"SUCCESS"

Before I share my journey of success with you, I would like for you to take at least a few moments to think about what success means to you and for you. When you think of success, what five words come to mind for you?

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I hope that you were able to come up with 5 words that came to mind when you thought of success. If you were not really able to come up with 5 words, see if you can complete this sentence:

"I measure my success by

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How did you do? Were you able to come up with five words or a complete sentence? If you weren't able to, you are not alone in this struggle. All of us at some point have had (and still have) issues on what success is. Even more so, many are struggling to know if they would consider themselves a success. How about you?

For a long time, I'd always thought success was having the best of everything. Success was no longer being poor, making sure that when I grew up, I would complete my educational path, the employment path, and making sure that I made more than enough money to take care of my family, parents, brothers, sisters, and those who couldn't help themselves. I would imagine success to be living in that mansion on top of the hill and having that home in the Hamptons and a winter vacation home to get away whenever I wanted to. Success was not having to work anymore. Having the luxuries of the world that I couldn't afford when I was a child growing up into the adolescent phase was all I wanted. I wanted all the clothes and shoes that I could fit in the biggest closet I could build. I would imagine success (at the time) being on the cover of GQ or Esquire and meeting the status of richness that I longed for in fashion. It wasn't just being comfortable ... it was about having it all. I measured success by what I saw on television, watching shows that would fill my head up with so many dreams and wishes I couldn't even hold it all in. I would imagine being one of the Carringtons in "Dynasty."' I would imagine playing the part of Dominique Devereaux's missing son. I would even dream while watching television at being a rich oil tycoon like the Ewings in the show "Dallas." Anything that television deemed as success, that is what I wanted.

The funny thing about that type of success was that it didn't work for me. My eyes were on the wrong prize. Everything I knew about success was not in the right context. Everything about success (at that time), focused on the material things that I knew I couldn't have at the time and the dreams I couldn't fulfill because I would daydream so much, I missed the most important times of my life and let those moments I really needed to make those possibilities happen in my life pass me by.

I would take the wrong opportunities thinking that if I did the quick, get rich opportunities, I wouldn't have to work another day. It seemed as though that I had done everything in order to make my life richer. I had thought of becoming an undercover drug dealer because they made the fast, easy money that wasn't taxed. I had even thought of becoming a stripper because of the great tips and the fast money that was being made by some of my friends that were doing it. All through these thoughts I was having, I kept asking myself ... "What am I doing wrong?" "What am I missing in my life that I can't make this money and become a success?" The biggest question that I finally asked myself was, "Why is God punishing me for doing the right things that don't seem to work?" I thought I was doing everything right and by the book. I would go to church and follow the teachings of the "Word." I would say to myself that maybe this was just a phase ... feeling sorry for myself and would get through it and God would bless me with the riches I desired to be a success.

Wanting to be a success almost killed me. I kept saying to myself that if I worked enough jobs that I would make the money I would need to be a success. I would do the noble thing and just work. I found myself working three to four jobs trying to make the money I needed to be a success. I ended up in the hospital with a bad case of ulcers in my twenties. Had migraine headaches so bad that I couldn't lift my head off of the pillow in my thirties. Now, even though I never thought of suicide as an option, I thought of giving up and walking away from the little bit that I did have.

It was at that moment where I got a break from God (or what I thought was a break from God), where I was going to become the success I desired to be. I was offered a job in Houston, Texas where I worked my butt off. I'd finally made the money I truly wanted to make and I had a great home and everything I thought I needed to be a success. Then, the stocks crashed. It was during the time of the big stock crash that it seemed that most of the workers in Houston lost their jobs. I happened to have been one of them that lost that great job. I didn't think at the time that this could happen to me. This was success for me. Things were going really well and I had finally found the success that I truly wanted and needed in my life. At least I thought I did.

As time went on, I couldn't find any jobs and times were getting tough. I couldn't go back home to New Jersey. I wouldn't go back home to New Jersey. My parents were really proud of me at that time and telling them that I had lost my job and telling them of the struggles that I was going through would have been seen to me as being a failure. My parents had already lost a son to drugs and they went through enough struggles in their own lives and I didn't want to put any additional burdens on them to ask for help. So, I stayed in Houston, sold most of the things that I had to survive, lost the place where I was living, and found myself homeless. I was living from day to day, not knowing where to go, and most of the time I was hungry, but too proud to beg for food to eat. I would look for jobs, but there were none. In spite of it all, I lost the success that I thought was the "be all to end all." At that time, everything I lived for and worked for seemed to had gone downhill for me and I really just wanted to have someplace to rest my head and a place to eat. I had forgotten all about success. All I knew was that at the time, success was nowhere to be found.

This is the point where I truly believed that God had given up on me. Even though I thought my intentions were good by doing the "right" things in my life, I thought God left me alone in the world to fend for myself because I had turned my back on Him and went my own way and did my own thing. No matter how much I kept praying, I felt that God was not listening at all to me. The funny part of all of this (and there is a funny part to this) is that God...