X-Ray Vision
Posted: March 29, 2011 Filed under: faith, Lifestyle 3 Comments »I hate going to the dentist.
I become a 2-year-old, overly sensitive cry-baby no matter what I am getting done. From routine cleaning to x-rays to root canal it doesn’t matter.
I hate going to the dentist.
A week ago I had to face the music and get some long overdue dental work done. I had to finally make amends with a problem that has brewed under the surface for almost 6 years. Yeah, 6 years, I know….don’t judge me.
When my middle son, Ajani, was born my dentist told me that my pregnancy and nursing of him weakened my enamel on my teeth and a small cavity had surfaced on the inside of one of my back teeth. The X-rays showed some preliminary signs of surface decay – nothing major – that could be resolved with a quick filling. I promised that I would have it treated but never did. I scheduled and re-scheduled my appointments until finally I just stopped kidding myself and the dentist. I did continue to have my routine cleanings and every time my dentist would warn me that I needed to treat that tooth. Now here I am 6 years later and the problem has finally left me with no choice….the X-rays show that what started as a minor surface problem had developed into a deep cavity that could’ve resulted in a root canal. Yikes.
So, what has compelled me to write about such a personal thing? It’s that from the outside, my teeth are pristine. I floss regularly so my gums are strong and I brush twice daily. To me, my teeth are pretty to look at and show no evidence of decay but the x-rays – that showed what was going on on the inside - told a different story.. and it wasn’t pretty. Of all things for God to use as a teachable moment, right?
Matthew 23: 27 Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you are like tombs that have been whitewashed, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything impure.
I had disregarded the early warnings and signs from the dentist and chosen to allow the issue to fester beneath the surface until it was exposed. My tooth had become so sensitive to temperature and sugar until I couldn’t take it any longer. When I finally got under the drill, the dentist had to drill all the way down – almost into the root – to remove the cavity and then fill it with whatever it is dentist fill teeth with. I had to get three shots of Novocaine to numb the area and had to endure 3 hours of anxiety (even though the procedure was only 20 minutes total).
So often we ignore the signs of an unhealthy spiritual life (or natural life for that matter) and keep moving, disregarding them as minor issues – ” God knows my heart”, “I am only human”, “I know I wasn’t completely honest about that but God, what was I supposed to do?”, Fill in your own here_______ . These are my excuses, in the words of Kirk Franklin “I cast my own stone”. If you are a believer, God always speaks to us in that still quiet voice, he is the ultimate X-ray, His spirit is always revealing truth to us about ourselves if only we choose to listen. And not just listen but act on what He is directing us to do, say or learn. He is the greatest excavator and cleans out the ugliest and nastiest of “tombs” but we are the ones that choose to whitewash them. We are the ones who parade around with the masks like everything is all good. Like we’ve got it all together so that we seem to be something we are not on the outside. But what about what is going on inside? What about what is happening under the surface that we so deliberately and sometimes, quite expertly, hide?
Additionally, the work didn’t just stop at the discovery and removal. My ‘cleaned-out’ tooth had to be filled with something. My tooth needed a filling. Just as I can’t stop at removing whatever that dark, ugly place is in my heart that God is treating, I have to fill it with something. It is up to me what I fill it with. If I am wise, I fill it with the Word of God, wise counsel, positive influences. If I am foolish, I return to my old habits and familiar ways and end up where I started from – or worse.
As I was wrapping up my enlightening trip to the dentist, I asked if that tooth was safe and if more work needed to be done to that tooth. He shrugged and warned me that he would have to keep an eye on it because he got as much as he could see but that didn’t mean it was 100% cured. I would have to guard it and keep watch…
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
Selah.
So now my prayer for my spiritual (and natural) life is that God, the ultimate X-Ray, continues to grant me the eyes to see and the ears to hear not just what is going on at the surface, but give me the desire, the courage and the strength to dig deeper and deal with what lies beneath – for there is where the healing begins and there is where I truly discover who I am.
Love y’all!
Does Anybody Hear Her?
Posted: March 17, 2011 Filed under: faith, Lifestyle Leave a comment »You never know what people are going through.
I experienced this in a major way recently and just wanted to post this beautiful song and lyrics by Casting Crowns.
Be mindful and watchful for those in need around you, there are so many ways to judge others by what you think you see or what you think you know about them but if someone played a video of your life….well, just watch and read.
