That's Me

Recently, I have been terribly inspired by poets. I have always had a special interest in African American poets as I feel the emotion, passion yet poignant control in their writing is uncanny. Recently Maya Angelou has captured my undivided attention. Writing mostly as an autobiographical fiction author, Angelou has written many autobiographies and created a new genre for doing so. She sees past the facts and into the motives, the heart, the persona, the lies, the games...all of it. She once said "All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated." So much of life is about survival and keeping our head clear above the water as we gasp for a cool breath for our aching lungs. These are not moments... but perhaps months, years... decades of searching our own heart and motives for the things unseen in our own lives. The depth of something that seems aloof or potentially intrusive. There are times I would rather sink than fight to keep my head above the water. To walk away rather than press in. To walk backwards instead of moving forwards. To let life teach me rather than me arrogantly teach "it." To allow faith to resonate and fear to fade.


Often to rise above these moments I remind myself of who I am and what I am truly capable of. It is taking that "grace" and "faith" and allowing the unknown to surface. What could it be? Will it kill me? Will I know what to do with it? Can I survive this pain and heartache?


I know I am more than just a woman but this woman, on a very lousy, stressful day, needed to be reminded of her woman-ness. As women we should never shy away from loving every inch of who we are. Each one of us has survived something... don't let time erase that from our memories.


Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.


Maya Angelou

Joan Didion: My Muse

Loved this excerpt from "The Year of Magical Thinking"... one of my favorite books.

Enjoy.

Excerpted from "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion Copyright © 2005 by Joan Didion. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

* * *

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

The question of self-pity.

Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file ("Notes on change.doc") reads "May 20, 2004, 11:11 p.m.," but that would have been a case of my opening the file and reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file in May. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words, in January 2004, a day or two or three after the fact. For a long time I wrote nothing else.
Life changes in the instant.

The ordinary instant.
At some point, in the interest of remembering what seemed most striking about what had happened, I considered adding those words, "the ordinary instant." I saw immediately that there would be no need to add the word "ordinary," because there would be no forgetting it: the word never left my mind. It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it.

I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy. "He was on his way home from work—happy, successful, healthy—and then, gone," I read in the account of a psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in Honolulu on the morning of December 7, 1941; without exception, these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an "ordinary Sunday morning" it had been. "It was just an ordinary beautiful September day," people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note: "Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States."

"And then—gone." In the midst of life we are in death, Episcopalians say at the graveside. Later I realized that I must have repeated the details of what happened to everyone who came to the house in those first weeks, all those friends and relatives who brought food and made drinks and laid out plates on the dining room table for however many people were around at lunch or dinner time, all those who picked up the plates and froze the leftovers and ran the dishwasher and filled our (I could not yet think my) otherwise empty house even after I had gone into the bedroom (our bedroom, the one in which there still lay on a sofa a faded terrycloth XL robe bought in the 1970s at Richard Carroll in Beverly Hills) and shut the door. Those moments when I was abruptly overtaken by exhaustion are what I remember most clearly about the first days and weeks. I have no memory of telling anyone the details, but I must have done so, because everyone seemed to know them. At one point I considered the possibility that they had picked up the details of the story from one another, but immediately rejected it: the story they had was in each instance too accurate to have been passed from hand to hand. It had come from me.
Another reason I knew that the story had come from me was that no version I heard included the details I could not yet face, for example the blood on the living room floor that stayed there until José came in the next morning and cleaned it up.
José. Who was part of our household. Who was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas later that day, December 31, but never went. José was crying that morning as he cleaned up the blood. When I first told him what had happened he had not understood. Clearly I was not the ideal teller of this story, something about my version had been at once too offhand and too elliptical, something in my tone had failed to convey the central fact in the situation (I would encounter the same failure later when I had to tell Quintana), but by the time José saw the blood he understood.

I had picked up the abandoned syringes and ECG electrodes before he came in that morning but I could not face the blood.

In outline.

It is now, as I begin to write this, the afternoon of October 4, 2004.

