Step Up to the Challenge

May 30, 2018Leave a comment

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Our challenges often prepare us for leadership and develop in us a sense of courage, strength and perseverance. Take Mary Crowley, founder of Home Interiors & Gifts, for example. She is considered one of premiere business women in Dallas, Texas. Her life was not an easy journey, but she as a woman with a firm faith in God, she grew and learned through each struggle in her life.

Married in 1932 and with children coming soon after, she and her husband struggled to survive through the Depression. Mary realized that if she was going to be able to feed her family, she would need to find a job. Although jobs were scarce at the time, especially for women, Mary chose a store she wanted to work in, dressed up and armed herself with a confident smile, walked in the doors of the store and got the job!

Without realizing it at the time, this job enabled Mary to develop a shrewd business sense that later prepared her to become head of a multimillion dollar company. Sadly, her marriage crumbled in 1939. She began studying to be a CPA and worked full time at an insurance company. Additionally, Mary suffered from insomnia, yet she turned her problems over to God. She used to pray, “Lord, you know I’ve got to get my rest. You worry about these problems. You’re going to be up all night anyway.” She would then go to sleep, leaving her problems in God’s hands. Her faith in God never wavered, and she found her confidence and strength in Him during those lean years.

In 1948 she married David Crowley, Jr. whom she had met at the insurance company. As a newlywed, Mary wanted to make her home as attractive as she could, despite her limited funds. She took a job as an accountant in a furniture company, and soon she began to notice that as people came to buy furniture, they had no idea how to accessorize their new furniture. Ideas began to dance around in her mind as to how she could help these people, but she also longed to be home with her children. In God’s way and in His timing, He began to put it all together. Several years later, a man who imported gifts and decorative accessories, asked Mary to become his sales manager in a new direct-sales company.

After working with this company for only three years, Mary’s staff had increased to five hundred women selling accessories through home parties. Sounds like a Joseph-type success, doesn’t it? The owner was pleased with the success, but he decided to add cocktail parties into the company functions, and he put limits on the commissions the sales women could make. Mary told him she didn’t agree with these conditions, so he sent her the office furniture that belonged to her and he was done with her position. Mary grieved the loss of being tossed off of that mountain, but she trusted God and knew He had a plan.

It was then that she birthed her own company, Home Interiors & Gifts. Mary followed God’s leading, and she gave Him credit for the success of her company. She knew that it was God who opened the doors, but it was her responsibility to walk through them. Mary’s desire was to help woman and minister to their needs. Many of the women who became a part of her team had never held jobs before and even needed help with their appearance.

Soon Mary’s company was helping women both personally and financially, paying dividends and bonuses. The business continued to grow and in 1962, the sales force recorded one million dollars in sales. Sadly, it was the same year she was diagnosed with cancer. She ended up fighting two bouts (mountains if you will) of cancer, but continued to fight on and bless many women in the process.

Mary was one of the first women to serve on the board of directors of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. She received two honorary doctorate degrees before her death in 1986.[i] Today, the Mary Crowley Cancer Research Centers in Dallas provide hope to cancer patients by expanding treatment options through investigational vaccine, gene and cellular therapies. Despite the setbacks Mary faced, God used her perseverance and creativity to inspire women and bring hope to generations of cancer patients as well.

What can we learn from her story?

Embrace the mountains in front of you and see them as opportunities for growth.
Don’t blame others or make excuses.
Do your work with excellence and integrity.
Be faithful in the small tasks.
Always ask, “Lord what do you want me to learn here?”
Keep your eyes on God’s plan for you.

Personalize It

What mountain are you currently facing in your leadership role?
What is God teaching you personally through this challenge?
How can you thank God specifically for this mountain?

