What’s Holding Up Your Dreams?
By Shelia E. Lipsey
What’s holding up your dreams? What’s your hang up? Every one of us has something that we aren’t so very proud of.
Most of the time we have tiny, little, old nasty secrets and stuff hiding away in our closets. We feel weighted down so much so that we plant our focus on the mistakes of our past instead of living for today. We pile our closets with skeletons and remnants of past hurts and failures. You know what I’m talking about don’t you? I mean those old secret “skeletons.” The habits, the mess, the junk, the baggage, and all kinds of stuff that we keep hidden away and nobody knows about these skeletons. Oops, I’m mistaken. There is someone who knows all about those secret skeletons safely tucked away. That is the Sovereign One. In Beautiful Ugly, Envy Wilson discovers this truth.
Like Envy, we often times can do quite a good job keeping these skeletons away from our friends, co-workers, church members and even family. We sometimes keep them hidden so long that we even forget they’re in the closet. Something happens though, and we find ourselves opening the closet up and the skeleton raises its ugly body and hits us head first! We want to get rid of the skeleton. We want to push it aside and pursue bigger and better things for our lives. We want to be able to put the skeleton behind us so that we can focus on our dreams and the desires of our hearts. We want to forget all the past mistakes and bad choices we‘ve made in life. Some people happen to believe that when we accept the Savior as our Father, the skeletons disappear too. But we quickly find out that it’s not always that simple. God promises to make us new creatures inside but the enemy tries to keep us remembering just how filthy our rags really are.
It’s time to take a look at your life. It’s time to do some housekeeping. It’s time to discover whatever it is that’s keeping you away from what God has called you to do. It’s time to get rid of the skeletons that have taken up residence in your closet of life. Clean out your closets of self-condemnation and self-defeat. Work on establishing those things that will help you step into God’s plan for your life. If you have been called to write, start calling yourself a ‘writer.’ Learn all there is about the writing process. Join writing and critique groups online and in your local area. Participate in writers’ conferences and events. Writing is just an example since I am a writer, but the list is endless. God has intricately designed our lives to do and perform marvelous things!
There’s even more good news. God has paid it all on the cross for you and for me. He paid for our past skeletons, our present skeletons and our future skeletons! We can be confident that even though the skeletons keep trying to reveal themselves in our lives, that we have the power to cast those skeletons out of the closet! God tells us that He is our light and our salvation. Whom shall we Fear? God tells us that greater is He that is in us than He that is in the world! Hallelujah, glory to God. Therefore, be courageous, be of good cheer. Go after the desires of your heart. Seek to walk in your destiny. Cherish life and living by doing and being all that you have been called to do and be. There’s so much that is yet to be done while we are on this earth. There are many books to be written. There are many songs that need singing. There are many dances to be danced. There are many speeches that need to be made. There are many lives to be touched. There are places yet to be seen. There are roads yet to be traveled. In Beautiful Ugly, Layla Hobbs learns these lessons after going experience a tragedy in her life.
So, clean out your closetful of skeletons, today. Not tomorrow, because tomorrow is not promised to any man. Today is the day to release self-condemnation over the mistakes of the past. Today is the day to walk into your future with your head held high and your face toward the sky.
Now is the time to walk mighty in the spirit and go forth. Now is the time to drag those skeletons out of your closet. Throw them away with the rest of the junk that has accumulated in your closet of life. Now is the time to fulfill your dreams!
About Beautiful Ugly
Three friends with different struggles rely on God and each other to get by. Layla Hobbs has so much to offer, including a beautiful singing voice, but obesity and low self-esteem hold her back from life and finding true love. Envy Wilson has always been Layla’s backbone. But what about her own dark secrets? She won’t share them with anyone, and it’s starting to eat away at her from the inside. And then there’s Kacie Mayweather. Stricken with cerebral palsy, she’s had her share of men—five baby daddies for six children, in fact. But she’s never had one man to call her own. They’ll need plenty of faith and support from each other to see the real beauty that lies within each one of them and fulfill their deepest desires at last.
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Beautiful Ugly by Shelia Lipsey
Shelia Lipsey is the author of three other Christian Fiction novels. The trivia question below is from one of those novels. Leave your response to the trivia question below in the comment section.
What was Fantasia Runsome’s profession? Tell us the title of the book.
About the Author
Author Shelia E. Lipsey is a multi-award winning author. Her novels are available at most bookstores nationwide as well as online. Lipsey’s books have been called gripping, life-altering, memorable and realistic. Lipsey was recently awarded the 2009 Top Shelf Award for Beautiful Ugly by Black Pearls Magazine. She also won 2009 Shades of Romance Readers’ Choice Awards for My Son’s Wife in the following categories: Author of the Year, Christian fiction Book of the Year, Christian Romance of the Year, Best Book Cover of the Year, Best Fiction Book of the Year, among several other awards for her novels, Into Each Life and Sinsatiable.
Lipsey is the proud mother of two sons and the grandmother of three blessed young men. She is president of UCHisGloryBookClub.net, founder of Living Your Dreams Now a non-profit organization and MAAW (Memphis African American Writers).
Read an excerpt and check the tour schedule at http://bit.ly/BeautifulUgly
For more information, visit www.shelialipsey.com.
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Jacquelin Thomas is an award winning, bestselling author with twenty-nine titles in print. Her books have garnered several awards, including two EMMA awards, the Romance In Color Reviewers Award, Readers Choice Award and the Atlanta Choice Award in the Religious & Spiritual category. Jacquelin was a 2005 honoree at the Houston Black Film Festival for the movie adaptation of her novel, Hidden Blessings. She was the first recipient to receive the Writers Achievement Award at the North Carolina Book Festival in Winston-Salem. 