Nine months and five days ago, at approximately nine o'clock on the evening of December 30, 2003, my husband, John Gregory Dunne, appeared to (or did) experience, at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York, a sudden massive coronary event that caused his death. Our only child, Quintana, had been for the previous five nights unconscious in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center's Singer Division, at that time a hospital on East End Avenue (it closed in August 2004) more commonly known as "Beth Israel North" or "the old Doctors' Hospital," where what had seemed a case of December flu sufficiently severe to take her to an emergency room on Christmas morning had exploded into pneumonia and septic shock.

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs, a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly impenetrable polish. The way I write is who I am, or have become, yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room, equipped with an Avid, a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now, let you pick the takes, the marginally different expressions, the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable, if only for myself.

To Read More...

Quiet Time

 

What I love the most about being in California again is the incredible amount of quiet time I get. Now, I don't just mean the obvious physical noise being muted but rather a simplistic hush that comes over me when I am able to sit in the quiet. We often see quiet time as something we ought to do and for me it is something I long for on a daily basis. The enormous amount of desire that conveys itself in a moment of picking an orange off a tree, filling the thirsty, longing wilted flowers with nourishment, the crash of the ocean as it hisses... beyond me, beyond this place...echoing into eternity. My mind craves those inexplicable moments that bring nature and human into one place... a quiet place.

I have a dream of walking along the ocean and I feel my toes squishing into the sand, it is warm and soft and forms to each contour of my feet as if to say "I see you, I support you"... as I stop myself and turn toward the vast and unwavering ocean, I can only believe in two things.

That this life is bigger than me but I am still a small instrument in the smallest inter-workings of God

And

That there is more to life than always seeing it as "bigger than me."

In my dream I hold my shoes in one hand, novels of great writers in the other and take a stroll with past minds... I reflect on the inconsistencies of life. The great depression and holocaust the world has immersed itself in. I admire the way my hair blows effortlessly in the salty winds as a splash of wave tickles my ankles and reminds me that I am human and therefore can not and should not decipher the world. Who am I to entertain questions about angels and demons and philosophers? Who am I to entertain questions about my God? Who are you God? Do you see me? The waves speak to me.... crying, exacerbating thoughts that make no sense... make no mention of understanding. Hurling their deeply entrenched desire to guide me toward the true light, the true answers... my Arthurian journey. Endless wandering of sand between my feet,  chilled water at my side and violent wind a my back...

This dream is a literal dream but a picture of my life in a reality I desire so often. When I close my eyes, I find myself feet in the ocean, ankle deep in the crisp rejuvenation of life. The reminder that there are endless possibilities as the ocean seems endless on the aching horizon.

I slowly dust the sand off my feet as I trail further away from the ocean I love, the ocean I crave, the endless possibilities of fluidity and motion. I carve my dreams not in sand but in stone... ones that I can remember. My dream will be my reality. My reality is this moment and this moment is quiet.

Deconstruction of a Stereotype

This is my final paper last semester in my African American Literature class. It will make more sense if you have read Ntosake Shange's choreopoem For Colored Girls and Gloria Naylor's novel The Women of Brewster Place. Both of these pieces are excellent reads. I was asked by my proff to submit for potential scholarly review! This kind of literature continually moves me and I enjoy reflecting and writing on it...

Enjoy!

The Strong, Black Woman: Deconstruction of a Stereotype through Violence

What does it mean to be strong, be black and be a woman? When put together as one phrase it becomes a common stereotype: the “strong black woman”. Ngina T. Bagget said it demonstrably in her poem titled “Strong Black Woman.” The final four lines exclaim, “Strong Black Woman/ Affected so many lives/ Being Strong for those who Couldn't/
But in the END Gracefully said Goodbye” (Bagget 2010). In these short line we see the identity of the strong black woman as a self-contained in control matriarch who thrusts through oppression even until death. This idea of black women being resilient and emotion-less is critical in literature especially when the notion of physical, emotional and mental violence is introduced. Though there are many arguments about the myriad of reasons (i.e.: white, capitalistic, patriarchy) for the stereotypical “black man’s violence,” the focus here is of the black woman as a victim of violence in literature and how this speaks to black women as a whole.  The question posed is this: In Ntosake Shange’s choreopoem For Colored Girls and Gloria Naylor’s novel The Women of Brewster Place what are the reactions from the black women who are victims of violence? How do black women survive the oppressive violence demonstrated to them by black men? By deconstructing the stereotype of the “strong black woman” and clinging to other black women for support, the black woman is able to regain her voice and dignity.

            To understand the strong, black woman, it is crucial to identify the binary by which it was born, that being the tension between black men and black women. There is an underlying strain between black men /women that has been current for centuries and yet theorists do not know how to effectively encompass and comprehend the stereotypical binary of “weak black man verses strong black woman.” The repercussions of these stereotypes are what elicit violence that one sees in For Colored Girls and The Women of Brewster Place. To enhance this argument that there is a distinct binary, Dr. Jean Wyatt in his article titled “Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Sexual Politics and the Genealogy of the Strong Black Woman” states, “When African American women and men internalize the gender ideology of the ‘weak men, strong women,’ there are political effects: The anger that could energize…dividing them from each other and thus preventing the solidarity needed for collective resistance” (Wyatt 55). Similarly to this statement are lines from For Colored girls like “are we ghouls? children of horror? the joke” (Shange 4). Instead of binding together as black men and women the movement is to resist one another and do themselves the disservice of silencing their collective voice. These women are seen simply as “ghouls” without any voice or presence. The silencing has come directly from their stereotype. What then do black women do with this lack of voice? Wyatt explains, “Being a strong, black woman meant that she could not admit vulnerability or imperfection or neediness” (Wyatt 57). Essentially to survive as a black woman in a society where tension between the two sexes is present one must be strong, even if it means she removes herself so far from her emotions.

A black woman must not admit to the imperfections of being human and as Shange puts it in her choreopeom, “we gotta dance to keep from cryin/ we gotta dance to keep from dyin” (Shange 15). Black women must keep dancing to the rhythm of life because black women have succeeded as matriarchs of their family due to many factors. Black women not only work against the violence of black men’s stereotype but also against racism and sexism. The black women constantly remind the readers that ‘We’re still here’ throughout The Women of Brewster Place by Naylor explicating the different character developments.

Unable to establish their her own identity apart from the strong, black woman, Lucielia “Ciel” Louise Turnerstory in The Women of Brewster Place is exposed to severe violence and her identity crisis that comes with the loss of her innocence. It is the coming together of black women that is what ultimately brings healing and rebirth to violence. Ciel is introduced to the readers not through outright descriptive narrative but through her thoughts and internal nature. Her narrative comes from the voice in her head as part of being a strong, black woman is to reject feelings of pain. Her relationship with her husband is detrimental in nature and he can be described as a man who can have a child but not talk care of it (Naylor 91). When Ciel becomes pregnant again with her second child, her husband Eugene asks “How the hell we gonna feed it when it gets here?” (Naylor 95). This tension rises as Eugene takes Ciel to get an abortion and the reaction Ciel gives (internally) is, “It was important that she keep herself completely isolated from these surroundings…Ciel wanted no part of it” (Naylor 95). In this scene Naylor deconstructs Ciel into a dehumanized object and forces the reader to ask: If Ciel is a strong, black woman, why did she just say no?

The deconstruction of the strong, black woman has begun at this point in the narrative and it only spirals with the loss of her daughter through electrocution. The violent death of her fetus to the hands of weak husband and the loss of a child due to a moment of negligence brings Ciel to the brink of sanity, “She was simply tired of hurting” (Naylor 101). Mary O’Connor in her article titled “Subject, Voice, and Women in Some Contemporary Black American Women’s Writing” describes this moment of severe loss more in depth when she states, “Ciel goes dead, she cannot mourn and is killing herself by not eating” (O’Connor 44). At this point there is not a strong, black woman in Ciel. She has given up the will until matriarch Mattie comes to be her savior. Ciel has been silenced by the violence done to her and Mattie has come to bring voice where it had only been internalized before. In a moment of deep desperation Mattie rocks Ciel like a mother would a child, rocking “back into the womb” (Naylor 103). Ciel finally releases the brokenness and allows herself to feel pain which complicates the stereotype. This rocking is done to exorcize the “evilness of pain” and Mattie gives Ciel a bath to “baptize” her back into existence. It took one black woman to bring another black woman to life (Naylor 104). O’Connor said it succinctly by expressing that, “This story calls for a period of mourning, a process of soothing and healing” and the most imperative aspect to the deconstruction of the strong, black woman is the process of healing (O’Connor 47). By allowing Mattie to enter into her vulnerability and figuratively baptize her back into existence, Ciel is able to regain a sense of consciousness. This is shown at the end of the story as Naylor writes that “…she (Ciel) would sleep. And morning would come” (Naylor 105).

As a contrast to Ciel’s expose that Naylor gives is the story of Lorraine that is found in the “Two” section of the novel. Lorraine’s story is the deconstruction of the strong, black woman but in the case of Lorraine she does not have the comfort and rocking of another black woman like Mattie. Lorraine’s rape is an instance of violence with no hope attached. No one saves Lorraine from her pain and even the reader feels trapped in her agony. Not only a strong, black woman, Lorraine is also a lesbian. If being a black woman was not difficult for its societal and social constraints the complexity of sexuality is now added to her individuality. Lorraine is a good woman but she “threated their (neighborhood) children” with her identity as a homosexual (Naylor 142). One could argue that she must now be a stronger, black woman in light of her sexuality. Her identity is a sort of hyper-strong black woman who can cling to her lover Theresa but no one else. Understanding the tension between black individuals, Lorraine states, “Black people were all in the same boat---she’d come to realize this even more since they had moved to Brewster---and if they didn’t row together, they would sink together” (Naylor 142). This foreshadows the horrific rape that Lorraine is forced to be the victim of and her prophetic words of “sinking together” become prevalent. In the moments before the physical rape occurs, Lorraine realizes why the boys are going to violate her and contemplates, “So Lorraine found herself, on her knees, surrounded by the most dangerous species in existence---human males with an erection to validate in a world that was only six feet wide” (Naylor 170). Laura E. Tanner in her article titled “Reading Rape: Sanctuary and The Women of Brewster Place” describes these males as “imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (Tanner 576). The breaking down of the strong, black woman merely into a bearer of meaning forces the reader to see Lorraine as an object and not as a human. Lorraine is sinking to the hands of another stereotype. Pain becomes a character introduced in this moment and lingers as the men “pin her arms, wrench open her legs and tear her pantyhose” (Naylor 170). Violence has deconstructed the strong, black woman into nothing but a tall yellow woman in a bloody green and black dress whose only way of speaking, like Ciel’s moaning, is to say “please” (Naylor 173). Lorraine is reduced to nothingness and does not have a Mattie to bring her to life and ultimately she cannot be rebirthed into a new identity without the help or ‘rocking’ of other black women. Brokenness is all that is left of Lorraine without any hope of reconstructing her identity.

Like The Women of Brewster Place, For Colored Girls is a choreopoem intended to be acted out by each of the characters i.e.: lady in red, blue, brown and etc. Each one of these ladies has a story to tell about loss of innocence, children, lives and ultimately what it means to be a strong, black woman. Shange begins her choreopoem with each of the women coming onto the stage through different exits. This signifying the different stages of life and different experiences each woman has encountered on her individual journey. Each woman dances separately and like O’Connor states, “This separateness continues as some women reject others parodying one dancing, or refusing to dance, but gradually as the stories unfold, as difference and similarity are established, they begin to dance together” (O’Connor 46). The women realize there is power in their language and telling of stories. Their differences define them just as much as their similarities as is described in the dark phases of womanhood by the lady in brown. The lady in brown describes the disheartening view of being a black woman, she describes:

dark phrases of womanhood

of never havin been a girl

half-notes scattered

without rhythm/ no tune

distraught laughter fallin

over a black girl’s shoulder

it’s funny/it’s hysterical

the melody-less-ness of her dance

don’t tell nobody don’t tell a soul

she’s dancing on beer cans & shingles

(Shange 3)

This portion of the text complicates the idea that black women have never been girls. They were born into a world with no rhythm and no tune therefore they cannot dance to the events of life. The dancing comes only to mask the pain that has overtaken each black woman. Their laughter is distraught due to the realization that black woman are subhuman in this context. That their voices have been silenced by their stereotype and Shange’s entire choreopoem is to give each lady a turn to “dance” or to “speak” if you will. This is reinforced when the lady in brown goes on to say “she’s been dead so long/ closed in silence so long/ she doesn’t know the sound/ of her own voice/ her infinite beauty” (Shange 4). Each of these stories gives an opportunity for each lady to speak and perform of the travails and the violence that has been done against her. By giving a strong, black woman a voice the deconstruction has begun.

            The lady in blue describes the violence of having an abortion, like Ciel’s experience of wanting to escape the reality, and ultimately she exclaims that there was “dyin dangling tween my legs” (Shange 22). The lady in the blue has a breakdown in identity as a strong, black woman because she recognizes that people “lookin at me/ pregnant” because that would minimize her power as a strong, black woman (Shange 22). Ultimately, she has the abortion and states that “this hurts/ thus hurts me/ & nobody came” which mirrors the experience Lorraine endured. When there is no one there to uplift the broken, silenced black woman she hurts. Sharing this experienced now draws the lady in purple, yellow and etc. to share their experience with violence and/or broken dreams. Shange is drawing these women together thru narrative. The lady in orange says it precisely when she states, “ever since I realized there was someone callt/ a colored girl an evil woman a bitch of a nag/ I been tryin not to be that” (Shange 42). The women in this text recognize that to be a black woman is to be a strong, black woman. The stereotype cannot be broken down until the black woman is heard. Shange closes the book with the story of Crystal and Beau as the ultimate breakdown in a woman’s psyche, like that of Ciel’s in The Women of Brewster’s Place.

            The lady in red (Crystal) tells her story of her longtime lover Beau who comes home from the war disturbed and wanting to marry crystal and take care of their two children. Crystal describes Beau as “crazy as hell” and also as a violent man who “beat her to death when she tol him” that she was pregnant (Shange 55, 56). Crystal being the strong, black woman that she is removed her children from the oppressiveness that Beau brought to the family. This strong, black woman is played out when Beau tries to coax the children to come to him and she states “don’t you touch my children/muthafucker/or i’ll kill you,” her words piercing the weak, negligent Beau (Shange 58). When Beau finally coaxes the children into his arms he berates Crystal for not marrying him and continuing to be a “whore” who will not let him see his kids (Shange 59). When the children are in the hands of Beau, Crystal loses her fire as the strong, black woman and Beau shatters her identity as he drops the two children to their death. Crystal “cd only whisper” and ultimately she loses her children just as Ciel lost hers to violence (Shange 60). The ladies in the choreopoem now gather around one another and chant “i found god in myself/ & i loved her/ i loved her fiercely” (Shange 63). Just like Mattie give birth to Ciel’s new identity, the ladies in For Colored Girls gather around one another and find strength in one another. This chant is a song of joy that unites the women as they each recognize the deconstruction of their own stereotype and there is a unity and voice that comes with it.

To survive is to be strong and strong, black women are just that. This mythic strength comes from the idea that black women need to hold it together for themselves and the black community. The strong, black woman like Wyatt explains is used “as a weapon in the power relations between Black men and Black women” (Wyatt 60). This weapon that is held by black women is often turned on themselves bringing their own demise and own sabotage. Embracing this social construct has been the source of great violence between black men and women and ultimately leaves women to rely on other black women for their rebirth of identity. To shut down every emotion has been to survive and letting out in pain like Ciel, Lorraine or Crystal did is to embrace a new identity apart from the mythological construct of the strong, black woman. The reactions of women subjugated to violence are silence. When the silence is recognized by other women, the ability to call the woman out of herself and her stereotype becomes the ultimate healer. The deconstruction of the strong, black woman leads all individuals reading The Women of Brewster Place or For Colored Girls to ask themselves: What social constructs am I as a reader succumb to and how is my voice heard?

Works Cited

Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place. New York: Penguin, 1983. Print

O'Connor, Mary. "Subject, Voice, and Women in Some Contemporary Black American

Women's Writing." Contemporary American Women Writers: Gender, Class, Ethnicity (

1998): 32-50. Print.

Shange, Ntozake. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow Is Enuf:

a Choreopoem. New York: Scribner Poetry, 1997. Print.

Tanner, Laura E. "Reading Rape: Sanctuary and The Women of Brewster Place." Duke

University Press 62.4 (1990): 560-82. Print.

Wyatt, Jean. "Patricia Hill Collins's Black Sexual Politics and the Genealogy of the Strong Black

Woman." Academic Search Premier. EBSCO, 2004. Web. 24 Nov. 2010.

