Lift Your VOICE? Your Turn to SHARE

So if you followed me last week, you may have noticed that I did a lot of writing and a lot of searching. I wrote about my experiences, good or bad, to expose my journey and encourage other young woman to do the same. Often, I do a lot of the sharing and not much asking, and so, I would like to turn the tables and invite my followers to do the writing!!!

I know, we are all very busy, and I am the only crazy one, but I believe we all have a story or inspiring word for another sister, and so, I want you to do that!

I want all my followers to use one of my journeys from last week to share your thoughts, feelings, story, inspiration, or something! Think about your OWN bootcamp! As a young woman, what has been helpful in your life of relationships, spiritual growth, etc. SHARE YOUR STORY!!! We said from the beginning we had a greatness to achieve and I believe we cannot reach that greatness until we learn how to connect with each other and share our lives and own lessons learned! I am leaving it in YOUR HANDS! You never know, we could start a movement of strong links, sharing, inspiring, and believing that A YOUNG WOMAN'S BOOTCAMP starts today, right now, with US!

A Young Tulips Growth: THE LAST DAY OF BOOTCAMP!!!!!

No car alarms, loud music, or fire trucks to wake me up or disturb my peaceful serenity. Four Words: I LOVE THE SOUTH! If you have never visited the south than you may not understand my love, but if you have, and now live in the north, you understand when I say “Escaping to the South is a Must”. Luckily to say, I now understand why New Yorkers have homes in the south. As I prepare for my morning prayer, I noticed a small little tulip bud outside my window. Could it be the first sign of spring! Excited and curious, I begin to think about the little tulip. How did it survive all the rain and harsh winter that had occurred? How proud would the owner of the property be once it saw this beautiful blossom? Thinking about my own growth and moment of challenge, I saw through this little tulip my own harvest of endurance. I realized that God was reminding me that I must PLANT WHAT I LOOK TO HARVEST! More importantly, I must never forget to water and care for what I plant.
For many young women, the seed has already been planted! We often forget how to act upon and apply what God has given us, even in the hardest, most challenging moments. Like the little tulip, we must also weather the coldest winters and windy falls, but know that Spring will soon come and we will be expected to blossom. Now this is not to say you must hide during your moments of challenge, but rather get pumped as you are about to experience A GREAT WOMAN IN THE MAKING! During my travels, I have experience amazing opportunities to speak to young girls. They often ask me, “Ms. Nicole how did you weathered the storm and stay true to yourself in places like Corporate America and other places where you were pressure to be someone else or something else”. The shocking and honest answer that I give young woman is that it was hard at first and I didn’t start off with “YES, I KNOW MYSELF DAY ONE” attitude. I had to learn the balance of who I was and what everyone wanted. I had to discover that what the world actually needed was Nicole Allen, just as she was, and not some average girl who tried to be the prototype of perfection and everyone else’s dream. It was hard especially, working in a highly prestigious, uptight and conservative, overly aggressive corporate culture, where you felt as is if you were fighting for civil rights in the twenty first century with a bunch of white boys who felt you should be spending your time getting their coffee rather than actually collaborating with them on multimillion dollar strategies. But like the little tulip, I learned the seed of humility and faith from the women who stood beside me and helped me learn how to fight strategically and pray relentlessly.


And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.—Matthew 21:21. After I figured out who I was and whose I was, I was able to fight with my faith and accomplish things that many wonder who positioned me, and others who couldn’t believe that I was doing what they had only imagined.


During much time and meditation, I am left with this, God believes in me to have faith in his promise and believe in his plan. His plan is not my plan and therefore He does not need my permission or two-way conference call to get His plan done. Before I left for my trip down south, my grandmother said to me, “You are a Shining Star, I can’t tell you how to shine, but you know the way! Sometimes your light may dim, but I believe that God has placed you and I here at this very moment to push you forward and remind you of the greatness that he is calling you for. Don’t forget your light, you are destine for it and I am going to support you through it!”


With her words, I now say to you my young sistah, never forget your light or to water and nurture the seeds of greatness that God has planted deep inside you. You can never expect to harvest what you don’t take time to cultivate. I feel the move of God’s spirit putting me at rest to know that I have been made to endure His boot camp of life, for it is my destiny, as a young man said, to be HERE! As I get ready to pack up on my last day on my island of peace, I am filled with an over exceeding excitement and unspeakable peace knowing that God has used this very day, this very place, and this very moment as a boot camp to prepare me for my harvest of greatness. Your boot camp will come, or it may have already passed, but please understand that when God orders a rejuvenation, He doesn’t need to give you a lot of notice, only your obedience to square up and say,

“God use me, I will go, if you must revive my spirit, then prepare my shoes, so I can endure this boot camp and return a seed of GREATNESS to fulfill the DESTINY you have planned for my LIFE

WOW, it’s DAY 5: Hope you all enjoyed and experience something from my journey and BOOTCAMP!

