Category Archives: MUSINGS

Kingdom Perspective

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today I am honored to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a prophetic voice for the masses, not just black folk but all folk who seek and need to seek human justice for all. Rev. King sought it and fought for it by giving his all, giving his life. I praise God for his selflessness, not cutting corners just so he could say he tried and then seek what was most comfortable for him. When situations get tough, giving up or half doing a job can be tempting. This is the case sometimes with us hard working mamas. I challenge you to read my latest column in EEW Magazine written to help mamas prone to cutting corners to the possible detriment of their children learn to fight for the next generation always with that generation in mind, much like Rev. King did. I salute this great American hero for embodying the Spirit of Christ and fighting to make life better for us all.

My One Thousand Gifts List

#401-410
Little girls with braided, beaded hair enjoying the sounds of it
Being at an Ebenezer AME church basketball game with Joshua supporting by brother as the coach
Seeing the school-aged cheerleaders and having nostalgic moments about my own cheering day
A mom kissing her son (about 12 years old) and his not being embarrassed to kiss her too
My children liking to be around me, even invading my space
Polishing my fingernails
Getting to church on time
Being able to remain in the sanctuary
Having no qualms about saying no when two people tried to recruit me for ministry I know I wasn’t suited for
Pulling together lunch for the family and enough for unexpected guests

Friday Feature: Back Attack

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Back pain is a chronic problem in America. According to WebMD, 80 percent of Americans will have lower back pain in their lifetime. Pills and surgeries to correct and remove spinal discs are common ways of dealing with pain, but some say nothing has given them the relief they need.

This is the brace I wore for several months to keep my neck in place so I wouldn’t put strain on my back. I didn’t want to pop pain meds for the rest of my life and my arthritic back wasn’t degenerated to the point of surgery. So I sought out natural therapies and now have my back pain under control. I haven’t had to wear that brace in more than seven years. Here are the methods that helped me (and one a friend of mine shared that helped her):

Crack my back—I am a huge proponent of chiropractic care. This is the main therapy that got me out of my neck brace. Though some see chiropractic practitioners as quack doctors, they have studied the spine’s relationship to all the body’s main systems and align the spine so those systems operate at their maximum capacity. When I go get my back cracked, more formally known as a spinal adjustment, I feel immediate relief from stiffness in my back and other limbs that have been affected from my weak back.

Stress less—The more you have stress in your life the more your back will hurt, or any part of your body for that matter. Stress has no bounds and can attack any part of the body at any time. The back, housing the spine—our connection to the body’s main systems, seems to get most of the pain.

Unstore my core—I have had to work hard to strengthen my belly, to get rid of the stored up fat. This is an ongoing process but every time I’ve slimmed my stomach there has been less strain on my back. This happens every time we strengthen our core muscles. There is less weight falling forward and bringing my back with it, making good posture hard to have.

Sit straight—Whether I was sitting or standing my mama wouldn’t let me slouch. Sit upright; walk straight with your head held high, she would say. And though her admonishments had everything to do with the appearance of confidence, her teachings have helped me seek to maintain good posture, which has supported my back. Firm, straight back chairs and elevating my feet while sitting have greatly helped my posture.

Increase Vitamin D—My friend was having so much back pain that her 42-year-old body would be bent like an old lady on a cane. Her doctor found she had a Vitamin D deficiency and after three days of her first prescribed dosage of the vitamin she didn’t feel any pain.

Of course there are other ways to strengthen your back, like stretches and other exercises, but, as always, I wanted to share with you the natural remedies that have worked to heal me. Do your own research and make sure you consult your doctor about the best methods for you.

What natural methods have you found that help with your back pain?

Costly Worship

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What Do You Think? Wednesday

In the kitchen stirring steel cut oats, a breakfast Joshua requested, he asked me about what seemed strange for someone to do: “Why did that lady put that stuff on Jesus’ head?” For the day’s school work he was reading Mark 14:1-9 when Mary of Bethany did the unthinkable, the seemingly unimaginable. She poured expensive perfume, a year’s salary, clean out its box and right onto Jesus’ hair. Others there sneered at her act, probably thought she was crazy wasting what could have been her livelihood for the coming months. But in a few minutes she poured out her best, all for Jesus. And Joshua, like the people—who counted Mary’s money like they had the right to decide what should be done with the proceeds from the perfume’s sell—wanted to know the meaning of this.

Jesus explained that Mary did this before He died, that she was preparing for Jesus’ death while He was still alive. You probably already know this but in Jesus’ day dead bodies were prepared for burial by being anointed with perfume and spices to preserve them. But Mary did this while Jesus still had breath in His body, giving off life right in her presence. Perhaps Mary was saying Jesus would always be alive with her, that she would not let Him die but take in His breath, take in His life, while He was yet living. Once she had Him in her presence there He would stay. She wanted the best to remain with her and loved him so that she gave him her best. Giving her best was the meaning of her outpouring and it doesn’t seem she thought twice about it.

