Remember the Work of Grace

When I was in college a friend told me that one of her friends thought I got everything I wanted. She didn’t even know me, but had watched from afar my entrance and acceleration in my sorority, work on the school newspaper, internships at top daily newspapers and a gang of people to hang with. This woman had long-distance envy, and I, with my sinful gloat coat that all strong black women wear because we do things that people should admire, got a kick out of her envy, thinking, “Dang, it’s too bad she ain’t me.” Continue reading

Let’s Do This!

Sometimes we don’t do what we know to do because we just don’t know how. Last year I presented a framework to help Christian women to go from calling ourselves strong black women (SBW) to some other name that reflected God. I didn’t have the name at the time, but I have since recognized that the acronym is still SBW, which stands for strong biblical women. I want to revisit that framework in this post because I recognize its structure is universal. You can use it to stop doing whatever wrong you’re doing and replace that with something righteous. Continue reading

Grow Up

Grow up! You ever issue that challenge to someone? I know I have, usually when I’m just fed up with their Israelite going around the mountain actions. I just want them to get it already. But how many of us have commanded ourselves to grow up? We may have; I know I do when I’m tired of some of my behavior that I should have stopped and replaced with something better a long time ago. The real challenge, though, is going beyond just telling yourself to grow up Continue reading

The Loving Husband

Me & Flynn on our anniversary, 8/8/10

A few years ago I saw a cartoon that showed a husband coming home from work to a house in complete disarray from garbage strewn on the front lawn with kids in the mud in their pajamas to toys, spills, a loud TV, an open refrigerator and a dog missing in the house. He walked past more mess and piles of clothes to find his wife, a stay-at-home mom, lounging in her pajamas reading. He asked her what happened. She replied, “‘You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world I do all day?’ ‘Yes,’ was his incredulous reply. She answered, ‘Well, today I didn’t do it.’” Her husband immediately knew the importance of what a stay-at-home does all day and what happens when one whose house is orderly doesn’t do her job. Though my house wasn’t this chaotic before I took my blogging break, some of my job didn’t get done and Flynn, my husband, witnessed this and had my back. Continue reading

The Break

My sister, Sharon, Me and our children


When I stopped my world stopped, at least the one that I had created in my busyness. No longer did I have to rise early and go to bed late to get it all done. My husband didn’t have to long for late-night dates nor did my children have to wait to play because “Mom, you’re always at your computer.” When my world stopped, I got out and the scenes changed immediately. I was now in those missing spaces and could see a lot better.

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.—Leonardo da Vinci, (1452-1519) Italian painter, sculptor and architect

My rest helped me reassess what needed to change so that I can renovate then rest on my perspective in three major areas: on God’s power; on my family’s purpose; and on my personal preferences. In short, I must have what I call the L perspective: Remembering that God gave me my family (a vertical extension), and they give me what God wants for me (a horizontal extension). If you sketch this reality, the vertical extension connected to the horizontal extension makes the letter L, thus the L perspective.

Though I knew some of this intellectually, my attitude displayed that the knowledge lived in my head, occasionally visiting my heart. I believe Jesus when He said that He came to earth that I might have life in Him, and not just any old life but one that is richly full (John 10:10). Yeah, that’s what I want and now have a better mind map to get me there. I pray that my revelations will inspire you to seek your own so you, too, will live the life Jesus Christ died for you to have, creating the same home in your head and in your heart.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith