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While I Was Deactivated…

Posted on February 27, 2022
I deeply cringed at the thought that, due to a new business venture, I must reactivate my Facebook account. It would have been a safe space for me if I could bypass any involvement with my personal page and just create a business page but that wasn’t a possibility.

For almost 10 years, I stayed away from Facebook because of a nightmare personal experience tied to it. I became a Twitter devotee for the commentary on the news, and an Instagram spectator because of the beautiful pictures, but Facebook was strictly off-limits. I was so severe in my stance that I turned down a position that required reviewing Facebook posts.

When I accepted that I could no longer get around the fact that I had to go back on Facebook, I decided that just an update to my profile picture after almost10 years would be a harmless and invisible move. I was wrong.

I logged in the next day to find multiple comments from people about the update. I forgot that it would show up as a notification for my Facebook friends. As I begin to read the comments, an unexpected feeling came over me. The person that these people were commenting on her picture – it wasn’t me.

I didn’t plan to view it like that or even think to go in that direction, but as I read the comments, I felt as if they were speaking to a person that didn’t exist anymore. Definitely bizarre, but it was unescapable. It was similar (but not exact) to someone waking up from a coma with memory loss and being greeted by people who they don’t remember anymore, but instead, I knew the people but not the person they were happy to see reappear on their feed.

It wasn’t to diminish or deny the authenticity or importance of the friendships or relationships in my life, but that person who had deactivated this Facebook account almost a decade ago wasn’t the same person who reactivated it. Same name, same appearance, and the same basic information, but it was two different people.

Recently, I was talking to someone about a Christian talk show host and the people he has on his program, and they commented that this person had survived past scandals. I realized that even though I had known about his well-documented scandals, I had forgotten about them until the comment. It is amazing how, in some ways, our past selves can disappear.

Reconnecting with the past definitely doesn’t have a fixed outcome. It can be beneficial, rewarding, and inspire gratitude, but it can also be a setback and re-establish relationships that ended for reason and don’t need to be resurrected.

I believe it was a divine action that caused me to look at that person who had created this Facebook account in 2007 and no longer recognize her. Is it because if I reconnect with her, I would stray from my current path? More than likely, but I will never know the answer to the question.

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REMEMBER ME

Posted on March 23, 2021

The text message read, “He is in hospice.” I know what it means for someone to be in hospice, but  I had no warning. I was at the beauty salon, in the stylist’s chair, and I get this text message from my sister about my uncle.

“Not him. Why him? Why him? Stay calm. Wait until your finished and then let it out in the car,” I thought to myself, and then I tried to make up a scenario where hospice was just an overflow for the hospital, but another text came through, “He is dying.” I told the hair stylist the news I just received, and we talked about it which helped me stay calm for the moment. I walked out of the salon, got into the car, called my parents, and the tears came. I asked my parents why are they just telling us now in this final stage, but they stated they just found out themselves that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer and was sent to hospice.

A week later, he made his transition.

This uncle represents some of the happiest times of my childhood. Our adventures with him and his children (my counsins) was this collection of eccentric moments filled with smiles and laughter that is a chapter in my life story.

For years, I’ve experienced the organic smiles that pop up when myself and my siblings remember those days with him, but when he passed away, it felt like a part of my childhood had died and that was unexpected. The words, “too young,” respond to this unexpected feeling.

Now memories that once made me laugh now make me cry. I want to cherish these memories, but at the moment, they haunt me because he is gone too soon. The life lesson I am learning in the midst of this is one all to familar when faced with mortality, “Life is short, and we have to make the most of the days we are given.”

One day, the smiles and the laughter will return when I remember those beautiful moments – one day.

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Children in the Courtyard

Posted on September 16, 2020

It’s Saturday night, and I am engulfed on social media following the protests, riots, and looting that have erupted across the country. I am tracking tweets as intensely as a stock broker follows the market. I am prayful, anxious, angry and filled with wonder and questions. As these contradicting thoughts and emotions crash over, I hear a sound from the window behind me.

It was a familiar sound, but it stilled me as if it was something new. I turned around and saw a little boy running around a tree in the courtyard as he filled the air with laughter. I just stared and listened for a brief moment because I felt in my heart that God wanted me to recognize a simple yet fundamental truth because the atmosphere within me was quickly going in the wrong direction.

