T-291: The Odds Have Been Against Me

As big as the vision that I have Concept is, I had better be in church this morning praying for God's favor. I was eating my first meal of the day and Grandma had the tv tuned into to BET's "Lift Every Voice" and a Mary Mary video happened to come on. How does the chorus go? "Get up, cause you can't stop....Get up, don't sit back, Get up, if you wanna get there."

I've always been extremely sensitive and when I say I cry at the drop of a hat, I soooo mean it.
So I sat there crying into the rice and potatoes I was eating at 10:30 in the morning thinking about how much I have given up and sacrificed in this my pursuit of entrepreneurship. My cousin and I joke about why I spend so much of my day going from meeting to meeting or sitting in front of the computer for up to 10 hours at a time. I tell her that I'm just trying to make a name for myself. She called me this morning at 9:46a asking me why I wasn't up trying to make a name for myself so it was only fitting that Mary Mary's song would be the first one I heard this morning.

We had a guest speaker this morning as the youth members of the church conducted the service. Mr. Fred Simmons spoke to us from the subject of "When the Odds Are Against You" and led the sermon with Judges 7:1-7. This is the story where God reduced Gideon's army from over 22,000 to just 300 in the Israelites fight against the Midianites because God knew that if Gideon defeated them with soldiers numbering 22,000, He would not have been given the glory- that the Israelites "would become boastful, saying, 'My own power has delivered me.'" (NAS)

Sure enough, the odds have been against me. A young, African-American woman working in one of many industries where none of the leaders and influencers look like me. I'm undertaking a project where the success rate is less than 5%, going from a business little to no overhead to one with overhead expenses of nearly $50,000 per month. The projected startup costs are $2.7M and my net worth is like, what, zero? I have 291 days until the proposed Grand Opening of this project and I have accumulated approximately 0% of that figure.

So the odds have definitely been against me but the few that have been for me are definitely working in my favor.