Being Your Best
A Woman's Guide to Personal Excellence
By Dorothy Eaton Watts
We will be presenting this booklet to you in several parts. We will run this series until we complete the booklet. If you missed any of the parts, you can catch up on the reading by checking our archive listing at the end of this article.
CHAPTER ONE -- A Successful Woman -
Part III
The facts are that Carla is a woman of high worth. She is a woman of destiny, whether she feels like one or not. She is still a daughter of the King of kings. She is still special to Him. She still has a work to do for God, a work that no one else can do.
If she, in faith, talks and acts success, the feelings will come. That is one of the psychological rules of life. Positive feelings follow positive thoughts and positive actions.
Remember Gideon and his band of Israelites? They felt defeated, powerless, useless, against so many Midianites. But God said, “Blow your trumpets. Smash your pitchers. Act like success is yours, and it will be.”
Remember Joshua and the children of Israel as they faced Jericho? They were ready to slink off and nurse their poor self-images. But God said, “Go out there and face the enemy. March with your heads held high. Blow the trumpets.” Success came following the actions of faith.
Twelve-year old Wilma Rudolph decided to conquer all phases of women’s sports. She went to her gym teacher one day and said, “If you will give me 10 minutes of your time, I will give you in return a world-class athlete.”
The coach laughed at her audacity. She? A girl who sat out all the games on the bench? She who had been born prematurely, and then suffered two bouts with pneumonia and one with scarlet fever before coming down with polio that left a leg crooked and a foot twisted inward? She who had worn braces for six years before teaching herself to walk?
Wilma turned away, tears stinging her eyes.
“Wait,” the coach called after her. “I’ll give you the 10 minutes, but that’s all I’ll give you. Remember, I’ll be busy with real world-class athletes, people who will be getting scholarships and winning gold medals.”
Wilma was overjoyed. Every day she practiced four hours what she learned in each 10-minute session. By the age of 14 Wilma was a member of the University of Tennessee women’s track team. At 16 she began training for the Olympics. At 20 she breezed to victories in the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes and helped the United States women’s team reach first place in the 400-meter relay.
Then came the day when she walked out onto the stadium field in Rome. Nearly 80,000 fans began cheering wildly, “Vilma! Vilma! Vilma!”
Three times she stood atop the podium to receive a gold medal.
Wilma Rudolph was the first woman in history to win three gold medals in track and field. Success for Wilma Rudolph meant conquering incredible odds, doing her best, winning the gold medal. Through years of practice she became a woman of excellence!
All of us women can be winners, no matter where we were born or how much education we have. We can be women of excellence regardless of the mistakes we have made in the past or what problems we may face in the future. Despite suffering, abuse, setbacks, and handicaps we too can achieve. It doesn’t matter what committees vote, or what others think. We can receive a gold medal in living.
Each of us can have success beyond our greatest dreams, for God created us to be women of excellence. He made us to be winners! He is on our cheering team!