Rosanna - What to do When Your Basket Isn’t What You Expected

This is a talk that Rosanna shared at the #2014 Chopped Women & Girls Gathering.  Rosanna handed out so-called "baskets" filled with various ingredients to groups of women.  She also handed out a list.  Each group of women was to then discuss the ingredients and what they could put together with those ingredients.  As it turned out, this beginning activity was a personality quiz of sorts, depending on your responses and reactions, you could possibly find yourself in one of the definitions given, and so the talk began:

Rosanna spoke:

As you can see the list I gave you doesn’t match what’s in your basket.  Weird huh?  Let’s talk about that for a minute or so…let me make it clear here, I’m not saying one group is good and one group is bad.  Every strength has its weakness and we all contribute something different to the body of Christ.  

Which ones of you (and feel free to call out the people in your group) led the change?-You’re part of 5%

 You’re what’s called a driver task-orientated who are always willing to lead. You love change and will throw yourself into new and untested. What you lack in reflective skills you make up for in energy. Pushed to the brink you become tyrants.

Which ones felt like it was a great thing and you got to do something different? You’re part of 20%

- you are called enthusiasts, you see it as an opportunity.- get a buzz from the challenge and a new sense of direction, and champion change so good job. 

Who in your group just kinda waited to see what would happen? Let others take charge?  You’re part of 50% so take heart you have some good company

Some of you, decided you didn’t want to play this game anymore.  You were confused about what was happening and why I would change the rules.  Anyone here want to fess up?  Don’t worry, if you won’t the person next to you probably will for you.  If that was you you’re part of 20% of people. 

You are analyticals  

-perfectionists who want to bar entry to the unknown until it is proven safe. Their change mode is denial. Their facts must be the right facts and the need for certainty causes havoc with the need for change. 

5% of people will never change.  Maybe it wasn’t you, but I’d be willing to bet we all know someone like that.  They’ve sat back and won’t change anything for anybody. 

Guess what you’re called??  And this one is my favorite.  It’s not me but it makes me laugh because I’ve seen it so many times.  You’re called the terrorist.  :) you  see change  as a threat, you’re going to resist until there is no other option. - the “yes but-ters”...”yes but that will never work”...” yes but…we tried that before”.  You may even go so far as to block or sabotage.

So……

 What I really wanted to talk to you about tonight is what to do when your basket isn’t what you expected.  Funny enough life isn’t always what we expect.  I’m sure there are a couple people out there who got pretty close to everything they wanted out of their life.  But for those of us in this room, how many of you have gotten what you expected out of life?  

I can tell you I certainly didn’t get anywhere close to what I expected.   I grew up in the church and my family has always been very active.  I went to Bible college as was expected of any good member of my family.  And if you do Bible college “correctly” you’re supposed to end up with a Mrs. Degree as well as a Bachelors.  I got one out of two.  So I continued on with life figuring it wasn’t a big deal and it would happen shortly.  Then some time passed…. Then more time passed... I started to get mildly concerned at this point.  I didn’t want to end up single and alone for the rest of my life.  I knew it was starting to get bad when unnamed members of my family started referring to me as an old maid.  I also got the “crazy cat lady” which, I only had two cats so I don’t think that was entirely accurate.  All of the names you hear from people about single old ladies were names used in reference to me.  Then I finally met someone.  It wasn’t a perfect relationship but hey it was actually a relationship.  We wrote for several months and when he moved to the city I lived in, we dated.  After almost a year of dating he asked me to marry him to which I confidently responded “sure.” Everything was finally happening like it was supposed to.  I would be able to snub those people who had made references to my clothes being too baggy to ever attract someone, or those who had said I was too independent and stubborn to ever get married. But there were some things I had ignored…the main one being that I didn’t love him.  I wanted to get married so badly I was willing to be joined to someone that wasn’t putting God first in his life.  I ended up breaking it off.  And I don’t tell you this because it’s a story I just love sharing.  Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing. My point is how much our lives don’t turn out like we expect.

Jeremiah 29:11   

If you read the first couple verses in this chapter it tells us who Jeremiah is writing this to.  It’s people that had been carried into exile.  I have a feeling that life didn’t turn out for those people like they had expected.  But Jeremiah reassures them, “hey!  We may not understand what’s happening here, but we can trust in the Lord almighty that HE has a plan, and that plan involves our future and hope.”

When I was going through hard times and trying to get some glimpse of what God could possibly be doing in my life that was SO against what I had planned I would quote this verse to myself to try and get some sense of peace.  Because let me tell you, when you feel like your life is on a roller coaster and you aren’t sure where the tracks are going it’s an incredibly uncomfortable feeling.  But God doesn’t tell us his plans, because maybe we wouldn’t believe Him anyway.

Let’s go to 1 John 3:2

I don’t know if it feels this way for you, but there is an incredibly secure feeling for me in the fact that no matter what change I’m going through there is an end purpose.  I may want that end purpose to be marriage, or kids or a steady income.  God’s ultimate purpose is to conform me to the image of His Son.  And he’s willing to do it in any way necessary. There are several scriptures that talk about the discipline of God which is a means to get us to conform.  That’s a great subject we should get into for sure!  Great girls getaway topic.  

Last scripture Hebrews 11: 32-38 not to mention Moses, Esther, David, Joseph, Daniel, Job, Nehemiah, Ezekiel….the twelve apostles, Paul himself who actually wrote this scripture.  I guarantee you none of them expected their “basket” to contain the things it contained.  Being sawn in two would not be on my list of things “to do” but then for that matter neither would I want to be thrown into a lion’s den. 

So we talked about our response to change based on our natural personality and how we function….we talked about WHY we need to accept change as good based on God’s desire to conform us to His son’s image.  I have a couple things I found online that kind of give us maybe a glimpse of why we would respond to change the way we do.  

1.The state of the individual- your worldview, what you think about life and what you think about God.  If I believe that God set the world in motion and then left everything up to circumstance that’s going to affect my view of change.  Versus whether or not I believe God is involved in every aspect of my life.

2.The scale of the change-big or little.  Something that’s for the best or not.  Some good came with the change in David’s life.  He went from being a shepherd to being king.  Not necessarily a bad move.  

3.The way change has been managed before-our habits how do you make a habit of change so you can function when change happens?  Are you the terrorist-so opposed to change you won’t change anything for anybody?

4.How much change they have had to cope with recently-sometimes life gets a little overwhelming and we aren’t sure we can handle one more thing changing.  

5.Their level of involvement-how much is the change actually affecting them?  Some people like to get all up in other peoples change and tell them how they should respond when in reality their basket is entirely different and they really have no business telling anyone how to respond to anything.  

6.Support they get from others-I see this one as the most important.  The reason being that our church family is something in which we should have an active role.  Other people, going through change should be able to lean on us for support, and the same is true for us.  When we’re going through change, unexpected events in life we should have the church family to rely on.

One thing we can be sure of in this life of uncertainty: God will give us the ability we need to cope and the strength to get through the change He gives us.

 ~~~

One day three men were walking along and came upon a raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea of how to do it. The first man prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength to cross this river." Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs, andhe was able to swim across the river in about two hours.

Seeing this, the second man prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength and ability to cross this river."  Poof! God gave him a rowboat and he was able to row across the river in about three hours. The third man had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength, ability, and intelligence to cross this river." And Poof! God turned him into a woman.

She looked at the map, and then walked across the bridge.