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Niama L. Williams, Ph.D.
Blowing Up Barriers Enterprises
Norristown, Pennsylvania
Phone: 484/231-
FAX: 484/674-
Email: drni@blowingupbarriers.com
Website: http://www.blowingupbarriers.com
October 15, 2009
Leaving $400/Week for a Dream …….
Norristown, PA—The moment Dr. Niama L. Williams slammed into the nicest Christian woman on Welsh Road last Thursday, October 8th, she knew her career as an academic was done. She’d crashed the car because Blowing Up Barriers Enterprises was a ministry God refused to put on hold. Her foot on the gas pedal was God’s way of removing her from Bucks County Community College for the real work of moving trauma survivors out of stasis.
“If you’re stuck, we want to help you get un-stuck,” Dr. Williams says of her start-up venture. “Too many people get up every day and go to a job they hate because they believe there is no other option. Following their dreams, the life they envision, seems reckless, foolish.”
Dr. Williams sought academic positions repeatedly after graduating with her doctorate in African American Studies from Temple University in 2006. Accompanied by her master’s in fiction from the University of Southern California and her bachelor’s in comparative literature from Occidental College, “Dr. Ni” as she is affectionately known, should have walked into a full-time academic position with ease.
Yet no job fit. Institution after institution offered minimal employment. Her morale depleting and student preparedness at a new low, Dr. Williams found it hard to maintain standards that administrators would support. Students complained and administrators listened.
Plowing into a loving Christian woman on October 8th revealed her error. Though she loved teaching, God was calling her to the ministry.
“I thought I’d found the perfect fit at BCCC,” Dr. Williams reports, “but as Lois, the woman I hit, walked across the Maple Glen Church parking lot to pray with me as we waited for the tow trucks, I knew that next time, someone would be dead.”
Leaving $400/week for a ministry would make sense to no ordinary spouse, but soon-to-be-husband Rev. Joseph William Massey knew he could not keep “Dr. Ni” from God’s mission. Pastor Jerald Goodwin of Upper Darby’s Union Memorial United Methodist Church waits to introduce her to ministerial ranks within his faith tradition.
“I must trust God, and that is what I share with all of my clients and workshop participants:
The words on Maple Glen Church’s marquee haunt Dr. Williams as she walks the path God has ordained: “When troubles come, rely not on self but on God.” They are her personal motto as she begins to free others from lives that stultify and stifle.
Her first spiritual growth workshop occurs this Saturday, October 17th, 2009, at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church in East Norriton, Pennsylvania. “Dr. Ni” will be presenting the spiritual tale of The Four Boyfriends as a way of explaining who is in your life and their purpose within it. For more information and to sign up go to www.blowingupbarriers.com.
Dr. Williams will be wearing a boot on her fractured toe and an icepack on her head contusion, but she’ll finally be on the right path.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
