destiny will eventually become bitter and feel used and taken advantage of. I am sure you have heard the popular statement, “To thine own heart be true,” and I want to say that I highly recommend that if you aren’t already doing so, that you start following that advice.

History is filled with people who accomplished great things and yet they had to persevere past the criticism and judgment of people. Some of the world’s greatest inventors were persecuted by their family or friends but they pressed on, because they believed in what they were doing.

Benjamin Franklin longed to write for his older brother’s newspaper where he worked as a printing apprentice but his brother refused to let him. Ben wrote stories anyway, under a pen name, Silence Dogood, a fictional widow who was very opinionated, particularly on the issue of the treatment of women. Every letter was snuck under the printing shop’s door at night to avoid discovery, and “Silence Dogood” became wildly popular. After sixteen letters, Ben finally admitted that he was the writer and though he received quite a bit of positive attention from everyone else, his brother only grew angrier and more jealous. This resulted in Ben receiving beatings and finally running away. Among the many inventions and improvements he created in his lifetime, Ben eventually started his own printing shop and took over a newspaper, the
Pennsylvania Gazette,
which under his supervision became the most successful in the colonies.
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After inventing the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell struggled to come up with the money to make his invention a household name. No one really took the invention seriously at first and even his closest family and supporters encouraged him to focus on his improvements to the telegraph instead of that “speaking telephone nonsense.” Bankers laughed at him and Western Union initially turned him down. But Alexander refused to give up which is why we have the telephone today.
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A Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that a deadly infection common in childbirth could be greatly reduced when attendants and doctors thoroughly washed their hands in between patients. Despite lowering the mortality rate of women giving birth, he was laughed out of Vienna for his belief. Still, he wrote down his findings and he is now credited with making childbirth safer.
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Margaret Knight worked in a paper bag factory in the mid-1800s when she invented a new machine part that automatically folded and glued paper bags, creating square bottoms instead of the envelope shape that was common at the time. Workmen refused to listen to her advice when installing the equipment because they thought “what does a woman know about machines?” She went on to start the Eastern Paper Bag Company in 1870 and developed more than twenty-six other patented inventions in her lifetime.
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Hedy Lamarr is known as a popular movie star from the 1930s and 1940s but she also had an extremely creative and intelligent mind. She earnestly wanted to help with the war effort during World War II and considered leaving acting to join the National Inventors Council but was told her pretty face and star status could do more for the war by encouraging people to buy war bonds. But Hedy never gave up on her dream and helped invent a remote-controlled radio communications system that was patented during World War II and two decades ahead of its time. In addition to her invention that has contributed to multiple technologies used today, she raised millions of dollars to help the war effort.
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It has amazed me to read the stories of these men and women who contributed so much to the progress of society in almost every conceivable field and yet they had to endure tremendous criticism, judgment and persecution in order to make something in the world better. This clearly shows how Satan fights progress of any kind. He uses all kinds of fears to try and stop people, but the confident woman will keep pressing on and say “Yes” even when the world screams “No.”

It seems the world opposes, or even fears, anything that is different than the norm. When people are different or they try to do something different, they must be ready for opposition.

Many people who have done great things in life were willing to stand alone and that is not possible without confidence.

Timothy, Paul’s “spiritual” son in the ministry, was very young and he was fearful and worried about what people thought of his youth. Paul told him to let no man despise his youth (1 Timothy 4:12). It really does not matter how old or young a person is. If God calls someone to do something and they have the confidence to go forward, nothing can stop them.

The Lord recently spoke to my own heart and said, “Don’t ever make decisions based on your age.” As Dave and I advanced in age, we found ourselves wondering if we should try new things since we were getting older. God made it very clear that age was not to be the deciding factor. Moses was eighty years old when he left Egypt to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land. At the age of eighty-five, Caleb asked for a mountain to be his property inheritance.

And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as He said, these forty-five years since the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while the Israelites wandered in the wilderness; and now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old.

Yet I am as strong today as I was the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so is my strength now for war and to go out and to come in.

So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke that day. For you heard then how the [giantlike] Anakim were there and that the cities were great and fortified; if the Lord will be with me, I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.
(Joshua 14:10, 12)

How a person responds to your age and, for that matter, how others respond is really up to you. Of course we all age in years but we don’t have to get an “I’m too old” mind-set. Adlai Stevenson said “It is not the years in your life, but the life in your years that counts.” Confident people don’t think about how old they are, they think about what they can accomplish with the time they have left. Remember, confident people are positive and look at what they have, not what they have lost.