I Believe

I believe that arguments last as long as you let them, even until death.

I believe that trust trumps all other values in marriage, without it, you have nothing.

I believe that the sun is brightest when the snow is whitest.

I believe that faith requires an aptitude of grief attached.

I believe true friendship does not require a daily, weekly or even monthly phone call.

I believe that I did myself the greatest disservice when I quit dance and piano.

I believe regrets are just failures that are etched in the back of our brains.

I believe we say things like “I don’t regret anything” to mask the real pain surrounding our guilt.

I believe that child birth is the worst and best pain I have ever felt.

I believe that it’s ok if a mother has to grow to love her child.

I believe that love is fleeting and a foolish word we throw around.

I believe in the gift of letting go at the right time.

I believe that one’s sexuality is not a choice.

I believe in the power of one voice to change the world they see.

I believe that peace only comes through tolerance, acceptance and the ability to admit when one is wrong.

I believe that America is not the greatest nation on earth.
I believe in single mothers and the wonderful gift they are to the world.
I believe I need to take care of the homeless, love the fatherless and give to the widow...more.

I believe that candles are better light than the harsh florescent lights we have created.

I believe that the emerging church has much more truth than is lead on.

I believe that much of who I am is founded on the neurons that stimulate me and not such much on the environment that surrounds me.

I believe we are all warriors and survive something at least once in our life.

I believe that chrysanthemums are so lovely when they are white, laced with purple.

I believe in the sanctity of life and pray for the breaths that were never taken outside the womb.

I believe in hope for the future.

I believe I create my own hope through my choices.

I believe that there will always be people who want your life…and you will want theres.

I believe that bubble baths cure most aches of the body.

I believe that bubble baths and an old vine zin will cure all aches of the body.

I believe that the choices I make now will ring on forever.

I believe that no one knows you better than yourself, well, maybe your washing machine.

I believe that you should never have sex with someone who you can’t see raising a child with.

I believe you can’t be prolife and pro death penalty.

I believe that my introspection is my deepest despair.

I believe that Jesus keeps saving me, not just once.

I believe that a sunset can smell like a salty ocean if you let it.

I believe that technology, not sex or violence, could destroy this next generation of leaders.

I believe in Karma and paying it forward.

I believe that Americans don’t laugh enough at themselves.

I believe that fifteen minutes of yoga can put me in a better mood.

I believe that an education is imperative and thirst for knowledge is key to keeping up with our world.

I believe ignorance and arrogance to be the most distasteful qualities.

I believe hate can wear high heels and a cross around her neck.

I believe that one’s sexual desires drastically changes from 18 to 23 and that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I believe that God weeps over the way he has been extorted into a money making machine.

I believe that family comes first, even if it takes a lifetime to get there.

I believe that God is steadfast, even in my disobedience.

I believe in myself to do the impossible.

Remember Me

Having felt an overwhelming presence of doubt recently, I turned to my dusty Bible. (Sometimes I believe it is strange I read more "self help" books than the Word) and I opened to a passage in the New Testament. 

Do you ever just want to hear from Jesus?

Don't get me wrong, I love the Psalms and think the Old Testament has a glorious way of painting a beautiful picture of life and the human experience.

But I needed Jesus.

So I sat flipping through the New Testament like a 8 year old girl... hoping that some passage would grab my attention. I thought of randomly pointing to a chapter, reading the crucifix story again or maybe I'll just stay safe and read Revelation literally so I won't really be challenged.

Then I came to Luke. I began reading Luke 8 and was reminded of the Sower, when Jesus calms the storm but then I came across verse 40. And an overwhelming sense of importance plagued my mind.
It read...

Luke 8

   As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. ⁴³ And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. ⁴⁴ She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.
   ⁴⁵ “Who touched me?” Jesus asked.
   When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.”
 ⁴⁶ But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”
 ⁴⁷ Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. ⁴⁸ Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
Who touched me? Your faith has healed you. Go in peace. 
Those words resonated with me and I read them over and over and over again. 
We are all damaged goods looking for a healer. A reason to live and reason to go on past the ugliness that we stare at in the mirror. 


Who touched me?