Jesus taught that we must have child-lik faith. There is a difference between child-like and childish. Child-like are those ageless and endearing attributes of a child’s nature that we must maintain throughout life: trusting, quick and ready to forgive, tenderhearted, loving, happy, and easily able to experience joy and peace regardless of the circumstances. Childish is immature and irresponsible behavior from someone who isn’t a child. I make this distinction because us adults can believe that child-like qualities are beneahth us and that belief ages the soul in a way that God never intended – it truly makes a person ugly on the inside.

The little boy’s laughter on that Saturday nighht wasn’t my escape from reality, but it was God telling me to trust Him with child-like faith in the midst of reality. It is a terrible existence when the darkness in our world just controls our thoughts and our words. We become part of the problem instead of the solution. It is those child-like attributes that keep us from taking this wrong turn even though we are fully aware of the world around us.

God knew that what was happening on that Saturday night would set the tone for the coming months, and He, as Jesus did for His disciples in the Gospels, showed me the heart of a child so that I would keep allowing light to shine into my heart even if it is surrounded by chaos.

 

 

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CRAVE

Posted on December 11, 2019

“When you are empty, you crave things. When you are filled with God’s presence, you crave Him.” Pastor David Ireland

The pastor’s words jolted me. For months, an evolution has taken place within my soul where things I’ve desired – and they were not bad – where losing their importance, and like someone having an outer body experience, I felt as if I was watching myself change, but I didn’t completely understand the process. When I heard this statement at church, my eyes were opened.

What is happening to me? Why don’t I care about going on this bucket list trip anymore? Why am I not anxiously awaiting to see Vogue’s September issue? Why has my passion for that brand new Cadillac disappeared?

The spiritual goals always came first in my dreams and aspirations, but the natural desires where always there as well but now they were doing a disappearing act which made me feel as if I was experiencing an identity crisis.

I know as Christians we are supposed to see ourselves through Jesus Christ – our identity is in Him, but let’s be honest, we still continue to identify ourselves through race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, education, where we live, what we have, and what’s in our bank account. When these classifications, though not all bad, compete with our identity in Christ and hinder us from being a reflection of Him, they become an issue.

As I sat in this Saturday night church service and heard these words, I connected the dots and solved the mystery.

My cravings for certain things and experiences in my life always stood just about next to my relationship with God and fulfilling the purposes He has for me life, and a divine realignment was taking place within me. What previously held so much importance, didn’t matter. What previously created so much excitement was now boring. What needed to happen became irrelevant. I felt like King Solomon when he proclaimed in Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

My soul was being emptied of one order to be filled up with a new one.

My constant prayer and cry to God over the past year is that I want to experience a new beginning in my life – a new chapter. Jesus said you can’t put new wine into old wineskins, but new wine must go into new wineskins. I want the new, and this evolution is God preparing for me the new by getting rid of the old.

When God answers our prayers, or starts the process that will eventually lead to the answer, our response has a crucial role. As I notice myself changing, I recognize two reactions that our constantly a choice until I have fully evolved into the new me. The first reaction is to try to reignite the passion I previously had for certain things as someone trying to re-establish a relationship with an ex. A place within  you is empty and you are trying to fill it with what is familiar or what you think should be there, and each time I have this response, there is a sense of emptiness that is so loud within me it is almost an audible noise.

The second reaction, and it is the God reaction, is to fill these new unoccupied spaces with Him through prayer, bible study, your calling, and fellowship, and each time this response happens, a new order is being established until it becomes the new you. What should be at the top is at the top. What should be in the middle is in the middle, and what should be at the bottom is at the bottom.

There is an intense struggle between the old and the new. It happens in the human soul and in the world around us. We want change, but we fight against it. It’s the insanity Albert Einstein so rightly defined. I don’t want to live in my insanity anymore. It is desperately time for new beginnings – a new chapter. I crave a new life with God more than anything the old me desired.

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The Dress That Twirls: Redefining Peter Pan Syndrome

Posted on May 28, 2019

“I want the dress that twirls,” Mary Beth protested to her mother. We were headed out to enjoy an Easter Sunday stroll around town when she suddenly requested this outfit change. I immediately thought, “What is the dress that twirls, and why does this three year old believe this dress is best for our outing?” Mary Beth is an extremely smart and thoughtful toddler; therefore, I knew there was more to her request than just a dress change – and I was right.

