Tag Archives: Black Woman

Get Some Help

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Some places I just don’t go emotionally. For me they are like taking back alley bike rides: They seem convenient but the potential problems keep me from going there. When I was a bundle of nerves and confusion the other week, I knew I needed to rethink my emotional bike ride theory and figure out how to seek and receive a safe path, whether convenient or not. My problem was I just didn’t know HOW to do that. I don’t have a problem being honest with my feelings, but usually when I am most folks don’t know what to do with what I share. As my friend Carla said, even though I am a recovering strong black woman, people see me as having it all together and don’t usually ask if I need any help; they assume I have it all together. So between folks not knowing how to advise me or assuming I don’t need advice and me not knowing how to get help, I don’t get or expect much help. This doesn’t mean I don’t need or want help; I do. After talking with Carla, I understood what recovering strong black women and their friends can do to get them the help they need:

Strong Black Women

  • Confess what you’re going through.

    • Even though you may not have gotten help in the past, you don’t know what your confession may yield you. When I told Carla how I felt, she didn’t have anything to offer me in that moment but later she apologized for not asking me if I were okay. She then gave me permission to interrupt her talking about her so we can talk about me.

  • Talk it out.

    • If you are like me you may know that you need help but just not sure what you need. If you talk it out, you may discover what you need to ask for.

  • Ask your friends to let you talk.

    • People who have strong black women as friends take for granted that these friends are supposed to hear all their problems. This is the typical nature of the friendship so you have to speak up for yourself.

  • Know that your friends want to help you.

    • They usually are so grateful for all you’ve done for them that they are willing to help you or work hard to get you the help you need.

    Friends

  • Ask.

    • Make sure to ask your strong black women friends what they are going through. Don’t assume they have it all together.

  • Listen to them.

    • After you ask your friends what’s going on, LISTEN to them. We’ve all had people ask us how we are doing and when we’re honest they don’t even acknowledge what we’ve said but go on to the next subject. Don’t do that. Even if you don’t have advice to offer, at least pray for them in that moment.

  • Seek God.

    • Let Him show you HOW to help your strong black women friends. Even though they may be the ones who usually dispense the advice, God can use you to help them too.

    God means for our relationships to be reciprocal for healing to take place. Let’s do our parts so we can be healed (James 5:16).

    How have you been guilty of not seeking or offering help?

    Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

    The Valentine’s Day Gift

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    Each time I was pregnant, I craved burgers. I devoured patty melts my first go around, Wendy’s double cheese burgers my second go around and White Castle burgers with my third pregnancy. While I had a great love affair with burgers, I declare I wouldn’t want my husband to try to woo me with a burger, even though this is what White Castle is encouraging.

    Did you see this ad? While I commend the fast food chain for capitalizing on broke people who like sliders and people who just want to show their loved ones some love, I just don’t think White Castle is special enough to give as a Valentine’s Day gift. White Castle is something you crave in the moment, get in the drive through when you’re in a hurry, buy when you can’t afford something else or grab when you don’t feel like cooking. White Castle just doesn’t seem special enough for the special person in your life.

    The more I thought about how I would feel if my husband took me to White Castle for a Valentine’s dinner, I thought about how God, our first love, feels when we give Him the spiritual equivalent of a White Castle dinner: When we only read our bible when the moment hits us, only say a couple of words to Him as we rush out the door, or go to Him when nothing else has worked or when there’s nothing else to do. While these are probably not the pattern for most of us, I’m sure we have been guilty of at least one of these at some point in our Christian walk. I know that I, trying to balance all that strong black women are expected to balance, have given God some White Castle love. Yes, we all have extenuating circumstances, like perhaps sickness and caring for a new baby, but when we constantly let life get in the way of our fellowship with the person who gave us life, we have to make some adjustments, including planning better so God gets our very best.

    This Valentine’s Day I want you think about how you plan to upgrade your gifts to God. I’m not necessarily talking about giving more money to Kingdom work, though some of you may need to do that. If you’ve been giving Jesus White Castle burgers with your time and talent, I want you to figure out how to give Him filet mignon. I want you to give Him whatever your best is. And as you know, He is worth every ounce and then some.

    Read what an exSuperwoman is doing with her gifts this Valentine’s Day at Confessions of an ExSuperwoman.

    Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

    Friday Feature: Free Flowing

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    It’s so easy to give up after trying hard at something and not seeing the results you expected. I know. I’ve done this in trying to improve my digestive health. The change in eating certain foods, the increase in enzymes and even more water just didn’t seem to be working for me at one period. I finally realized that more water and fruits and vegetables for me meant more than the average person. My major increase helped, but I was still having a bit of sluggishness until I discovered that I needed to do the following to keep my colon free flowing:

      1) Avoid mucous-forming foods (also known as acid-forming foods), like cheese. Mucous can get caught on your intestinal walls and block the free flow of waste through and out of your system.
      2) Drink room temperature beverages with meals. Many of us love an ice cold glass of water, but cold and food don’t mix well. Cold drinks can solidify your food and keep it from flowing freely.
      3) Drink 32 ounces of room temperature purified water first thing in the morning. This helps my digestive tract get going after its rested overnight. I also have a friend who drinks a hot cup of water first thing in the morning. She says this does natural wonders for her system.
      4) Drink a freshly squeezed juice or vegetable drink in the morning. This also helps my digestive tract get going immediately.
      5) Drink a hot beverage after a meal. I like to drink tea. Hot drinks help to “melt” foods, helping them break down and allowing them to move easier. Sometimes for an extra boost I select fenugreek tea, which loosens mucous and is a natural diuretic.