Often times I wonder if Jesus ever senses my longings. If he hears me when I cry in the shower afraid to confront a world that I don't understand. I beg him to speak louder as I navigate through the throbbing that aches in my being. I read this and wondered... Does he feel me? Does he sense me? Does he distinguish me from the rest?
I touch you Lord and at times, I cry out in a deep desperation. Not because I am a victim of my life but rather I desire a proactive passion for you.

Your faith has healed you


I recall a moment I had the other night in the front seat of my beat up 03' Saturn. It was close to ten at night and I had just gotten out of one of my classes. I had been struggling with what was next. I desired so much but I didn't know how to do any of it. I felt paralyzed. Even in my own strength I felt that I couldn't conquer the cavern of doubt. I sat in my car and felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to change the station to KLOVE. I don't listen to Christian music. God doesn't care. He'll use anything he can get. I then heard a song that brought me to fall on face. 





"Stand up, even when you're broken. Stand up, when your hope is stolen. Stand up, you'll see where you are going. You don't have to be afraid."


Go In Peace


I love that Jesus doesn't ask questions about why this woman was bleeding, how long it had been and demanding answers to questions she predicted he might have in her head. I remember watching this story as a child on one of those cartoon movies. I remember the woman inching her way toward the only persona in her life that she had left. She had exhausted her efforts. She had done all she could. Her life depended on one man. The Son of God to touch her. I remember this woman crawling to her Savior...inching her way in all of her pain...grasping her stomach and chest in agony. The crowd staring in disbelief. She didn't care.


The pain it took to even reach out to him was worth all the while. The he stopped among the chaos. He stopped and turned. He stopped and turned to her... commanded her to have peace... to literally rest in the arms of her God and to allow the weight of her world to be given to her Savior. To remember who ordains and sees it all.


Sometimes I think about this woman who touched Jesus. It is easy to idealize her situation... to claim that she ran away laughing, no longer in pain.... a true miracle.


I don't see it that way.


I see a woman who had heard her Savior gently remind her that he is in control. She had a perspective change. Perhaps her bleeding stopped for awhile but then something else came up. Perhaps she had to experience the death of one of her children, lose her home, contract a new disease, problem... concern...


Living out faith does not happen instantaneously. Go in peace because I am in control... not necessarily just because you are now well.


I love when Jesus speaks to me. When I hear him loud and clear. When I am reminded to rest in him...

John 14:27 (KJV)

   "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as
    the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be
    troubled, neither let it be afraid." 

Real Men

I read this from a blog titled God Said it Best and I thought it was powerful enough to share. Word for word. Enjoy.



"I was listening to the radio as I was driving home from dance class on Tuesday. The DJ posed the question: "What should guys never do because it will detract from their manliness?" One woman called in and talked about how her husband decorated their home perfectly-much better than she ever could have. I wanted to cry right then. It was obvious that she had less respect for her husband, rather than more, because of his ability to decorate. I couldn't help but think that there is absolutely no reason someone should look at a male as any less of a man just because he can decorate, or can design clothes, or can cook, or enjoys watching Project Runway. Why do we have to stereotype "men's" and "women's" activities, and if you enjoy an activity in the other gender's "category" it detracts from who you are?

This whole thought process got me thinking about what it TRULY means to be a man or woman. Immediately, the passage of Titus 2 came to mind. In this post I'm going to talk about what it really means to be a man. In a following post I'm going to talk about what it really means to be a woman.

(Disclaimer: In this post, I'm going to use the term "man" to refer to a male who has achieved or is striving to achieve the spiritual characteristics discussed in this post. "Guy" refers to a male who is an adult but has not achieved these characteristics. "Boy", of course, is a male who is neither spiritually nor physically mature. )

Titus 2:2, 6-8Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. So, according to these verses, what characteristics should a man possess?

1. Temperate A real man is able to control his emotions. He does not let anger, frustration, or any other emotion get the best of him. He controls his emotions, his emotions do not control him. Let it be noted that this does not by any stretch of the imagination mean a man should be emotion-LESS. It simply means that a man's emotions should not control how he acts.

2. Worthy of respect Simply put, a real man should show Christlike character. People should look at him as someone of good character and reputation.