We all have a past but we also have a hope and a future…
She is running
A hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction
She is trying
But the canyon’s ever widening
In the depths of her cold heart
So she sets out on another misadventure just to find
She’s another two years older
And she’s three more steps behind
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
Or does anybody even know she’s going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that’s tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
She is yearning
For shelter and affection
That she never found at home
She is searching
For a hero to ride in
To ride in and save the day
And in walks her prince charming
And he knows just what to say
Momentary lapse of reason
And she gives herself away
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
Or does anybody even know she’s going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that’s tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
If judgment looms under every steeple
If lofty glances from lofty people
Can’t see past her scarlet letter
And we’ve never even met her
If judgment looms under every steeple
If lofty glances from lofty people
Can’t see past her scarlet letter
And we’ve never even met her
Never even met her
(Never Even Met her)
(OHHHHH)Does anybody hear her? Does anybody see?
Or does anybody even know she’s going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that’s tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? (Does anybody hear her?) Does anybody see? (Does anybody See?)
Does anybody even know she’s going down today?
Under the shadow of our steeple (shadow of her steeple)
With all the lost and lonely people (Lost and Lonely people)
Searching for the hope that’s tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? Does anybody see?
He is running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction
Revolve Tour 2011
Posted: March 13, 2011 Filed under: Lifestyle Leave a comment »I am on the road returning from The Revolve: Dream On! Tour in Baltimore at 1st Mariner. Revolve is a Christian conference for teens (similar to Women of Faith). I went as a chaperone for SOR (Sisters of Righteousness) a teen group for girls at my church.
The conference was AWESOME to sum it up in one word that gives it no justice. All the speakers and artists were beautiful, moving and relevant. I wish something like this existed when I was a teenager, maybe I would have made different choices during those days…Maybe I wouldn’t have placed so much value on how I looked. I may have learned earlier in life that God formed me perfectly in my mother’s womb and He thinks I am precious and beautiful just the way I am.
Maybe I wouldn’t have sought to please everyone around me regardless of whether it was detrimental to my emotional, mental, physical and spiritual health. I would have been able to understand and walk in the faith and hope that if I commit my works to the Lord, He will honor my work and the validation of others wouldn’t have mattered so much. Maybe.
I went to church my whole life but back then, the practical truth and wisdom of a conference like this was unknown to me and I struggled through adolescence wondering if I was pretty enough, smart enough, just enough – enough.(If I tell the truth about it, I still struggle with it from time to time).
Now that I’m older and have witnessed the power of God’s grace in my life, I know that every struggle, lesson, victory and loss was not for me at all…it was for ‘them’. For every young lady that comes to me crying because some boy broke her heart. For every one that calls me stressing out over their friendships or how they look or not making the team, I can relate and try to offer them some words of encouragement as much as I can.
I can remind them they are enough, they are special and they are loved not just because I think so but because God says so. And I pray that they remember God’s unwavering, powerful, redeeming, liberating, validating love if they ever begin to question their worth as I often did when I was their age.
Despite the lack of a conference like Revolve: Dream On! when I was younger, I didn’t turn out so bad 
. So now I can’t help but get excited for these ladies’ future and help guide them to meet it with their heads up to the sky!
Dream On ladies, Dream On!
SOR girls with Revolve Artist, Jamie Grace
Managing Expectations
Posted: March 11, 2011 Filed under: Lifestyle, relationships 4 Comments »Live. Write. Heal. Right?
I have recently had an over 10-year friendship dissolve evolve into something strange and I have been working through the emotions involved with that. I am in a state of reflection right now, trying to figure out what happened. Should I just leave well-enough alone? Could I have done something differently – should I have? If I am honest with myself I can say that I have felt some distance begin to grow between us for a while. It has always been the big, white elephant in the middle of the room. I am sure if I felt it, she felt it too but neither of us has said anything. When we first began our friendship we were very much alike but had no idea until much later. In the beginning I was a single parent with no man so we hung out, enjoyed each other’s company, shopped together, laughed together. But as I have grown and she has grown (perhaps), I began to feel a chasm between us. I first noticed a change in our interaction when I got married. I don’t think she was jealous or anything like that. She had just gotten out of a 10-year marriage and was newly single and was definitely enjoying her new found freedom, so I don’t think that had anything to do with it. At first it started with small comments about what my husband was or wasn’t doing for/with me. Then I would vent to her about stuff that was going on between us – stuff every newlywed couple grows through when they are, well, newlyweds.
