Has Adversity and Self Discovery Lead You To a Path of Faith?

Has Adversity and Self Discovery Lead You To a Path of Faith?

Check out the story of Dr. Valerie Opher and see if you can relate to how adversity can lead you to Faith. Many of us who have worked in corporate american and been exposed to its subtle but strong institutional racism know how it can test your faith and belief system.

When I was growing up we had to brave race riots and the Hell Angels to go to school in JHS and High School. But it wasn't just other racial groups that challenged us but there were tough inner city gangs too that challenged our faith to go to school.

Those challenges and many others taught me how to live prayerfully. This is why I am including her book and story on this site. It shows us how our adversities shouldn't be viewed as some thing bad they can actually make us stronger in our faith.

No one wants adversity but when it meets us prayfully we can rise to the occasion with God's help. Take a look at Dr. Opher's story and consider buying her book.

HOW THE PRACTICE OF FAITH IN THE WORKPLACE CAN REDUCE FEAR, PRODUCE REMARKABLE RESULTS, AND GENERATE LIFE LESSONS


Pittsburgh, PA - Valerie Opher, BSN, RN, MAS, DM, an African American woman, who has worked in not-for-profit as well as for-profit organizations in Corporate America, has a testimony.

While Dr. Opher does not suspect that her professional experiences and associated challenges, in general, are very different than those of other African Americans working in Corporate America, she does acknowledge that her Scared to Faith approach is unique. What she realized over the years is that she has been able to produce remarkable and far-reaching positive results in the workplace each time that she was scared; scared into believing in a higher power that she calls God.

Through her spiritual self-help book, entitled Scared To Faith that was recently released, she shares some of her most profound work experiences, which are ultimately life experiences.

Dr. Opher's practice of ©traveling to self, or listening inwardly for spiritual guidance, and then obeying the messages afforded her job opportunities that required, on paper, many more years of work experience than she possessed at each of the different time points. Early in her career, Dr. Opher was offered and accepted several professional positions requiring 10-20+ years of work experience when she had less than 5 years [experience] in related jobs in the healthcare industry.

To be the only and sometimes first African-American woman in several leadership and management positions presented Dr. Opher with many racial and political challenges. Dr. Opher experienced a racial attack by Caucasians that was mentioned on Fox 45 Ten O'clock news in Baltimore, Maryland. She was called a refugee by an African-American woman who was her boss in Charlotte, North Carolina. A Vice-President of a hospital asked Dr. Opher the following question: Who do you think you are the Rosa Parks of Wilmington, North Carolina? While employed as a CEO of a community health center in North Carolina, Dr. Opher's life was threatened.

In the late 1990's while employed by a Fortune 500 company, Dr. Opher was asked to tell the other four Black members of a team of 100+ persons not to sit together, because "it makes the rest of the team uncomfortable". One of the many questions that Dr. Opher addresses in her book is: Even though we often rationalize that our inclusion is simply tolerance, how do persons of color in Corporate America maintain and honor our identity when we are fewer in number and are continually challenged to demonstrate acts of respect for White colleagues?

Her story is inspirational, enlightening, and definitely worth sharing. In addition to sharing some of her most profound work experiences in Scared To Faith, Dr. Opher includes a Lesson Learned section at the end of each chapter that focuses on how she chose to practice faith in her quest to overcome her many challenges instead of focusing on what happened to her.

Each of the Lesson Learned sections includes discussions on aspects of the study of knowledge, such as beliefs, knowledge claims, and truth-if it exists! The topic of truth is discussed in detail and in the context of socially constructed realities, which is a characteristic of a postmodern environment.

Discussions about beliefs, knowledge, and truth in the context of work-related experiences especially those of a racial or discriminatory nature are garnering attention from not only Corporate America, churches and other faith-based organizations, but also from philosophy departments at academic institutions throughout the country.

Each of the experiences shared in the book, Scared To Faith, demonstrate Dr. Opher's determination to acknowledge a higher power that she calls God. Each time that Dr. Opher was faced with a challenging work experience, she traveled to self, or communed with her spirit. She learned the importance of acting on the spiritual messages, because they yielded remarkable results every time! Scared To Faith is about being scared to the point of believing in a higher power. Valerie Opher learned to become scared to faith and very little else.

Visit www.travelingtoself.com for information about Scared To Faith, and to read Dr. Opher's poem Traveling To Self, which received an Editor's Choice award.