Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Mountain High…Valley Low (much respect to Yolanda Adams)

Hello World,

Incredible. Riveting. Inspiring. These are some the words that I thought of as I watched Chilean miners being painstakingly rescued one at a time after being trapped in a mine for what had to be an excruciating 69 days. As I watched the rescue unfold, I could not help but think of how everyone experiences dark periods from time to time…of course, we may not be physically submerged in a mine hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface but we are having a valley experience nonetheless…

I wonder what the miners used to sustain themselves during this dark period of their lives…And what do we do when we experience the valleys of our lives…how do we cope? how do we sustain ourselves? what do we do to push through?

As much as I detest pain in any form, I have realized that God uses painful experiences to draw us closer to Himself and to grow in character and faith…a necessary evil at its worst and a prelude to blessing at its best if you let it be…I’m not Job as I have not had everything taken from me all at once with no explanation but I have had some trying times for sure…

I recall a particularly painful time in the beginning of the 2003…I had not had a job in my field for about a year and although I had managed to find a retail job, I was left without steady income again when the retail company suddenly shut down…My roommate who I had depended on to pay half of my bills moved out…My car broke down, and I did not have the money to pay for it to be repaired…

I did know what to do – except to turn to God for comfort and an explanation…And He did…I believe…In January of that year, I had had a mountain high experience…God had confirmed to me that my writing was my ministry through a synchronistic experience at church that New Year’s Eve…I felt like I had received my “marching orders” and quickly began working on my first book…

But by the end of that January after I lost the retail job, my roommate moved out and my car broke down, I no longer felt inspired to write – or do much of anything else for that matter…Since I did not have money to pay my bills, I simply stopped opening the envelopes with the bills in them (I would not recommend this if you have mortgage.) My world became very small since I had no transportation…I spent most of my time at my home although I did not clean it for a long time since I was feeling so down…I started dating this wildly inappropriate guy that if I had been in my right mind, I would have run from…Lord help me…

That dark period went on for about two months…I must say the Lord had my back because nothing was turned off although I had stopped paying my bills and although my mortgage got behind, I did not lose my home either…But as I continued to seek God, although halfheartedly, He finally revealed to me what the deal was…One day, as I was searching the Internet, I came across a sermon that basically said that just like Jesus, when we have been given a ministry, we must go through a period of temptation and testing as Jesus did…As mystical as that may seem, I knew it was true…When God gives us a revelation, I think we have to be prepared for the devil to come to take away what God has told us…And as Jesus did during his temptation, we have to stand on the word of God and believe what He told us…even if we have been trapped in a mine…

Once I realized what was going on, I knew that I could cope with what was happening to me…And within a few months, everything that had been taken away from me had been restored…I got a job in my field that enabled to pay all of my bills without a roommate and my car was fixed. I began opening my mail again, and I finally cleaned up my nasty house…As a I write this, I wonder if people will think I’m foolish but the “foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom.” (I Corinthians 1:25)

So how do I cope when feel like I have sunk into a mine and life has become dark and constricted…I petition God for an idea, a thought, a scripture – a glimpse of heaven when I am in hell – or what feels like hell…

I imagine the miners thought of their family and friends as the dark days ticked by…I imagine many of them prayed to God night and day to be rescued…I imagine that God revealed to them that although everything was dark around them, they would again see the light…

How do you cope during difficult times?

Any thoughts?

P.S. If you’re going through, the lyrics from “Open My Heart,” a song from Yolanda Adams’ “Mountain High…Valley Low” album maybe just what you need…and the video of this beautiful song is also below…

Talk to me
Talk to me

Alone in a room, it’s just me and You
I feel so lost ’cause I don’t know what to do
Now what if I choose the wrong thing to do
I’m so afraid, afraid of disappointing You

So I need to talk to You and ask You for Your guidance
Especially today when my life is so cloudy
Guide me until I’m sure
I open up my heart, oh, yeah

My hopes and dreams are fading fast
I’m all burned out and I don’t think my strengths gonna last
So I’m crying out, crying out to You
Lord, I know that You’re the only one who is able to pull me through

So I know I need to talk to You and ask You for your guidance
Especially today, when my world seems so cloudy
Lord, guide me until I’m sure
I open up my heart, oh, yeah, yes I do

So show me how to do things Your way
Don’t let me make the same mistakes over and over again
Your will be done and I’ll be the one to make sure that it’s carried out
And in me, I don’t want any doubt, that’s why

I want to talk to You [Incomprehensible] and ask You for Your guidance
Especially today, when my world seems just a little bit cloudy
Lord, You guide me through that’s why I open up
I open up my heart, my heart, my heart, my heart

All I need to do is just hear a single word from You
I open, I open, open up my heart
Just one word could make a difference in what I do
Lord, guide me until I’m sure

I open, I open, I open, I open my heart
You just say one word, one word, one word, one word, one word
I open up, I open up, open up my heart to You, to You

You’re the lover of my soul
Captain of my sea
I need a word from You
That’s why I open up my heart

Posted on Sunday, September 12, 2010

Encounters of the Spiritual Kind…

Hello World!!!

Insert Laura Ingalls and Nellie...

I’m fresh off taking my 9-year-old nephew to the V-103 “For Sisters Only” event yesterday…When I first asked him to hang out with his 37-year-old aunt, he was actually excited…until he discovered where I was taking him…As we walked around in the throng of women perusing vendors selling weave products, jewelry, clothing, etc., he declared, “They weren’t lying when they said for sisters only.” Then I felt bad…I guess I shouldn’t have taken the boy down there, huh?…It was a sneaky thing to do I admit…I had asked my boyfriend to go too, and he said, “No.” And then he added,”I don’t know any guys that have ever gone there.” I hope I haven’t scarred my nephew for life…Anywho…

Sooo on to the topic of the day…Have you ever tried to go incognito as a Christian? I do from time to time…Not that I’m ashamed of being a Christian or anything but sometimes I want to keep my thoughts to myself and let the events of the day or night unfold unfettered by my world view…Maybe my last sentence doesn’t make sense but I think it will as I continue to write, so continue to read on…So a few weeks back during my L.A. vacay, a friend and I went to a bar one night in Manhattan Beach…Since both of us are kind of homebodies, our intention was just to hang out for a bit so we could say that we hung out in L.A. past midnight and get back to our hotel room within a couple of hours or so…sad, I know, but true…so we put on some print dresses believing that we were going to a kind of neighborhood bar on par with the bar at Bennigan’s or something…we had inquired at our hotel about such a place and thought we had dressed appropriately…We.were.wrong…

As the cab sped away behind us and we walked up to bar, which was on the bottom floor of another hotel, we realized that we may not get past the proverbial “velvet rope” and that we could be stranded…In fact, the guy, looking like “Suave Dave” in his thin black suit, stationed at the front door, literally started looking at us from the soles of our shoes to the crown of our heads…I guess we didn’t make the cut…We weren’t swank enough to hang out with the posh crowd downstairs and he motioned for us to go upstairs with the more casual crowd…It was all good though…Upstairs was an open air bar with a pool in the center…And we still felt like “country goes to city” in our print dresses plus everyone else was white…not that I’ve never been the only black person in a crowd of people different from me before…but let’s keep it real…but when you are in a closed in space with people who are different from you for whatever reason, you never know what the result could be…Just ask my nephew about “For Sisters Only!”

Soo, I’m taking too long to tell this story…let me speed it up…Although I have a man and my friend is on a man fast, no one wants to be the girl in the bar or the club that no dude steps to…And we were afraid that would be the case as no one could probably see past our “Little House on the Prairie” print dresses and my flip flops that I have worn as shower shoes at the gym…(Really, looking back, I was wrong for venturing out past 9 p.m. with some flip flops anyway — particularly at my age…)

But lo and behold, a guy steps to my friend and starts chatting her up and it’s obvious from the animation in his eyes and voice, he is actually interested…I guess in support of his boy, his friend steps to me and starts making conversation…but I sense in his demeanor and tone that he is merely being polite…It’s all good though…as I said, before, I gotta man…As we start talking, it’s clear that dude has some mula…now, keep in mind that I had made a decision to not wear my “christian suit” so I was letting dude talk without saying anything real about myself…Anyway, he told me that he lived on a house on the beach and that he was the president or something like that of some Internet company…Yeah, he was braggin’ a bit but I sensed that he was telling the truth…He told me his boy was from the East Coast and was visiting him for the first time in L.A.

So dude, who looked to be about my age, explains to me that he is bored with his current career and would like to explore developing a Web portal though which different people could find out about different charitable organizations across the world and give to support them…Well that was cool enough that he said that, right? So he asked me what charitable organizations did I like…I muttered, “CARE, World Vision, etc.” I was still drying to maintain my look of “disinterested cool.” Then the heavens opened..well not really, but dude’s eyes expanded and he said, “Are you spiritual or religious?” Inside, I was like, “Man, I’m trying to be incognito…” But the Holy Spirit said, “Share.” So I said, “I guess I’m both…” In less than an hour, dude told me how he wanted to make a difference with his life, how he grew up Catholic but stopped going to church and how L.A. was so fake…I was like, “Really.”

I would like to say that I managed to get my Bible out of my purse and read a few scriptures with him in the middle of the bar but that is not what happened…Leaving my huge purse in the hotel room was probably the only fashionable decision I made that night, and I don’t carry a Bible in my purse anyway…Instead, we had a real conversation and I came out as a Christian…

I don’t know what will happen to dude…Maybe I can find out from my girl…The guy that chatted her up asked for her number…I would like to think that when that guy got home from the bar, he got on his knees and prayed to know Jesus…But I can’t call it…but at least I was faithful, albeit reluctantly, to declare the name of Jesus…And maybe as he keeps having encounters of the spiritual kind, dude will stop chatting up fake girls in the bar and have a real relationship with Jesus…

I think Jesus was proud of me in my print dress and flip flops…

Any thoughts?

Posted on Wednesday, September 8, 2010

37…

Hello World!!!

As of yesterday, I am 37 years old…Maybe that’s not a big deal if you’re 73….but if you’re me, 37 is three years away from 40…Wow! I mean it’s all good…I’m here…I’m still alive…I’m healthy as far as I know…I’m cute…but I think every year that you are alive, you should grow in wisdom and grow more into the person that God created you to be…I think I’m growing in wisdom and I have been striving to be all that God created me to be so I feel like I am making progress…But it’s just amazing that I can remember turning 13 and now I am 37…Oh yeah, maybe I am going somewhere with this post and maybe I’m not…Here’s a thought…If I could go back and tell my 13-year-old self some wisdom and some revelations about myself, below is what I would say…

1. You are enough…If the kids around you think you’re ugly or lame or lacking in any way, ignore them because you are enough…

2. Hang around some of the kids that rap and sing and maybe don’t go to class in high school because Ludacris, Bone Crusher, Tiny from Xscape better known as T.I.’s girlfriend, Mike Crooms aka DJ Smurf aka Mr. Collipark and the original DJ from OutKast went to Banneker…and maybe you could have been in their crew or a video or gotten a free album or something…

3. You will meet some of the nicest guys you will ever meet in high school…You may meet guys who have more money or who are more sophisticated after high school but pay attention to the nice guys because you will always want be in the presence of one…

4. Having parents who have a ton of rules is actually really cool…You won’t get pregnant in high school, be tired of clubbing at age 20 or have reached your peak at age 16…

5. Treasure your friends. No one lives forever, but the young die too…Rest in peace Shakita and Shonda…

6. That girl who threatened to “kick your heart in” in homeroom ended up on Divorce Court (yes the television show) years later looking unkempt, hefty and just plain ghetto…karma, ha!

7. Never tell a female associate about your good man because she may just take him…Shout out to N…I guess I really can’t be mad at you since you married him and everything after high school…Guess it was meant to be…But I still learned the lesson…

8. You are a writer…(Still affirming that truth…)

9. Slow down girl…Don’t believe the hype…

10. Keep journaling…It’s therapeutic and a good way to hear from God and yourself…

11. Continue to be unflinchingly polite…You will be surprised how many people don’t bother to say please, excuse me, thank you, etc. anymore…but being polite makes you feel good about yourself even if others think you’re corny…

12. Every goodbye ain’t gone, every shut eye ain’t closed and every adult ain’t grown…

13. Exercise actually feels good…