As we walked around Georgetown, we saw a small park beautifully decorated with cherry blossoms. Mary Beth got out of her stroller and begin dancing in the park and playing with the cherry blossoms. Her mother Elise turned to me and said, “That is why she wanted to wear that dress because she likes how it twirls when she dances.” Mary Beth knew, from prior experiences, that the stroll around town meant for plenty of whimsical opportunities to dance and play, and she wanted to wear the dress best suited for the occasion.

As I watched and participated in this ethereal performance, I found myself wanting to live in her world. As I jumped up and down throwing cherry blossoms in the air and running in the church yard adorned with daises, I escaped the abundant, and sometimes grappling, anxieties of my life, and I went to a different place.

It is a world where the carefree happiness of childhood perpetually exists and the stresses of adult life are never permitted. I wanted to stay in Mary Beth’s world as long as I could because I knew somewhere between when I got in my car to head back home and going to work the next morning, I would mentally go back to the “real world.”

What is the balance between the Apostle Paul’s comments that our actions must show the transition from childhood to adulthood, and Jesus’s comments that unless we become like little children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven?

Despite the fact that I have been taking care of myself since I was eighteen years old, I’ve been told that I have peter pan syndrome to a certain degree. This description wasn’t bestowed upon me because I fit the classic definition of those who suffer from this syndrome. It was given to me because, in spite of many hardships that should have noticeably scarred my heart, I have maintained this youthful soul. 

Recently, I begin losing my peter pan syndrome. The negative experiences and disappointments of living in New York started to steal my youthful exuberance. I thought maybe I do need to grow up and these problems are necessary for change, but the affect on my attitude wasn’t positive so something was amiss with my conclusion.

My struggle demanded a change in my approach to relationships so there was a “growing up” element involved, but even greater than that, I realized that for the first time I am in a place where I can’t even remotely solve my problems, and I have to trust God with childlike faith more than ever if I want to come out of this with my soul unscathed. It is a divine spin on my peter pan syndrome.

As a daily reminder of that happy place where I can exist as long as I have my childlike trust in God, I keep a picture in front of me from that magical Easter Sunday where I twirled with my tinkerbell, Mary Beth.

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From Black to Human

Posted on November 13, 2018

Two Words That Changed My View About Race

I live for (and die with) the comment section. The general public’s insight and humor on a story, a social media post, or a YouTube video is just as informative as the piece itself. Comment sections – the new chat rooms – have drawn me in to the point where I almost don’t engage any content that doesn’t allow comments.

But what comes along with the comedic relief and different perspectives that I find delightful are comments from ill-informed, uneducated, and just simply mean-spirited people who like the attention they get from negative comments. The positive always outweighs the negative, but the negative, for some reason, can speak so loudly to us rational humans to where it makes the positive non-existent.

One night I was looking at videos about the Civil Rights Movement on YouTube and reading the comment section. Between the video content and the negative comments, I found myself overwhelmed with anger. The content itself can easily enrage someone because it speaks to the horrors of American institutionalized racism that lasted so long into the country’s existence, but the negative comments take the recent past into the present and reveal the number of people, because of their own racism, who either continue to justify that behavior or minimize it to varying degrees.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (New International Version, Eph. 6.12)

My mentor gave me this guiding principal about the difference between positive holy anger and negative human anger. When your anger is directed at a person, it is a guarantee that God didn’t incite that type of anger within you, but when it is directed at the forces of darkness and their destructive works, your Heavenly Father is calling you to take action.

As I read the comments on the YouTube videos that night, my anger was directed at people. I caught myself because I knew in that moment whatever message was finding a place within me wasn’t from God so I prayed. These two words were impressed upon my heart as I spoke to God – Human Race.

I have known for quite sometime that the concept of different races of human beings is a social construct and not a biological or biblical reality. God created different tribes and tongues (or as we say today – nationalities), but He didn’t create different races of people. The purpose that our modern-day racial classification system came into existence was to promote division and supremacy. At its very root, the belief system that there are different races of people is antagonistic towards the unity God intended to exist among humanity.