    If you are on the quest for better help, please don’t give up. Sometimes we strong black women think we have too much going on to work so hard on an issue like digestion. After all, we’ve dealt this long with a sluggish system; we can survive, some of us might think. But you don’t know this. God gave us everything we need for life and godliness. Taking care of our bodies in every way we can gives us life and helps us to be godly because we are honoring our bodies, the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost, God Himself, deserves the best. We should give our best whenever and wherever we can.

    Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

    Friday Feature: Keep It Juicy

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    It’s Black History Month so we must share our stories, those of the past and ones we are creating right now, even health wise. And health wise, the African American story is not so good overall. Black women contract AIDS four times more than Latina or white women, we have a higher rate of abortions per capita, and heart disease is staggering among us. We have to make a change. That’s what “Friday Feature” is all about, helping us get a handle on our health the natural way.

      WARNING:

    The following may be somewhat graphic language, even for strong black women, but I had to give it to you straight.

    While in grad school, I was working full-time, researching for a professor and excelling in my classes. I was keeping things together, but in more ways than one. One day, with penetrating pain in my belly that periodically had me doubled over in my seat, I had to leave class and go to the emergency room. After laying a few hours behind a curtain on an emergency room gurney, hearing crying and snotting beat-up Joe call and explain to relatives, police and medical workers how he got caught in a homosexual prostitution crackdown in a local park, the resident gave me the news. “You are compacted. Go to the drugstore and get a stool softener and you should be fine.”

    I had left class, drove in pain, waited four hours, and heard sadly hellacious stories to be told my bowels weren’t moving. I wanted a real diagnosis, a prescription given, hospital admittance, surgery performed. I wanted to scream that my pain was because I was keeping things together that should have been moving on and out. Compared to Joe, I had a small problem, at least in that moment, but constipation can lead to more serious problems, like a perforated colon and colon cancer, and even “minor” ones, like halitosis.

    My natural healthcare specialists tell me that we should eliminate waste after every meal. Hmmm, I don’t know many people who do that and I even know a woman who says it’s normal for her to handle her business once a week. Once a week may be normal for her but it is not normal. We have to flush the waste out. Otherwise, just like garbage that sits and gets smelly and moldy, our insides will get smelly and moldy. We have enough problems fighting sagging, dimpled and wrinkled skin. Let’s work to keep our insides straight.

    So, like natural healthcare practitioner Sunyatta Amen says, we got to “keep it juicy,” her way of reminding people of the importance of eating foods that have lots of water so they can lubricate your body and help your food to flow through and push waste out. Nothing can replace actually drinking water, but here are some of my juicy favorites that do well giving my water an assist:

    Cabbage
    Collard Greens
    Leafy Greens salad
    Watermelon
    Oranges
    Apples
    Mango
    Strawberries
    Blueberries
    Squash
    Eggplant

    What are some of your favorite juicy foods? Share yours and if you don’t eat them raw, tell us how you eat them.

    Deception Demotes

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    Did you ever think someone should get kicked out of your church or has someone ever gotten kicked out of your church? I know some people think that everyone who wants to be at church should be allowed to stay there. They have issues, but at least they came to church to try to get rid of them. Well, some people don’t come to church to get help for their issues; they come to church to start some issues. That is their ONLY reason for being there. And because that is their only reason for being there, they are singularly focused and easily cause deception to sweep through swiftly. What should be done with these people? What if you find yourself to be one of these people?

    This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.—1 Timothy 1:18-20

    In this passage we see the Apostle Paul teaching the younger minister, Timothy, how to occupy his position in the church and giving him an example of what he did to people walking in deception. He told Timothy to “wage a good warfare,” meaning fight with all his spiritual might by holding on to his faith and following what he knows to be right. For Hymenaeus and Alexander, those who abandoned their faith and spoke bad things (probably about the Christian faith or its leaders), “Paul handed over to Satan.” We know Paul didn’t literally hand these men to the god of all evil spiritual entities, but his metaphor suggests that Paul no longer served as a spiritual guide, a protector, for these men. He cast them away from his arch of safety, allowing Satan to have free reign in their lives. Parents sometimes do this, throwing up their hands to allow wayward kids to go their way. It’s not that the parents don’t love them, but when the kids have gone too far in their deception the only thing that may bring them back where they need to be is the natural consequences of their sin. Paul realized this and simply helped to facilitate that with Hymenaeus and Alexander and so do churches that kick out troublesome members who “have made shipwreck their faith.”

    With strong black women historically allowing our own strength, ethnicity and gender to dictate to us how we handle situations, it’s likely that there have been some Alexander and Hymenaeuses among us. My hope is that we put ourselves in check so we aren’t kicked out of a church, a job, a friendship or a position of confidante in a friendship. Let us leave our place of deception to come back and sin no more.

    Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith