Learning to Receive

Growing up, we didn't have a lot of money.

My mom was a single mother, and money was often tight.

And while I will always be incredibly grateful for everything she sacrificed to make sure we had what we needed, looking back, I can also recognize that along with those sacrifices came beliefs about money that I unknowingly carried with me into adulthood.

Some of those beliefs would eventually follow me into one of the most financially successful seasons of my life.

And when that season ended, when I lost so much of what I had worked for, I couldn't understand why something I had once prayed for had been given to me only to disappear.

For a long time, I saw that loss as one of the hardest failures of my life.

I don't anymore.

This is one of the scars I'm thankful for.

Because losing what I once thought made me successful ultimately taught me something I might never have learned while I still had it:

How to receive without allowing what I receive to define me.

Money doesn't grow on trees.

Must be nice.

We can't all be that lucky.

There was an unspoken us and them when it came to money.

There were people like us, who didn't have much.

And there were people who did.

The people who had money were often talked about as though they were stuck-up or arrogant. There seemed to be an assumption that people with money thought they were better than everyone else.

And somewhere along the way, I internalized that.

I didn't want to become one of those people.

The problem was, I also had this knowing inside of me that I was created to do something big with my life.

I don't know exactly where that knowing came from.

It has just always been there.

The same way I always knew I would write someday, I believed that the dreams planted in my heart had the potential to create financial abundance, too.

Maybe it was simply a little seed God planted inside of me that I have spent my life learning how to water.

But for a long time, wanting more came with guilt.

There was a part of me that worried pursuing financial success somehow made me disloyal to my family.

Would they think I believed I was better than them?

Was wanting more somehow saying that what we had wasn't enough?

Was I becoming one of those people?

Back then, if you had asked me to describe a rich person, I probably would have described everything you could see.

A big house.

A fancy car.

Expensive clothes.

Beautiful jewelry.

Money, to me, was represented by things.

And eventually, I got some of those things.

Years ago, I became very successful in an online business. At the height of that success, I was making close to $10,000 a month.

That money gave us something I had always wanted: my husband, Mike, was able to be home full-time with our family.

Even then, underneath everything else, what I really wanted was time.

But somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that.

So many people had told me I couldn't do it.

They told me I was crazy.

Delusional.

That I would never become financially successful doing what I was doing.

And when I finally did?

I wanted them to know.

I wanted to show everyone what I could buy and what I could do now.

I thought I was saying:

Look at everything I've accomplished.

But looking back, I think what I was really saying was:

Look. You were wrong about me.

I started using money to prove that I was worthy.

And somewhere in all that proving, I started becoming someone I didn't recognize.

Then I lost it.

The income.

The house.

The car.

The fancy things I had attached so much meaning to.

All of it.

At first, I questioned God.

Why would He give me this success only to take it away?

Why would He allow me to work so hard for something and then lose it?

For a while, it felt like punishment.

Today, I see it differently.

I see protection.

I don't believe God was protecting me from financial success.

I believe He was protecting me from becoming someone I was never meant to be.

There is a difference.

I don't believe I was being taught that having money was wrong.

I believe I was being shown what happens when I allow money to determine my worth.

Losing those things forced me to confront what remained when all of the visible evidence of my success disappeared.

And what remained were the things that actually mattered.

My family.

My faith.

My character.

My relationships.

Myself.

That experience became one of the greatest blessings in disguise of my life.

It humbled me.

And it completely changed my definition of success.

Today, success looks much quieter.

Success is peace.

It's slow mornings.

It's intentional living.

It's having the freedom to decide how I spend my days.

It's drinking coffee with my husband without one of us watching the clock.

It's being present with my children.

It's having time to write.

It's creating something that helps another person feel a little less alone.

It's having enough that I can give generously without worrying about whether there will still be enough for us.

I still want financial abundance.

That's something I'm finally becoming comfortable saying without immediately trying to soften it.

I want to make good money.

I want my writing to become financially successful.

I want my books and the things I create in the future to provide an abundant life for my family.

And I don't believe there is anything wrong with that.

Because I'm no longer focused on what money can prove.

I'm focused on what money can provide.

Freedom.

Freedom to write more.

Freedom to spend more time with my family.

Freedom for my husband to eventually work less.

Freedom to give more generously.

Freedom to build a stable foundation for my children and, hopefully, the generations that come after them.

And yes, I might buy some nice things along the way.

Healing my relationship with money doesn't mean I have to prove how evolved I am by never wanting something expensive.

I'm allowed to enjoy beautiful things.

I'm allowed to spend money on something simply because it brings me joy.

The difference is that I no longer need the price tag attached to something I own to tell me how valuable I am.

Those are two very different things.

Still, if I'm being completely truthful, I think there has been a part of me that is afraid of becoming financially successful again.

Not because I'm afraid I'll fail.

I've never really been afraid of failure.

Failure doesn't scare me because I understand that mistakes are part of becoming who we're meant to be.

I think I've been afraid of my own potential.

Because I've wondered:

What if I become that person again?

What if money changes me?

What if I lose myself?

But the more I've sat with those questions, the more I realize something.

I've already been that person.

I know what she feels like.

And I didn't like it.

I also know myself differently now.

I genuinely love the woman I have become.

I know what matters to her.

And I trust her.

Maybe that's the piece I've been missing.

Maybe healing my relationship with money isn't only about believing I'm worthy of financial abundance.

Maybe it's about trusting myself to receive it.

That lesson is showing up again now through my writing.

Writing comes naturally to me.

I love doing it.

And more importantly, I know my words can help people.

For a long time, those things almost made me feel like I shouldn't be paid for it.

If it's a gift, shouldn't I just give it away?

If I love doing it, should I really make money from it?

If helping people is the point, doesn't attaching a price to some of my work somehow cheapen it?

I'm learning that the answer is no.

My writing takes time.

It takes energy.

It takes vulnerability.

It takes years of living, healing, learning, reflecting, and finding the words to explain what I've discovered along the way.

That has value.

And allowing myself to be compensated for that value doesn't take anything away from the heart behind my work.

Actually, I think it creates a beautiful ripple effect.

When my writing financially supports me, I have more time to write.

More time to write means more things I can create.

More things I create means more opportunities for those words to find someone who needs them.

Receiving doesn't take away from giving.

Sometimes receiving is what allows us to keep giving.

I'm starting to understand that money itself doesn't determine our character.

Money can be used selfishly.

It can also be used generously.

It can be hoarded.

It can be shared.

It can become a status symbol.

It can become security for a family.

It can build walls between people.

It can also create opportunities to help them.

I don't believe money decides which of those people we become.

We do.

And maybe that is what I wish I could tell the younger version of myself who believed there were people like us and people like them.

You don't have to choose.

You can be wealthy and generous.

You can be humble and wildly successful.

You can care deeply about impact and be well compensated for your gifts.

You can appreciate everything you already have and remain open to receiving more.

You can want financial abundance without making money the most important thing in your life.

More than one thing can be true.

And when I ask myself now how much success I would allow myself to imagine if I knew with absolute certainty that it wouldn't change my heart, my answer isn't a dollar amount.

I imagine a life where I don't have to look at my bank account before making an ordinary decision.

I imagine being able to give freely when someone I love needs help.

I imagine creating a sustainable foundation for my children and future generations.

I imagine spending my days writing and creating work that matters to me.

I imagine more time with my husband.

More time with my children.

More freedom.

More generosity.

More peace.

For most of my life, I thought learning to receive meant convincing myself that I deserved more.

Maybe it isn't.

Maybe learning to receive is finally understanding that I can have more without needing it to make me more.

My worth was never in the house.

It wasn't in the car.

It wasn't in the $10,000 months.

And it won't be in the number of books I sell, the number of people who subscribe to my writing, or the amount of money sitting in my bank account someday.

I know who I am without those things now.

And maybe that's exactly why I'm finally ready to receive them.