I’ve heard plenty of times that there is nothing wrong with racial pride or racial identity regardless of the origin of our modern-day racial classifications. My response to that is would you be comfortable with someone of another race expressing their racial pride to you? Without fail, people honestly aren’t comfortable in that scenario. The reason for that is race is inherently divisive because it was created to be divisive and there isn’t any way it can be recast to remove the spirit of division that is connected to it.

Today, with God’s perspective about the human race, I am no longer comfortable with racial classifications. When I hear people talk about their race and affiliate themselves with a race to distinguish themselves from other people, I clearly see how that undermines unity and promotes division and strife. I strongly believe that race is one of the most powerful tools diabolically used to prevent people from living the life God intended for them.

I purchsed a t-shirt that sums up my stance on race. It has differenct races listed on it with boxes next to each them, but the only listing with the box checked is next to the word human. People have and continue to fight against racism in our world, but if we want to end racism, we have to abolish the belief system at the root of racism – race.

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Tears, Blood, and Sorrow

Posted on January 9, 2018

How The Columbus Day Controversy Re-Kindled God’s Heart Within Me For The Native Americans

I wasn’t a fan of Columbus Day well before the anti-sentiments became a cultural norm. I never understood for years why Columbus Day is a federal holiday. It is absurd and a flat out insult to say someone discovered something when there were people already here. It’s as if those people didn’t exist. If we are honest with ourselves, the people indigenous to the lands called the Americas have been treated for centuries as if they were anything other than people that deserved the Golden Rule treatment Jesus commanded.

Someone said something on twitter in the midst of the Columbus Day debate that just grabbed my heart. This person wrote that they believe Native Americans would like for people to remember their existence more than just one controversial day during the entire year. I am one of those people that Columbus Day stirs up sorrow in my heart for America’s indigenous people, but after that day, I just go on with my life. I know that there is more I can do for the indigenous people who are still alive – I’ve always known – but I have never acted on that awareness. This tweet exposed my inaction, but it also made me feel like a hypocrite.

“Why aren’t they smiling in any of these pictures?” “Would you be smiling if you were subjected to what happened to them?” Years ago, this exchange happened between myself and a co-worker as we looked at pictures of Native Americans. The piercing sorrow in their faces in every single one of those pictures broke my heart to the point where, as a form of escapism, I wanted to recreate American history to where the U.S. government didn’t have any blame for their plight.

I am not the only American who, at some point in our lives, wanted to run from our country’s evil beginnings and think we’ve always been this special place on earth where everyone has always had access to live the great American Dream. There is a significant portion of U.S. citizens who have created an American history that would be defined in literature as historical fiction, and they defend their version with this mantra, “If you don’t like our country get out.”

The recreation happens because it is extremely difficult to face the depth of brutality this country legally subjected people to for centuries. So instead of saying, “These evil things did happen. The United States of America has a very dark past that includes tremendous human rights violations that lasted for centuries, but we are in a better place today,” there are millions of Americans who would whether just lie to themselves than face the truth, and they even get mad at other people for speaking the truth.

I recently established within myself that we are currently living within a narrative where people are trying to recover from centuries of legalized white supremacy, segregation, bondage, and oppression. It is one thing to read about societies rebounding from destruction in history books, but it is requires an authentic mental adjustment to realize you are living within one of those societies. I believe this proper mental framework helped me to correctly respond to that tweet instead of pretending like I didn’t see it because it rebuked me.

I was running from God’s calling on my life to be of service to the Native American community because I couldn’t face the devastation and destruction brought upon them by the sheer existence of this country and its governments – federal, state, and local. More than any other people group existing in this world right now, none has suffered loss as the indigenous people of the Americas. The few that have survived the destruction are in a fight to overcome the horrors of the past while the world around them is a constant reminder. It is an intensely hard and painful fight that, if not won, leads to a dark existence medicated by various forms of escapism.

Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. (Gen. 4:8-12 NKJV)

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.                       (2 Cor. 5:10 NKJV)

People may choose to forgot what happened to the Native Americans, down play it, justify it, or just turn them into caricatures for their Halloween costumes and mascots, but God hasn’t forgot. God sees the blood of innocent Native American men, women, and children that is entrenched within American soil, and one day, every single person who brought destruction upon these people will answer for their crimes. Like Christopher Columbus, they may be celebrated heroes on the Earth for their evil deeds, but Divine justice will prevail in the end.