You Should Thank Him: Yes, Right Now During Boot Camp!!!!!

So I did tell you that this is a boot camp, right? Sometimes during a boot camp you will experience moments where you may need your Bengay or good old faithful heating pad to get through the rest of the day. During a time of serious, downright tear jerking reflection, I felt I needed to share a MOMENT! Yes, the saying “You cannot correct what you are not ready to confront” is real. As young women we experience pains, especially in our relationships, and we often do not understand the growth or power in them, let alone how we can correct them. Speaking from experience, I have often received a response from God about my relationships I was not expecting. What is so great about God is that he knew exactly what and who I needed in order to grow and while I was off crying, God was busy preparing. What’s even more amazing is that God used that person as only a teaching moment, as they were the smallest piece of the overall picture into what God needed to accomplish. Imagine that! You see, it is often difficult to thank someone when they hurt you, but I am here to tell you young sistah, when you do look back, after the dust has settled, you will have the power to say “THANK GOD”. I needed all of that to make me into the woman I am today. You will not only want to thank God, but also the man or men that have hurt you. It may not be easy at first, but when it does, oh my goodness, you will thank them because you are so much stronger, wiser and better as a result of the pain you both experienced.

So as a young woman growing from her experiences, I thought it was only proper to craft my own thank you note. Now let me put a disclaimer out there, IF YOU ARE READING THIS AND FEEL LIKE OMG is she talking about me, probably so (LOL), but know that this was truly about directing hope to build dreams so I would no longer delay my FUTURE and maybe YOURS too…(SMILE).

I like to call it ….YOU SHOULD THANK HIM!

So, I was thinking about you today and us, and well you remember that guy I had told you about, the one who hurt me oh so bad. Well I was thinking, actually contemplating, that before you thank me and we begin our life of amazing adventures and uncontrollable laughs and smiles you should probably, no you should actually take a second to

Thank him…..

Yes PLEASE thank him. It is because of the broken heart that I was left with I learned how to walk with God and trust that Love is not just a feeling or something you wake up and experience ; It’s a CHOICE. Through the loneliness of a relationship, I came to experience the GREATEST love and the sacrifice of God that allowed me to understand what it means to make a CHOICE. It revealed to me an important lesson; we choose to love and we ACT on it once we choose it. The amazing thing is through the complication of loving him; I learned the simplicity of loving you. It showed me that what we think and say to be complicated is really simple.

So you JUST GOT TO THANK him.

Don’t bother being mad at him. In fact, THANK him that I stopped looking for you and began believing you would find me. No better lesson could I have learned than the one of understanding I could no longer control the outcome of whether love would find me. It was a MUST that I stop trying to predict the future of LOVE. Don’t forget to express your gratitude in the prayer warrior he helped build. In the absence of him, I learned the intimacy of prayer and the importance of coming together to build OUR prayer game. You see if I would have never experience the unavailable him, I may have never knew how awesome two people can be when their voices are lifted to God and their arms are raised to the sky giving thanks for LIFE and the ABILITY to share it with one another.

So go ahead, don’t hold back, THANK him for his contributions.

As tears run down my face, I am happy and feel with an overwhelming sense of amazement that you are here. I too feel the need to thank him along with you. Without him I would have never taken the time to prepare myself for you. I know now that with him I took myself too seriously, which is why I can now laugh when you make that funny face or funny smell. So don’t feel obligated to repair anything that has happened in my life, because through it all I have become a better me and more importantly I have become a whole me. I am now stronger than ever and ready to unite the whole me with the whole you. I now understand that my purpose in your life is NOT to complete you, but to assists you in completing the assignment that God has in your life and for you to do the same in mine.

So trust me when I say your THANKING him should not be crude or filled with cynical words, but with a sense of gratitude. He completed his assignment, and now I am all yours. What is so amazing is when I see your smile, I see the answered prayer that I explained to God when I was imagining what you would look like, what you would think about, what you would live for, and most importantly how you would allow me to enter a space where only God occupies. You might want to give this brother a hug, because his assignment was only to prepare me for you!

In fact, thanking him is the right thing to do; I mean what better thank you, could you give this Brother for giving me to you. In fact, I want to thank him for allowing me to see what it would feel like when I thanked God for creating such an amazing man like YOU!

