For I know the plans I have for you….

This picture is of Shaq on my last day of work at the Alabama School for the Deaf in Taylor Hall, the dorm where I worked. His laugh could literally be heard quite a distance away in his own true gift of joy; you could not help but smile and feel the joy this boy just happen to express in the personality God gave him. If you click on his picture, you will find a link to the Alabama Institute of the Deaf and the Blind. If curious, check it out to learn more about the Deaf and Blind Communities in right here in sweet home Alabama.

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11

When we were introducing each other in class, it may have been obvious I have a very intricate plan for what I would consider my sincere dreams, but then again, every five year plan I have ever conceptualized has never exactly come to realization as I have expected it would. In fact, on many occasions, it has turned out better than I thought in the first place. As you may see in my introduction, I am a very spiritual individual, and God has indeed been very good to me, my family, and the dreams I have attained thus far in my life.

You see….many thought I would never get this far in my life. Many implied, if not said directly, that I would never amount to what I have. While these discouraging remarks have not been my sole incentive to prove those people wrong, because quite frankly, if that was my original motive, that is just plain stupid and perhaps even selfish. I would like to think my life has amounted to more than that, to more than what people told me I could not do.

I always wanted to work with the Deaf since I took my first class in American Sign Language at Clemson University. I attended an interpreting program at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and then worked one full school year at the Alabama School for the Deaf. I have always wanted to go abroad in some fashion……first just to travel and on another trip to serve others in a mission-type capacity. Before I came to Auburn, I was fortunate enough to backpack in Europe six weeks alone, and thanks to the support of many people (friends, family, and beyond), I was able to spend ten weeks in South America traveling and working on three separate servant-like projects this past summer. The experience transformed my life in living a dream through God’s creation. I could never have fathomed the journey in the capacity of my experience without just going to experience what I did firsthand. Now I am about to graduate from Auburn with a perfect GPA when many believed that someone with a disability could never do so. I do not express this to brag but rather to express that you can achieve goals even when statistics simply express that you cannot. I am not the standard of a statistic. I am rather what I believe I am intended to be and what I intend to become.

From Auburn, I hope to publish two books, both of which are a considerable work in progress. The subject matter of these texts will be to express the adversity my family has faced and overwhelmingly overcome. My goal is to inspire because I believe that so many people today are hopelessly living stagnantly day to day, surviving to breathe and pay some bills. I refuse to live my life in such a mindless pursuit or even perhaps to the extreme, mindless ambitions. If I die tomorrow, I will know that I did so in well-performed fashions to glorify something much greater than myself and that I could not have accomplished all that is possible without that much greater thing. I will take the summer to simply write. I believe that certain seasons are meant for certain things, and while I can, I plan to take a season of my life to write a book that has been on my heart for a very long time, to aim for the stars, and to see where God shows up in the mixture of all this excitement in the journey we call life.

In the next few years, I would like to work full time in a prominent position until I am well on my way to publishing and becoming a professional speaker. Eventually, I would enjoy the success of becoming a doctor of academic excellence because I believe that knowledge is the most powerful substance to move and change lives for the better. The best place to perhaps mold minds for a better future is in a collegiate environment where minds are seeking direction to be shaped. I would like to own several successful businesses (perhaps an art gallery, a restaurant, a non-profit, and some type of creative-driven project). I desire to be successful financially so that I may help as many people as possible in the blessings I have been given. To me, so much has been given, and in the blessings of being given so much, it is only worthwhile to give back to those less fortunate than myself. Please realize these dreams will only be achievable because of the relationships in my life and assistance that is given by so many to get where I am going.

I do not know where God will have me, but I certainly will be had. In the long term of things, I have always wanted to be a father and perhaps am approaching one day where I will be. I am kind of biased towards boys. Perhaps the thing I have enjoyed most in my life is the relationship I have with my father in the good and bad times where sometimes we saw eye to eye and other times, not so much. I want several sons, not seven brothers for seven brides, but perhaps four brothers for four brides. As people often say, we will approach that bridge when we get there. I have the gift of fluency in sign language, and it would perhaps be a tragedy not to use that gift in raising my own Deaf child through adoption. And if I can, I would enjoy throwing Spanish into the mix perhaps through a Hispanic nanny….really no joke. The reason why people in our country know one language and only one language is because we are raised with one language immersed in one language. While my children may not understand the importance of knowing two or perhaps three languages, the gift of doing so will have rewards that otherwise would not be achievable if a bilingual home environment is at all possible.

Dreams are not about what you will do; they are about what you are doing. We can all talk about dreams, but it is quite another thing to live that which we talk about. Please understand that I have only been able to do so because I have been surrounded by the right people at the right time. The people around you will most influence you and the dreams you attain or in negativity do not attain. I owe everything in my life perhaps to the two most prominent people who have believed in me even when I did not believe in myself, my mother and father, Diana and Jim Cartee, Jr. God promises, “I know the plans I have for you,” but do we really believe that? Desires are planted with good reasons. I have been fortunate in my background to live out those desires, and dreams are not really lifelike until they are done in actuality. My plan is to live, and in the process, dreams will come true. Dreams will change, but they will happen. You just have to have something that is often lost in the chaos of a let’s-just-check-of-the-my-to-do-list society. That something is faith. My faith is in He Above that He will indeed provide to the fullest of my heart’s passions: “plans to give you (and me) hope and a future” in something incomprehendable to most human minds, going home.

Well, I guess that about covers the dreams I can think of off the top of my head at this moment. More will come, but then that will work for another more than perhaps necessary elongated blog entry. I realize this entry is very lengthy; so if you succeeded in reading its entirety, thank you for taking the time to do so.

Poetic out,

JLC iii