Realizing Reverance

I think back to Adrienne 3 years ago and I smile. She was bold. Bold in a no holds barred, take the risk and worry later kind of way. I didn’t quite feel invincible anymore, but if I believed in something, I mean truly believed in it, I would go for it 110%. No questions asked.

The project I was working on at the time fell into my lap. A friend of a friend recommended these people to me, and after seeing their incredible potential, I dove in head first. And things moved quickly. We had secured an investor. Huge opportunities in Hollywood opened up. Everything was flowing.

I spent a lot of money and time on this. I was focused on one goal: sign a major brand deal. The project centered on building a successful brand around the artists I was working with. It was a concept I had been playing with for a while and I was finally testing it out. I would take a fine artist and build a commercial brand around their artwork, creating more affordable pieces for a wider marketplace that were reminiscent of their art and thus, generating passive income for them.

My company had actually started in Laguna Beach at a struggling art gallery. I had come to have an almost motherlike love and sense of responsibility for the fine artists I was working with. They were so talented and so driven in one area and, for the most part, completely hopeless in everything else. This included sustainable business practices. So I went for it. Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars were poured into this project. I pulled back with other clients and stopped signing new contracts. I was all in. And beyond a doubt, I was sure it was going to work.

We did an incredible promo shoot in the middle of the desert. We had over 20 people on set and again, everything had clicked into place. I was in the flow. It was all going according to plan. There were two brands in particular I wanted to sign with. Major brands. The kind of brands you see on red carpets.

Within two weeks, we heard back from one of them. They were interested and wanted us to sit down with the creative director for North America to work out a brand deal. This was it. All the hard work and late nights and innumerable risks culminated to this moment.

Until the phone call.

There’s this feeling when you know things are about to go left when you expected them to go right. It’s distinct, like a buzz in the back of your chest. It’s not quite dread, but it’s close, like a crinkling around the edges of a pristine piece of paper.

As she spoke, the paper began to fold.

I’m going to spare all the details because it’s not really the point of what I’m writing here. Essentially, one of the two people I was representing was deeply unethical. The kind of unethical that is hard to believe still exists today. Until you encounter it for yourself. Until you are sitting on uncomfortable outdoor furniture as someone spouts their unbelievable and incredibly bigoted personal beliefs. I had a choice to make.

I could sweep what he had just said under the rug, move forward with the project, and forgo my personal morals and ethics in the name of success. It had been done thousands of times before and it will be done a thousand times over again. Especially in the industry we were entering.

Or.

I could listen to that still small voice.

“I’ll pray about it,” I told myself.

As I turned on the car to drive home, I already knew the answer. I was going to walk. On all of it. The hundreds of hours of work and thousands of dollars I had spent. The big opportunity in Hollywood. The investor. The brand deal. I was walking away from all of it.

I sat in the chair at my desk in our empty office that night. The sun had long since set and the quiet hum from downtown permeated the glass door next to me.

“God is going to bless it,” I told myself. “He is going to multiply everything and bring this money back tenfold.”

I was doing the right thing, the ethical thing, and that meant God was going to bless me in return.

A small whisper.

“What if I don’t Adrienne? Am I still good then?”

I stopped the slow spin side to side on my desk chair.

What if there isn’t this abundance they preach about? What if I have to rely on God for the rest of my life and it is difficult and I work hard until the day I die. What then? Is God still good? Is God still the beginning and the end? What if I don’t own a ranch in the hills and a cottage by the sea and live out the freedom success brings that I envision for myself?

I hear the prosperity gospel often in Christian circles, for a while I lived by it. If I give my life to Christ and I work hard, if I pray and sacrifice for others, if I do the “right thing,” everything will change and I will be blessed abundantly with my heart’s desire. It has to be so. That is what is owed to me by God.

Only one of those things is true. When you give your life to Christ, everything does change. But deciding that being a good person means you deserve good is actually a Karmic belief and sits in direct opposition of the Gospel. We live by grace. We are given unmeasurable, unimaginable grace. It is our belief in Christ and our sensitivity to the Holy Spirit that drives our lives. It is our trust in Him, through every good thing and through every storm that defines us. And if you are in the middle of the storm, then it is your duty as a Believer to hold on to, by mountain or by mustard seed, the reality that you are held in the arms of the Creator. The strength you gain from this adversity is the strength that will guide you through your personal legend. It is the very strength that will give you the ability to help others through the storm.

We have confused a wealthy life with a blessed life. You are not owed money and material prosperity. Those gifts are blessings, but not always.  It should not define and form your Faith how much money you have or how comfortable your life is. Blessings come in many forms. Abundance comes in many forms. Sometimes less is the blessing. Sometimes less is the abundance.

Ask yourself, is your faith based on what you can get from it or what Christ has already given you?