Strength, Courage, and A Good Pair of Wings: Don't Leave Boot Camp It's Only Day 2

My sisters and I, better known as THE ALLEN SISTERS, are extremely close. Now like any sisters, we grumble, disagree, share humiliating stories, laugh, cry, and all the things you can only do with your siblings. For many years, I have hidden under their protection. They have always been a place of safety for me and I learned how to stay in close sight of their love and safeguard!! They have always held my wings like a little bird teaching me how to fly in this world, preparing me for the ugly vultures (ladies, you know what I am referring to) , and ensuring that I knew how to eat at times they would not be around. As a little bird, being far away from your family can be scary. You have practiced how to fly your entire life and when you are face with doing it on your own you may PANIC. It is as if one day you wake up to find your big sister birdies have left the nest (just for a quick shopping break and light lunch) and there is no one to hold your wings as you have always practice. You have to fly all by yourself. Can you imagine how the little bird must feel going to the end of the nest and looking out into the world 10,000 feet away from the ground? Do you wonder if the little birdy has forgotten the courage that has been taught during the cold nights of soaring the skies? Do you believe that sometimes they may not know their own strength? Or do they just sometimes not realize the power of their own beautiful wings?



Like the birdy, we often look to see who will help us fly. As we think we are being put in place of impossible, God is actually molding and preparing us to SOAR in the possible. He must know you can fly on your own, for “He will give you wings that are MADE to SOAR”. My grandmother recently told me this, “Sweetie, Life can be Hard, it may knock you, but God’s Grace will hold you. You must believe in Him and make Him your wings so when you fly, you will have faith to know that it is He who will helps you Soar!”


This story is for any young sister who is being prepared to soar and is afraid to tip toe to the edge of the nest and fly. Like me, you may have the BEST SISTERS, mother, father, BFFs, in the WORLD, but you yourself must not be afraid to use your own beautiful wings and SOAR into the world. I am challenging you to give it all you have and remember your SOURCE! Source, I have used that word so many times! I am reflecting on SOURCE for a second and understanding the GREATNESS behind it…………….


God knows your HEART and He will prepare the atmosphere so when your time of greatness arrives, you not only FLY into it, but you SOAR right through it!

This is dedicated to my LOVELY sisters who prepared me for the big SKIES. You taught me to LOVE MYSELF, never FORGET MYSELF, and MOST OF ALL know that no matter how FAR WE GO WE will always BE

THE ALLEN SISTERS, strong and beautiful,

It's A Boot Camp so Get READY: Who YOU got with YOU

Remember back in the day when girls use to beef with each other and gather in a big crowd to have a showdown or beat down? The talk had been around school that someone had been talking smack about the other and it was time to face it head on! Well, if you are like me and have never fought a day in your life, you too are probably hoping it is all talk and nobody will really fight! Your girlfriends are looking at you like, “You know you have never been in a fight in your life and it may get ugly”. Just thinking about it gets my blood pumping. Anxious, you look back and just like you, your friends are praying and contemplating whether to walk away or stand there to see how it goes down! Everyone is ready and willing to jump up at any moment, and someone shouts out “So, who you got with you?”

 

Through my own journey in life, I have often been faced with this same question. I have learned Sometimes instead of looking above me, as the pastor says; I have looked behind me which only leads to my own disappointment. We often become frustrated when we look for people to ALWAYS have our backs or heal our pain. We assume that they must contain the capacity to push us forward or simply comfort us at every step through this thing called “life”. Your friends and family will always love you and will always WANT to be there in your toughest moments. Please don’t think your love ones do not want to give you everything they have, but rather you are hoping in them for things that they are often not designed to offer. As I grow, I have found that the humanity of people are often too small and too limited to offer you what the boundless and illimitable power of God will never fail to give you!

Lamentations 3:24: says, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him”! One of the most powerful thoughts to remember that I must often remind myself of is this, “If you put your hope in anyone other than God, your sadness will overbear your JOY and subtract from the JOURNEY that God has placed you on!” A moment of meditation……… and Reflection………………

As I reconnect with my southern roots, sitting outside in a quiet garden with just me and the sweet aroma of God’s tranquility and never ending love, I am at peace to tell one of my young sisters this, “Believe in your heart that one day you will find a peace that is greater than any crew, family member, or support system could ever give”. Be patient with yourself little sister and know that growth is TOUGH. No one can do it for YOU, so don’t be afraid to cry out when you feel alone or experiencing the toughest boot camp of your life. If you don’t know where to find peace, it’s okay to reach out to someone and asks them, but often God will lead you to it if you just ask. Be reassured that when you look back and feel as if no one is there, God is, but to see Him you must look ABOVE. You can find your way back when you ONLY ALLOW Him to lead you THERE!” So the next time when someone asks you “who you with”, let them know I got Jesus and His crew so the better question is “Who YOU With!” Or in the words of my BFF, “WHO GOING TO CHECK ME BOO”! LOL…….. See you tomorrow for DAY 2!