So in the kitchen, among steel cut oats and a Bible story about a woman desperate to have Jesus, I tell Joshua that we too must be desperate, seek to be excellent, for Jesus. We have to give our best with our handwriting, in our time, in our talk, in whatever we do. This is how we keep Jesus with us, breathing life through us, showing the world that He is right with us. Being excellent—giving Jesus our best—is the Christian obligation. This we must do in honor of Jesus.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.—Romans 12:1 (NLT)

We were created for this before creation itself (Ephesians 1:4, 10-14). With Jesus loving on us better than anyone loving on us how could excellent worship not be our obligation? Please, tell me what you think.

Go In

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My kitchen mostly has been my bane. I cook there. I clean there. I stress there. I don’t want to be there, but feeding three growing boys keeps me there indefinitely. I want a trap door, to go through the floor, to disappear to a quiet world of no cooking and rest in God’s blessed presence. But breakfast and snack and lunch and snack and snack and dinner and snack tie me there. Of the many rooms in my home, the kitchen has become my castle and it’s from here that I rule. Sandwiches, ladles and soup make for lousy scepters yet the children rush in with their demands. And I command and cook, cuddle and coddle, encourage and flourish for my family in the kitchen, but in the kitchen I had been missing what I desired most: to bring unadulterated worship into this space, to shed the labor and lavish my Savior with love. How can you go into the Savior’s presence when in your presence is a pile of dishes, a dirty floor and demands for more? How can you transform the routine into a greater thing?

After nine years of pleading and pressing through
After stumbling from false prayer starts to settle fussy babies then trying to make it through
After murmuring and complaining that I can’t make it through
After wanting to give up, sometimes giving up, prayer and knowing without it I couldn’t make it through

After crying and crying out and snottin’ and shouting out I made it through with the “afters” in my rearview, my daily list of gratitude driving them far from me. So in the kitchen on an early morning after quieting the 2 year old back to sleep and making lunches for the day I began to praise: the gift of running water to rinse the knife makes me utter praise; the gift of three types of sandwich spreads has me in praise; the gift of wheat bread AND spelt bread has me singing praise; the gift of feeding my kids has me roaring in praise; the gift of a loving husband who wants to make his lunch has me in praise; and the gift of unadulterated worship comes and I am overcome and want to fall to my knees but hesitate, not wanting to drop to an unclean floor. But the One I adore was born on a dirty floor, hay maybe, among smelly barn animals and surely noises coming from more than His mother. The manger, the only place available for His birth, became the praise room for the magi, the mother and the earthly father to worship the miracle. God, the Great I AM, came in flesh, born among animal flesh and probably mess, to fulfill prophecy, His pre-creation destiny to rescue us from self. So I drop myself to my dirty floor and I worship my Savior even more, knowing that He sacrificed, coming in contact with dirty floors, soiled hearts, and unrepentant souls, ministered to know-it-alls and received anyone who called on His name. The manger door was open. When the door is open sometimes you just have to go in. I went into His presence, became reborn in His presence and came out an anyplace worshipper that only Jesus could make me be.

My One Thousand Gifts List

#391-400
Listening to the Thursday Night Bible Study CD in its entirety early this morning
Nate waking up early so I was able to put him down for a nap when Simone, Tabitha, Alexis, Tanena and Josiah came over to watch a poetry DVD
The comedic styling of Nathaniel
Nathaniel and his self-satisfied looks
Hosting Simone, Tabitha, Alexis, Tanena and Josiah at my home and the sweet fellowship we enjoyed
Reading Motherhood for an uninterrupted period
Waking up about 10 minutes before Justus did and was able to release, turn on the stove to be cleaned and peel an orange before he awoke
Curt calling just to check in and telling me he was thinking about taking me to the Esperanza Spaulding concert
Being able to read in bed in the quiet of morning

Friday Feature: Will for Food

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“Jesus saith unto them, ‘My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.’”—John 4:34

I’m so glad this is my life verse. If it weren’t I might have had a fit on Christmas. Time didn’t allow me to cook the Christmas meal I told you about. So when I came home after going to my uncle’s for dinner (where the green vegetable and the dressing were prepared with meat and the other sides were starches) I made me a tuna nacho and a fresh juice. Yes, I skipped a traditional Christmas meal and instead had a fancy snack and a vegetable juice, something I have regularly. My meal itself wasn’t special but what was special was that I was truly okay eating it on Christmas. I was truly okay with my family not understanding that a person who doesn’t eat meat doesn’t want to eat things cooked with meat, that I don’t want a meal of potato salad, macaroni and cheese, candied yams and cornbread and that vegetarian means eating a host of vegetables prepared different ways.

I don’t expect anyone to fully understand my choice to be a semi-vegetarian. They aren’t the ones feeding me. I knew that going to my uncle’s house and I know that wherever I go. “Don’t worry about them; they aren’t putting any food on your table,” my mother would say if I was bothered by someone at school or work. And I know the same is true when people misunderstand my vegetarianism, when they wonder why my hair is locked and why we home school and the same is true for you. People may not understand where you choose to work, whom you choose to befriend, where you choose to live or the way you choose to raise your kids, but if your choices are God’s will for you, doing them—not following or giving weight to the opinion of others—is what nourishes you.

My transition to a more holistically healthy lifestyle is something God made clear I had to do. His charge to me is my food and I continue down this path, past the naysayers and those who suggest other ways to me, so that I can complete the work He put me on earth to do. As you seek a holistically healthy lifestyle I hope you will anchor that in God’s will for your life so you can complete the work that He sent you to do.