Leadership 2

This is an excerpt from Positive Leadership Principles for Women

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

[i] Mary Trotter Kion, http://www.historyswomen.com/1stWomen/MaryCrowley.html

Regaining Strength

March 12, 2018Leave a comment

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It’s easy to feel down or frustrated after experiencing a failure or loss or setback of some sort. Our immediate reaction may be fear or despair, while hope and strength feel beyond our reach. Helplessness and hopefulness are at two opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, and yet there are always small steps we can take to climb out of our feelings of failure and move forward in life.

How do you regain your strength in order to keep going? Here are some principles that will help the process:

Grieve the loss, don’t ignore the pain. Allow yourself to feel sad when disappointment happens.
Find a healthy way to express your feelings – journaling, walking, talking to a friend, painting, gardening, etc.
Seek God’s comfort and ask Him for strength to move forward.
Choose to look for glimmers of hope. Find something for which you can give thanks each day.
Take a step forward in a positive direction, even if it is simply meeting a colleague or friend.
Step out and help someone else. Make a plan for how you can use your experience to strengthen another person.

In my own life, when I have faced hurt or disappointment I have found that God gives me an inner strength beyond what I could produce on my own. The Bible reminds us that He is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of need. This week focus on the strength He gives. And always remember, where we are weak, He is strong.

Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash

Healthy Self Talk

May 22, 2017May 22, 2017Leave a comment

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What are the voices that tend to creep into your mind? Maybe it’s the voice of fear that whispers, “What if ……happens?” Or perhaps it’s the voice of self-doubt which scolds you and says, “You’ve made so many stupid mistakes – you can’t do anything right.” Maybe it’s the voice that continually beats you up in your brain sniveling, “You’re not smart thin enough, you’re not good enough, you never do enough.” The voices we hear come in many forms and fashions, but we don’t have to allow them to grow into weeds and overtake our minds. Instead we can pull them out by the roots and replace these thoughts with the seeds of truth.

Whether we are weeding a garden or weeding out the negative thoughts in our brains, we can apply the three R’s: Recognize, Root out and Replace. It’s amazing how quickly a weed can grow in our minds without us even realizing it. When it comes to the real flower garden in front of our house, I literally think weeds pop up overnight. Given a few days, and some of those pesky plants can grow to become the size of small trees! So we must be vigilant and alert, recognizing weeds at the point when they first appear. The apostle Peter wrote, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).”

It’s inevitable – doubts, discouragement and lies will pop into our heads. How do we recognize them? We need to take a moment to consider our own personal reoccurring thoughts – the ones that seem to grow in our own garden. For me personally, I struggled many years with self-doubt in every area of my life, from my physical appearance to my capabilities to even my relationships. I first needed to recognize that these were unhealthy and destructive thoughts. They were doing more harm than good. Often we grow comfortable with our fears and doubts, and fail to identify them as weeds. We must recognize that they are not based on God’s truth, and have a negative drain on our lives. These negative thoughts also prevent good seeds from growing.

Stop for a moment and consider, what are some of the destructive voices you are allowing to grow in your mind? Once you begin to recognize your own personal brain-weeds, then it is time to root them out at the core. If you have ever tended a garden you know that if you just whack weeds off at the surface level, then they will return. We must dig them out from the roots! For me, at the core of my self-doubt was really the doubt the God loved me. I didn’t believe that He created me for a purpose and had equipped me with gifts and talents. It was time to weed out the deep roots of doubt.

What is at the root of the negative voices that pop into your head? Dig deep for a minute and consider the core. Dealing with the root system of the weeds in your mind, allows you to dig them out and then turn in a new direction. We must replace the old ugly weeds with healthy, vibrant truth. Where do we find that truth? The Bible reveals that God is love. His very nature is love. He is good, and He is faithful. He is able to do all things. Oh what powerful and life-changing seeds we plant in our brain when we know God’s word! I recommend choosing at least one verse to memorize in order to help you crowd out the weeds that want to grow in your mind. Ask God to lead you to just the right verse to help you.

Next week, I will give you some of my favorite verses which I have memorized to help me plant seeds of faith and strength in my mind.

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