I'm Not a Hypocrite I'm Human: How Your Faith Journey is Designed to Get You Out of Your Head and Move You into Your Destiny

By T. Jackson

How many times have you intended and set out to do what you believe is right only to face challenges every step of the way? Some obstacles you breeze through. Some put you under more pressure than you are comfortable with, and some totally blindside you and derail your focus. It doesn't make you a bad person to miss the mark, and it certainly doesn't make you a hypocrite. It makes you human. In these pages, author T. L. Jackson has opened up about her fight to hold on to her faith and stay the course on her personal journey. This is not another book telling you to "keep the faith and you will be walking on sunshine." It's a look at the real-life challenges that come up when you decide to have faith on your journey. In addition to powerful testimonies to God's grace (even under pressure), this book was written to comfort, empower, and inspire the readers to do the work that is needed to strengthen there faith daily.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644920350

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

How Do I Have Faith After I Have Fallen?

Have you ever fallen or failed at anything? I did plenty of times, but you have to decide whether to get back up or stay down.

But how do you have faith after you have fallen? This is a question we all ask at some point in our lives. We want to understand how to hold on to our faith after being wronged, mistreated, making mistakes, and the list goes on.

In fact, I came face-to-face with this question in a big way myself. I was going through my regular morning routine, getting ready for work, but I felt unsettled. I pushed past the feelings I was having and went on to pick up my morning coffee, tune in to my regular radio station—like I said, I just followed my normal process, basically ignoring this feeling that was nagging at me.

I got to work and started my day like any other.

There was a line of customers waiting for the doors to open, like we were giving away government cheese. I found myself thinking, Why are all these people lined up, and why didn’t anybody open the door yet?

I even started to get aggravated, but I didn’t let that get to me. I went on getting settled into my desk and greeting my coworkers, but the feelings of unease still lingered no matter how I tried to suppress them.

Finally, it was 9:00 am on the dot.

The doors opened, and I started serving customers, who were the most interesting part of my job. We were busy, people were coming and going, and I felt myself getting annoyed and irritated because other employees had started calling out for the day, which meant that it would be a long day and we would be short on staff.

Then as I was helping a customer with opening a new account, for some reason, I happened to notice a young man looking into the window of the bank.

My stomach dropped.

It was a sinking feeling, the type of feeling that a person gets when they’re about to have a panic attack. I immediately excused myself and rushed into the break room. My heart was pounding. I was having an anxiety attack.

I tried to ease myself of the anxiety, but in my head, I was telling myself, "Oh hell no! Not again! This guy is about to rob us. Don’t panic… Calm down, Tonya. Stop tripping and get it together, girl."

I was finally able to pull myself together enough to go back to my desk to finish helping my customer. And just when I was finalizing all the transactions and about to be done with the customer, I was notified that one of the bank tellers had just been robbed right before I came out.

My sinking feeling was right all along.

We went through the process we had been trained to follow pulling the silent alarm, locking the doors, and not allowing anyone to leave. The next step was to keep everyone calm until the police and FBI arrived to question everyone who was there.

As we all waited there, I could feel my anxiety intensifying again.

I wondered why this kept repeatedly happening to me. I felt like a walking target; I felt like I had a sign on my forehead like an ATM.

The FBI, police, and even a psychologist questioned the staff, and I was the last on the list to be interviewed. As I was being interviewed, I totally lost it. I broke down sobbing, uncontrollably shaking. I was losing control. At that time, that was enough for me. I could not endure another robbery in the bank. I told myself that I was determined not to let the robber put fear in my heart and end my