The Gift of Desperation

First, let me say go Obama care! History has been made and it’s because someone stepped into their destiny and BELIEVED IN HOPE! You go Boy, I mean Mr. President!

During the last several days, I took a personal vacation to revive my spirit and refocus on the purpose and very plan that God has ordered in my life. I wish I could say that I went on a tropical vacation that was on my schedule since last spring. You know the trips you save almost half on because you purchased so far in advance. A trip you decide on because you want to use up your vacation days at work or need a place to go just because it’s that time of the year. Like many of us, I was well over due for a vacation, but unwilling to take one, and well, someone ABOVE us decided that if I was not going to willingly take one I would be placed in a position where I would cry out for one. You know the feeling where you can’t explain, it makes no sense, and everyone is left puzzled of your abrupt departure. What I and everyone else fail to realize is that the trip that I thought was so unplanned is actually the very vacation that God booked well in advance. You see my desperate moment of escape was only the strategic planning of God in bringing me to a place where I could be at total and complete submission to Him and no one else. God said, “Return unto me and I will return on to you”. You see the gift of a desperate moment is the set up for when you began to realize that you have taken a detour and you must now find your way back to the main road; YOUR SOURCE.


I learned so many things during my alone time and I want to share them with you. I wrote every day of my journey; mostly how I was awaken by the aroma of only God and the intimacy of His voice and His Silence. I am going to share my FIVE JOURNALS with you each day. I like to call them A Young Woman’s Boot Camp, inspired by a young man’s faith and unimaginable strength to seek God even at a time where he is facing the hardest boot camp of his life; a place where neither you nor I would never ever want to go. As my candid journals may be dismaying to some, I think as true leaders of greatness we must be transparent and allow the world to see our normality. I hope my willingness to be free and open about my growth and experiences will save some young girl close to giving up on her dreams and settling for less than her best life. I hope I can encourage another young woman who is experiencing a desperate moment right now to fight strategically and stand up boldly. My faith is renewed in the fact that I will not DEPEND ON ANYONE but my SOURCE! I am strengthen to know that LIFE will be LIFE, but my muscle of FAITH will continue to grow everyday because God is using my mustard seed of Faith to take me further into my HOPE! So you see Sistah, I am in a place of awesome peace right now that surpasses all understanding and it is because I found the GIFT of a DESPERATE MOMENT! I hope you ENJOY and FIND SOME WAY TO reposition and rethink your own steps when you too experience a seemingly hopeless moment. Meet me tomorrow for DAY 1!

Blessings Sistah Lady Allen

A Letter to a Young Sister

Dear Little Sister,

Let me first say I am so proud of you! You have weathered the storm, done the unthinkable, and have begun to live your dream. You have done what others have only dreamed of and more. I marvel at your strength and applaud your boldness. I remember many years ago you told me “Sister, I am dreaming of greatness and I must go after it. I know at times it may not be what I have envisioned it to be, but I am going to WORK HARD for it. I see a world out there filled with so many opportunities, and, well, I must answer the call.” After those words, I knew you were destine for it. Every day I pray for you. I pray that God will give you the strength to be bold in answering the call and the humility to allow Him to guide you. I know it may get tough at times. Every great idea or move you make may not always work out the way you would have hoped. You may, at times, be wounded in the fire, but trust me it will not destroy your dream or purpose. Oh yes, there will be times where you will feel alone, but know that in those moments you are being situated to take some quiet time with the One who is requesting your attention and needing your Ear.

I have never been more proud of you and I pray you will keep doing the unthinkable. You are no carbon copy, but a true trailblazer who has been put on an assignment to blaze a path for other women to follow. I know now that you have been remarkably made and undeniably destined for greatness far greater than anyone on earth could ever imagine. As someone with a little experience of climbing that ladder in some amazing stilettos, I have learned that you must be willing to extract all the pressure of others and believe that you are a VESSEL designed ONLY for God and what He has for your life; so allow Him to be your GUIDE! Remember little sister BE Smart and BE Fabulous but always remember to listen and trust your GUIDE!

You have so many amazing Sisters who believe in you and are cheering for you every step of the way. If you stumble, WE ARE HERE! If you forget, WE ARE HERE! If you lose sight and get scared, WE ARE ALL HERE! We got your back little sister! So keep serving and never wavering in what you have been CALLED to DO! I call it Destiny, but you call it JUST AN ORDINARY RESPONSIBILITY!

Love and Blessings

Lady Sistah Allen