Patience In Business

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens..." Ecclesiastes 3:1

As I wrote in my last blog post, I believe that God is in the process of prospering my family through my business.  I'm excited about where I'm headed, and about all God has done to promote me over the past year.  It is truly remarkable, to think about all that I've learned and how I've grown.

As I go forward, I do struggle.  If you follow my blog, I don't want you to think that everything is sunshine and roses.  It's been a long, hard process for me to get to this point.  I'm still dealing with issues.  At first, I dealt with a lack of clients.  It was just a complete lack.  It took me a few months to get some buzz going about what I was doing.  Then, once the buzz was going, I was contacted by a few people who wanted me to do some work for them.  One of those people panned out, and I'm thankful for Dan and Rose Flatt of Multi Media Business Printers.  Since then, and since I learned how to wait for God to bring me the clients, I have started, yet another challenging time.

It's difficult to create time to meet with clients (especially with a toddler at home, and only one vehicle for our family), but I do it.  Of all the client meetings I've had (except for Dan and Rose), I have yet to have someone smile at me and say, "Yes, I want you to work with us.  Here is a check for $XXX)".  I've had potential clients who talked about it...but I haven't received any money yet.  Now, for some of them, they are simply waiting on funding to be available to work with me.  I understand that.  But my controlling nature still wants to move things forward more quickly.

That's my biggest struggle.

I was thinking about my struggling tonight and God spoke to my heart.  He reminded me that He is in control of this.  I gave it to Him, so I need to let Him handle it.  The truth is, I have no idea what these businesses are going through in their own struggles.  Every business owner has struggles, whether they're financial, or internal with their employees, or something else altogether.  There have been some potential clients that have asked me to contact them and they haven't gotten back to me.  That's OK.  I believe there's a reason for that.  I believe that I probably won't ever know the reason.  But, I also believe that I will trust in God to take care of my business.  I'm believing him to weed out the clients who might not want to pay me (like the guy in England who asked me for a contract but never got back to me after I talked about money).  I don't want to chase clients down.  I want them to want to work with me, so we have a good working relationship.  I want to create great change and promotion for their businesses.  I want to do my work with the highest degree of integrity there is.

So, even though I'm growing more successful every day, it's going slow.  I know I still have some things to learn, and perhaps God is even waiting for me to perfect those things so that when I do get that first big check, I'll be ready to take on the challenge.  I am fortunate because He's already shared His plan for my life with me.  I know He wants to bless me in my writing.  He's given me a gift, and I want Him to use it for His glory.

I can be patient as I wait for His perfect plan to unfold.  His perfect plan is always better than my botched-together plan, anyway.