Celebrate the fact that you’re not exactly like everyone else. You are special! You are unique!

Even if you are reading this book and let’s say you’re sixty-five years old and feel you have wasted most of your life doing nothing but being shy and timid—you can still start today and do something amazing and great with your life.

At the time of this writing my husband, Dave, is 65 and I am 62. We are doing as much now or perhaps even more than ever, but we had to make a decision not to get a “retirement” mentality or to think in terms like, “I’m getting too old for that.”

We are determined to let God lead our decision making, not people or our age. I am going to be a confident woman as long as I am on this earth and I know when I go to heaven I will have perfect confidence because there is no fear in God’s Presence.

I can say that I am a confident woman because I have decided to be one, not because I always feel confident!

Celebrate the fact that you’re not exactly like everyone else. You are special! You are unique! You are the product of 23 chromosomes from your father and 23 from your mother. Scientists say there is only one chance in 10/2,000,000,000 of your parents having another child just like you. The combination of attributes that you have cannot be duplicated. You need to explore the development of your uniqueness and make it a matter of high priority.

It does not increase your value when you find that you can do something that nobody else you know can do, nor does it diminish your value when you are with people who can do things that you cannot do. Our worth is not found in being different or the same as others, it is found in God.

Thousands of years ago the Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested that each human being is bred with a unique set of potentials that yearn to be fulfilled as surely as the acorn yearns to become the oak tree that is within it. I believe thousands upon thousands of people who read this book are people yearning to fulfill a deep longing inside of them. Don’t settle for “average” or “getting by.” You may have some limitations but you can be extraordinary if you decide to be.

The famous actor Sidney Poitier tells of his life under the colonial system. He shared that in those times the darker your skin was, the less opportunities you could expect to have. His parents, however, and especially his mother cultivated a fierce pride in him that made him refuse to be anything other than extraordinary. They were extremely poor and enough poverty can eventually mess with your mind if you let it, but Sidney kept on believing he could rise above it and he certainly did.
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Tenacity is a wonderful trait to have. The eagle is tenacious. Once it sets its sights on its prey it will die rather than let go.

Truly confident people are not defeated by opposition; they are actually challenged by it and even more determined to succeed than they were without it.

The world said “No” to Sidney, but he said, “Yes!” What will you say when the world says “No?”

Chapter Nine

ARE WOMEN REALLY THE WEAKER SEX?

O
ne of the misguided ideas about women is that they are weaker than men and that is not true. The Bible says that they are physically weaker (1 Peter 3:7), but it never indicates they are weaker in any other way. Women have the babies and believe me when I say that you cannot be weak and do that.

I might need my husband to open the lid on the new jar of mayonnaise, but I have tremendous endurance when it comes to sticking with something until it is finished. I am not weak and I am not a quitter. As a woman, refuse to see yourself as the “weaker sex.”

Don’t let that wrong mind-set take hold of you. You can do whatever you need to do in life.

The world is filled with single mothers whose husbands walked out on them and refuse to support their children financially. These moms are giants in my eyes. They work hard and try to be both mom and dad to their children. They sacrifice time, personal pleasures and everything else imaginable because they love their children fiercely. They are certainly not weak.

Men who merely walk away need to remember that strength does not walk away, but it works through situations and takes responsibility.

More than 10 million single mothers today are raising children under the age of eighteen. That number is up drastically from the 3 million reported in 1970 and it’s estimated that 34% of families headed by single mothers fall under the poverty line (making less than $15,670 annually).
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Their biggest concerns are much more basic than many two-parent homes—they worry about affordable, quality child care for their children, keeping a car running and living in a safe, affordable house or apartment.

Some men think that if a woman is a stay-at-home mom and homemaker that she does nothing all day. He may say things like, “I worked all day, what did you do?” These types of comments can make a woman feel devalued, but they are made by men who have a tremendous lack of knowledge. Raising a family, taking care of a man and being a good homemaker is a full-time job that requires overtime with no overtime pay. I applaud the stay-at-home moms, especially those who do their job with joy. You are my heroes!