You Are Made For More!

Have you ever embraced a silent dream?

Have you ever set an unreachable goal for yourself?

I have deeply desired to be an author ever since I was a little girl reading my way through “The Little House in the Big Woods” series in the second grade.

I am here to cheer you on, my friend, because dreams really do come true … hard work does indeed pay off … and doors truly are miraculously opened.

My 11th book will be released in just 5 short days! It is the book that I was born to write! 

Oh … now … I love all of my books but there is something special about this one whose due date is quickly approaching. 

I have always wanted to write a book to women and for women.  I have wanted to write this book since I was in college but I knew that I didn’t have enough life experience to write it with deep wisdom.

I wanted to write this book as a young mother … but again … I knew that my energy exceeded by experience. And so I waited.

I longed to write this book when I was the mother of teens … but again … God said, “Not yet!  There will come a day …”

In just 5 days it will be the day!  

“Significant: Becoming a Woman of Unique Purpose, True Identity and Irrepressible Hope” is the title of the book and I hope that you will order a copy for yourself and for every woman in your life. The link to buy the book is right here.

But, in the meantime, how about if I offer you a little taste of this book?  Would you like a preview? 

Enjoy!

“Believe it or not, I am among the minority of Americans still alive today who spent part of their early education in a one-room schoolhouse. It’s true – I commenced my days of reading, writing and arithmetic in a century-old building that housed kindergarten through the prestigious sixth grade. 

How excited I was to sit in the same places where my mother and grandfather had sat decades before my time.

I mused about who had written on the blackboard prior to my school years, and who had made lifelong friendships in that single room with its timeworn desks, installed in the antiquated style of being bolted to the floor. 

As an intimidated five-year-old, I would gaze up at the pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincolnthat hung imposingly over the teacher’s grand desk and wonder if those men were actually staring down at me! 

Mrs. Dombrowski, an Australian war bride, was my teacher for three glorious years, from kindergarten through the second grade. I loved being her student! She must have seen my potential, because she challenged me from the start. She allowed me to study arithmetic with the second graders when I was only in kindergarten. She handed me books that were above my reading level, believing that I could master them. 

She would daily call me to her desk and whisper in my ear some amazing fact from history or science. As I would stare at her in jaw-dropping wonder, her brown eyes would twinkle at my incredulity, and then she would send me back to my desk next to the other five-year-old students. 

The one-room schoolhouse became the victim of centralization and was closed after I finished second grade. 

When it came time to advance to Mrs. Cayea’s third-grade class at the centralized school, I sobbed on and off for days. I couldn’t imagine leaving the safety of Mrs. Dombrowski’s classroom and going to school every day to listen to some other teacher whom I knew wouldn’t love me nearly as much as Mrs. Dombrowski did. 

This is what my beloved teacher wrote in my second-grade yearbook (I still have this treasured keepsake): 

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night, the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. —William Shakespeare

What in the world was the esteemed and admired Mrs. Dombrowski thinking?

 I was only seven years old, and I had no idea at all what those words meant at that childish time in my life. 

I later wondered why she hadn’t quoted something much more understandable and appropriate for a seven-year-old brain. It seems to me that Dr. Seuss, who was extremely popular at the time, might have been a more suitable voice from which to quote: 

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

As I look back from the vantage point of time, I know now that both quotes mean nearly the same thing—and yet Mrs. Dombrowski elected to cite the Bard rather than the man who wrote The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. 

Although she never had children of her own, with the words she wrote in my second-grade yearbook, the never-to-be-forgotten Margaret Dombrowski had chosen to convey these two very different and rich possibilities to me (the little girl who believed that her teacher walked on water): 

First of all, she was encouraging me to stretch beyond the simple yet wonderful wisdom of Seuss. She was challenging this seven-year-old to think like a ten-year-old...or a fourteen-year-old...or even an adult. 

Secondly, she was telling me, “Carol, I believe in you! You are made for more!”

I didn’t understand my teacher’s carefully chosen Shakespearean quote in the second grade...or in the fourth grade...or in the sixth grade. But by the time I arrived in junior high school, I was beginning to understand the following about what my lifetime influencer had been endeavoring to communicate: 

Figure out who you are...figure out why you are here. Figure out what you believe and what you stand for! 

Don’t just be one of the crowd! Don’t compromise who you are to please others!

Stretch your brain!
 Embrace bigger thoughts than you are able to think on your own. 

Do you want to know what I truly believe today, more than five decades after Mrs. Dombrowski wrote those words in my black-and-white year- book? I am convinced that the brilliant Australian war bride was declaring to an impressionable, wide-eyed daughter of the heart: 

“Carol...any average second grader can enjoy Dr. Seuss, with all his quirks and colors and clever, imaginative words. But you were made for more than average. You were made for more than above average. You were made to be a person of virtue and character. 

Don’t give in to the whims of the day and the fads of your culture. Defy whims and fads with well-chosen values and a commitment to noble character. “

I wonder if you had a Mrs. Dombrowski in your life. 

Did you have someone who believed in you completely and challenged you persistently? In case a “Mrs. Dombrowski” was missing in your life as you grew up and matured into an adult, allow me to speak in an Australian accent over the vast landscape of your heart: 

Why are you here?
 Why are you still sucking in the atmosphere of planet earth? 

As you seek to love and serve God, are you here right now, at this moment, primarily to... 

• raise a significant family and teach your children to pray and trust the Lord? 

• minister to the needs of the sick or elderly? • teach children to paint or sing? 

• run for public office?
• start your own business?
• write an inspirational book? 

Please don’t short-change your life with mediocrity—you were made for more! 

You were not created for average—you were made for extraordinary! 

I dare you, as a woman of the 21st century, to know who you are, to determine why you are here, and then to be passionate about it! 

Stand up for something noble. 

Let your unique voice be a resounding one of excellent values, immovable integrity, and passionate kindness. 

I know that I know that I know that there is not one common person reading these words today. Inside of you lies a seed of the greatness of God. 

It is up to you—as an uncommon gift to this world—to fertilize your great seed, which may currently be lying dormant, with big dreams and both short-term and long-term goals. 

It is up to you to pull up the weeds that surround your seed of greatness. Extract ordinariness and compromise. Remove selfishness and small thinking before they have a chance to grow. 

Discover why you were born and go for it with every ounce of creativity and passion in your soul! You will make Mrs. Dombrowski proud when you determine not only what you were made to do but, more important, who you were meant to be. 

Many years ago, profound words from the brilliant and well-known Shakespeare were deposited in my innocent soul by a woman of great character and intellect. Today, allow me to humbly share with you some vibrant words that have the potential to shake your very soul as you own them: 

“When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, He goes about it in a very unusual way. He doesn’t stir up His earthquakes or send forth His thunder- bolts. Instead, He has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home and of some obscure mother. And then God puts the idea into the mother’s heart, and she puts it into the baby’s mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts. The greatest forces in the world are babies.” – E. T. Sullivan

You were born into this world some eighteen...twenty-seven... thirty-four...forty-nine...sixty-three or more years ago, as a baby into which a great idea was deposited.

As a woman, you have infinitely more potential than an earthquake or a thunderbolt will ever have! 

God has been waiting for you to become the force you were made to be!“

Thanks for listening to my heart this week.  As you know by now, my heart is truly not a perfect heart but it is a heart that is filled to overflowing with gratitude for the life I have been given and for the people who walk with me.  And, it continues to be a heart that is relentlessly chasing after God and all that He is!