Cheers to the Fall and the Purpose of It All , livre ebook

WestBow Press - Khalia Deborah Stokes

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50 pages

English

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Your God-given purpose could be buried on the other side of a dark and challenging season. Always bet on what God can do through you!
We all fall down in life, but the lessons that our scrapes and bruises leave make us stronger. Like many young women, Khalia Deborah Stokes has had some nasty falls along the way.
In this memoir, she shares how she discovered her God-given purpose, which was buried on the other side of a dark and challenging season. Battling depression, isolation, and the woes of mommy guilt, she viewed herself as unworthy.
God, however, saw her challenges as a way to let His glory shine. As you read her story, you’ll be encouraged to:
• reap the full value of professional education;
• find the career that is right for you;
• ignite your faith and live how God wants you to live;
• pick yourself up after stumbling.
After each chapter, you’ll find a “Let’s Reflect and Journal” exercise as well as an invitation to write a letter to yourself on an important topic.
Discover a new perspective that revolves around the idea that struggle is part of a bigger plan – one that ends with you enjoying life and helping others.

Sujets

Personal Memoirs

Biography

Autobiography

Informations

Publié par	WestBow Press
Date de parution	22 février 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781664292758
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Cheers to the Fall and the Purpose of It All
Khalia Deborah Stokes

Copyright © 2023 Khalia Deborah Stokes.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-9274-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8277-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9275-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903146

WestBow Press rev. date: 02/21/2023
CONTENTS
Chapter 1Ready to Take the World
Chapter 2The Stumble
Chapter 3The Fall
Chapter 4Solitary Confinement
Chapter 5Leaving the Nest
Chapter 6Growing a Healthy Heart
Chapter 7Restoration

CHAPTER 1
Ready to Take the World
When we leave the house in the morning, we make sure to grab a particular set of things. We make sure we have our keys so we don’t get locked out because no one likes that. Of course, we grab our cell phones because everyone would pretty much die without them these days. Now we can’t forget our wallet because every time we step foot out of the house, it seems like we need something from the market or Target. Finally, we all grab our masks because we live in the middle of a pandemic known as COVID-19. Our keys, phones, wallets, and masks are essential tools because of what is happening globally. Sometimes that last item we grabbed, our mask, is also symbolic of what is happening inside us.
In 2013, as I was getting ready to graduate from college, my morning routine did not seem very different from what it is for most of us now. We weren’t living in the middle of a pandemic, but I grabbed the same essential tools before leaving my house for the day. I would grab my keys, my phone, and my wallet, but instead of a physical mask that I used to protect me from COVID-19, I would put on a mask that would hide the authentic me behind the woman I thought the world wanted me to be. Instead of being who I indeed was, I stepped out my door being who I thought everyone else wanted me to be, and I was succeeding at it.
In February 2013, I was in my last semester of undergrad at Eastern University, and I was ready to graduate and get my life started! As usual, I remember starting my day off, driving to campus, and heading to the Jammin Java cafe to get a mocha java blast. Chocolate and espresso were the best way to start my mornings in college. Then I went to the library and popped open my MacBook to kill time before my morning class.
As I checked my inbox, I noticed I had an email from Vanguard. I was a little nervous about opening it as I had recently finished a very long interview process to begin a new role at the company after graduation. I was worried because I had heard so many stories about recent grad struggles and having so much trouble finding work after college. I so desperately did not want to be in that boat come May, when it was time to walk across that stage and step into the real world. After shaking off the nerves, I opened the email, and the first word I saw was “CONGRATULATIONS!” The amount of joy and excitement I felt was unmatched. I immediately picked up the phone, called my mom, and shared the good news. After hanging up the phone, I let out a massive sigh of relief, picked up my MacBook, and headed to class. I felt a lot lighter going through the rest of my last semester knowing I had a great job waiting for me.
I was excited and confident as I coasted through my last three months of college, and boy, was I excited to kick off the plan I laid out for my life. Now that I knew I had a great-paying job waiting for me, nothing was in my way. I wanted to buy my first property and become a landlord by the age of twenty-five, travel every minute I could, save up a ton of money, and start building my wealth. I had everything set up for success, and I just had to keep going.
At this stage in my life, I was such a driven young woman who was laser focused on making it in life. Graduating from college, landing a good-paying job, and making money was my only focal point. Failure was not an option so I would work overtime to ensure I accomplished everything I needed to position myself to be successful. I would study for as long as it took and did whatever I had to in order to graduate. I was not going to miss my opportunity to walk across that stage and get my degree.
My current reality and some things I got the chance to witness were not what I wanted to be a part of my future. I did not want to work as a cashier in the shopping mall forever, and living paycheck to paycheck was not a life I was willing to accept. I often saw the financial struggles that my mom had to take on as a single mother raising three children, and I wanted to take a different route. I was determined to do what she wanted me to do and make my life better by staying focused and working on getting ahead in life. I was going to make her proud, and providing for myself would lessen the load she had to carry. She took care of us our entire lives, and this was my opportunity to take the baton from her and take care of myself. There were so many people rooting for me to graduate, live this incredible life, and take all that the world had. Those around me told me to focus on school, get some work experience, and get a business degree because I would always be able to find a job.
So that is what I did. I focused on making it to the finish line and getting my degree. I started my days by clocking into work at the bank and then heading to campus for my afternoon classes. After classes were complete, I rushed over to the mall, where I worked as a cashier at Sephora until about 10 p.m. Let’s not forget I also tutored accounting on campus whenever needed. I was so afraid to fail and disappoint my mother and everyone else who watched my journey, expecting me to come out on top. I was scared to fall from the pedestal that I had sat on since my early school days. I had to do what I had to do to live up to others’ expectations. I became a machine that worked and worked to please everyone else. Even if I didn’t want to work in finance and work my way up the corporate ladder, it was what I was told would make me successful. However, the days I questioned what I wanted for my life, I just pushed that to the side because, to be honest, the route to pleasing other people’s expectations seemed to be working for me. I mean, look at me: about to graduate college with a finance degree, with a job offer paying more than most recent grads, and smoothly coasting through my last three months.
Well, May came fast and furious, and it was time to close my college chapter and take on the world. Family BBQs, graduation parties, and a little weekend getaway were the perfect ways to celebrate my accomplishments. After all the celebration confetti settled, it was time to clock into work and start my career, and I couldn’t have been more excited.
The first couple of months on the job was nothing but training and studying for financial exams. I spent eight hours per day learning about stocks, options, how to do my job, and more, plus at-home studying time. We even got the opportunity to shadow current employees and get a hands-on view of what we would be doing throughout our workdays. The first few weeks were exciting because it was full of meeting new people, learning new things, and the hopeful feeling every new employee has.
However, after that initial new-job bliss, the excitement died down, and I began going through the everyday routine. I began to like what I was doing less and less. But like I was used to doing, I kept pressing and ignored my feelings toward my job because I should just be grateful that I had this opportunity, so I needed to work to succeed.
More time passed, and one morning my mother found me at our dining room table at 5 a.m. crying my eyes out. I was getting in some study time before I went into the office and broke down because I didn’t want to go. I could not shake the feeling that I didn’t belong where I was and didn’t like what I was doing. I thought I’d feel so different out of college, working for a great company, making good money, and making everyone proud. My mother asked me what was wrong, and I told her that I didn’t like my job and deep down it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing with life. I was afraid to be honest with my dreams because I felt it would not guarantee the kind of success I was chasing. However, chasing others’ ideas of success had left me feeling a bit lost and unsure of what I was