3. Self-controlled This goes hand in hand with temperance. While temperance means that a man controls his emotions, self-control simply means that a man controls his actions.

4. Sound in faith A real man knows what he believes and does not compromise that. A real man has a firm foundation in God and His Word.

5. Sound in love A real man knows what love is, and how to show it to others. This is not the mushy-gushy feeling kind of love. This is Christlike love.

6. Sound in endurance A real man does not give up easily. His character is able to endure even when tested.

7. Seriousness This does not mean that a man cannot be funny. Rather, a man knows the proper time to be funny, but also knows when the time is not proper and is serious when he needs to be.

8. Soundness of speech A man guards his mouth. He uses his words to edify and exhort others, never to tear them down.

9. Set...an example I left this one until last because this is the one that I really want to expound upon. A man is a leader. This does not necessarily mean that he is in a position of leadership, but he always sets a good examples for those who watch him. Although not explicitly stated in Titus 2, a man also needs to be a leader with women. (Not necessarily all women in all circumstances, but as a general rule.)

I know some will disagree with me on this point, but in my study of Scripture I have come to the firm conclusion that God meant for men to be the leaders. Obviously there will be some areas when women are better suited to be leaders (a women's Bible study, for example). But as a general rule, God designed men to lead and women to follow.

This does not mean that men should "rule over" women. But men need to step up to the plate, to be the initiators and leaders, especially in relational and spiritual matters. This really is the best way, because it is the way God designed things to be.

As I have taken dance classes for the past few weeks, God has used them as an object lesson for me as to how He meant for men and women to relate to each other. See, in today's society and culture, guys do not know how to lead. In dance class, most of the guys don't know how to lead. Sometimes guys try to "rule over" women, and make things rough for them. If a guy is too rough with the girl in dance, he will hurt her. Other guys are timid and don't really want to lead. When this happens in dance, the results are disastrous. If the guy doesn't lead, the girl doesn't know what to do and the dance becomes a complete mess. Some guys try to lead but simply don't know how. Their lack of experience shows. Sometimes they give girls the wrong signals (and as the teacher says "Don't tell her something you don't mean!") Their shoulders are tense, and it is difficult to follow them even though they are really trying. The more they lead, the more they relax and the easier it is to follow.

Then you get the guys who have done it. They're no longer guys trying to be men. They've learned how to lead. They've become men. In dance, these guys make the best partners. In life, they make the best people.

And it's so refreshing when you finally come across a real man. Last Tuesday I danced with several guys in a row who either didn't lead, or were really tense. As much as I enjoy dancing, I wasn't able to enjoy it to the fullest extent possible with these guys as my partners. But after dancing with several inexperienced partners in a row, I got paired with Jordan, who has obviously danced a lot before. The difference was astounding. The first thing I noticed and mentioned when I placed my hand on his shoulder was "Your shoulders aren't tense!" And for the brief two minutes that I got to dance with him, I probably had more fun than in the rest of the class combined. He knew what he was doing, and he led me perfectly. He wasn't rough at all, in fact he was the most gentle of all the guys I danced with, but I always knew exactly what he wanted me to do. The fact that he led well made things so much easier for me. This is the way it is in life as well. When men lead, it makes things so much easier for women. Not easier because the women are getting out of leading-rather, it makes it easier because it frees up the women to do what they were meant to do (something I will be discussing in my next post).

The world, the church, and many wonderful Christian women are looking for men. Men who will step up and lead the church, men who will step up and lead their families, men who will step up and lead in their relationships. Have you ever ended up in a situation with a guy where you weren't sure where the relationship stood? A man steps up to the plate and guides the relationship. A guy will play around with girls' hearts. A real man realizes how precious a woman's heart really is, and will treat the heart, and consequently the woman, with care and respect.

Someone made a comment tonight about how God is sexist because He's male. While the comment was made in jest and not meant to be taken seriously, it made me wonder "What if God was female?" And I realized that the thought of God as a woman truly scared me. God made men to be the leaders and protectors of women because that's what God does for all of us! God leads us and protects us. Loves us and cares for us. That is what men need to do. Be leaders, especially in church and family. Always be ready to defend and protect the weaker (women, children, elderly, sick, etc.). Love and care for all. This is what a real man does.

God bless men."