Then as time progressed on, she would do or say things with her own life that I didn’t necessarily agree with (and vice-versa) but I was no saint so I didn’t judge her or form any opinions about what she was or wasn’t doing because – who was I to tell a grown woman what to do with her life? Hey, if she liked it I loved it. Well needless to say, those early seeds of indifference and turning a blind eye to certain things began to harvest and now I sit here with a dead friendship that I don’t know what to do with. I say my actions are probably mostly responsible for this because as I have evolved as a woman, my outlook on life, love and relationships has changed and I just don’t respond to things the way I used to. I actually have a conscience now that I try not to offend and I often will opt to do the right thing as opposed to the thing that feels good. I can’t necessarily say the same for her – not judging – it just is what it is.
So let me give some background to why I am here. I recently experienced a death in my family that I was trying to work through and in the midst of all that, my friend called me and I was unable to answer the phone. I was unable to answer the phone twice – as she reminded me when she finally got me on the phone. Once she said that to me, without really noticing, I got really angry and shouted “I was busy – I had a death in my family!” I was really irritated that she said that to me given the type of stressful weekend I had just had. I couldn’t believe that here I was, going through something very painful and the only thing she could say was I called you twice this weekend?!?! As if I was rude/wrong for not answering or returning her call. Now granted, she didn’t know that I was going through a death in my family, but even if I wasn’t, since when is it OK for someone to say so I called you this weekend? I have never understood what people expected of you when they say something like that. What kind of whacked out abandonment issues does one have when a person isn’t even allowed to not answer your calls? The whole experience left me feeling kind of funky.
So, why am I so upset you ask? Because I would NEVER in all seriousness, in a million years say to another individual (outside of my husband) that I called them when they didn’t call me back. It just makes you seem needy and clingy and quite frankly, all it does is invite the person to either lie to you (Oh, I didn’t see it), or hurt your feelings (I know. And?). Either way it doesn’t end pretty so that is why God invented caller ID and voicemail. Obviously, the person was unable to answer the call at the time and when another time is more suitable, they will call you back. Is it just me? The second reason I am so upset is because once I heard that the person I deem a friend a experienced a death in their family, I would have immediately switched gears and said oh no, how selfish of me, sorry to hear that, are you ok? Who died? How’s your family…yada, yada, yada. You know stuff FRIENDS say. Instead, she was wrapped in her feelings of the fact that I snapped at her. Said a few empty words I don’t even remember and abruptly hung up the phone. I haven’t really heard from her since. I have since tried to call her back (yes, I left a voicemail) and sent an an email apologizing for snapping at her – which she responded to – but nothing of substance. I haven’t heard from her since.
I remember talking with my mother about life one day and she said, “Baby, just because someone has always been your friend, doesn’t mean they have to stay that way forever. Length of time is never a good reason to stay in a relationship that has stopped being reciprocal”. Simple but so complex. That conversation with my mother came back to me after me and my friend’s latest – riff (for lack of a better word). And then after speaking with another one of my good girlfriends she dropped something on me that I have NEVER heard before but it hit me like a ton of bricks.
“Sometimes you have to manage your expectations of how you think people should treat you. Just because you are a certain kind of friend to someone, it doesn’t mean they are going to be that same kind of friend to you.
Wow.
I meditated and pondered on that all night long last night. Managing Expectations. That isn’t a new terminology to me at all because that is what I do for a living and I know all about managing expectations. I am a Marketing Account Manager (i.e. Project Manager) and all day long I manage my client’s expectations, manage my internal teams expectations but never, ever have I managed my own expectations. This is going to be new territory for me and I am not sure how to navigate these waters.
So today is my first day of trying to manage my own expectations. I am purposing not to expect people to treat me any differently than they have proven to be. I will only be responsible for my own actions and leave others actions completely up to them. I will not hold anyone hostage for letting me down, however I will set boundaries and not accept behavior that is displeasing to me for the sake of “friendship” and most importantly today, I will free those who want to be freed. In the words of Fantasia…”Go Ahead and Free Yourself ” I will not be anyone’s option or fair-weather friend…I don’t have to be.
Love and Light y’all…:)
