unloaded gun

One of the worst things that can happen when you come face- to- face with an opponent that wants to enslave you, is to have a gun that is not loaded. 

I am presently in a series of study sessions in lessons of the bible. The series is called Breaking Free, by Beth Moore.  This host equates lies with captivity and truth with freedom.  There are several truths. My truth, the host suggests, is a sum of my experiences and my environment. Sometimes hindsight really is 20/20. So as I now see my captivity, I can look back and clearly define my truth.  

My TRUTH =  born into a family, with parents who believed in Jesus as their bridge to the almighty God; wanting to follow Jesus, as my own choice; being a perfectionist; holding people to high moral standards, and being utterly disappointed when they did not live up to those standards; depreciating myself when I err; avoiding some activities for fear of consequences and sequelae; feeling that the approval of some persons was conditional on my being excellent; being very picky; indecisiveness; nervous to trust; seeing a brother’s marriage (to a women who had recently begun to believe in Jesus) become a tangle of disappointment, betrayal and confusion; seeing my family blame the sequelae of his marriage on the woman he chose, and her not really being a “believer”; seeing one of my parents not be productive (even though they were full of so much potential); not seeing that parent change, despite countless prayers; seeing myself achieve and avoid certain bad choices; progressively acting like past closeness with God would be sufficient in the present and in my future; progressively not communicating with God through prayer; seeing my [past] boyfriend love me, like no man has ever loved me; seeing that my [past] boyfriend matched the promise a few had told me God was sending; seeing that in several key ways he was the kind of man I had been telling God, openly and silently, that I wanted Him to send for me; seeing in one essential way (his initiative in, desire of and faith in all things God), that he was not, presently, what I prayed for; seeing myself wonder what that big question mark on his spirit was finally going to reveal; not seeing my [past] boyfriend when he read the bible (because he wanted to) or prayed on his own; not seeing the boyfriend move forward, quickly; seeing us (he and I) move too fast in physical affection; seeing that he was not formally educated or a professional (like me); seeing that he had made some poor choices in past relationships (and I had not made some of those poor choices, and if I compared myself to most of my peers, in that regard, I was exceptional, and he was not exceptional); not seeing my pride, sense of entitlement and perception of superiority.

PLUS (+)

LIE = the boyfriend could never be someone God wanted for me; he was not smart enough; if everything in his life was not where I thought it should be, then he was not for me; he would never want to be fully committed to God; maybe one day he would stop loving me

= CAPTIVITY

{Self-delusion; confusion; fear; worry; broken-hearted; numbed emotions;  isolation;  hopelessness;  loneliness}

It’s sad to have an unloaded gun when you come up against captivity. As a person that believed in the power of God’s Spirit being with me, I believe I had a gun. I had God’s words (the ones I received personally and the ones I could read in the verses of the bible); I had, Jesus, as my deliverer; I had experiences to confirm my faith, people who prayed for and with me; I went to church BUT, my ammunition was to be an Active and present relationship/communication/trust/partnership with God. This, I did not have. So when I heard the lie, my gun was unloaded, and I was not adequately able to fight off captivity; consequently, I became enslaved. If I had had my gun loaded, maybe I would have recognized the lie when I heard it--because I did hear it. Unfortunately, my [past] boyfriend did not even seem to have a gun.

I almost asked God, “why did you send me a man without a gun?” Even before I finished the question in my mind, I was realizing the answer: so that I could see him/be a witness to the event of (the boyfriend) being connected back to the almighty God (a priceless thing to behold); because God trusted me to be a bridge between him and God; because God believed I could handle it; because God intended to walk with me through the whole thing. The next thought I had was about Canaan, the land promised, by God, to the descendants of Israel. When God brought the Israelites there, during the leadership of Moses, the land was inhabited by other people. It was not empty and just ready for the Israelites to just walk into and occupy. God had intended to walk with them in the gaining of that land (the acquisition of their promise), BUT fear [of the people living there putting up an insurmountable fight; that things would not be easy] and a lie [that something was not right with the circumstances; that they had been lead into a trap; that this was not from God] drove them away from their promise...and it was 40 years of dryness in the desert before the chance to acquire the promise would come before them again.

wow 

The lie of epidemic proportions

Now on to Hair.

I recently watched, “Good Hair”, the documentary by the comedian, Chris Rock. He explores the world of black hair and the women who are adorned with it. I was talking about this film to my Indian friend. She stopped me because I kept using the term “natural hair” and she did not know what I meant. So I went down a list of women [whose ancestors hail from the African continent, to be called ACAGs in this blog (African Continental Ancestry Group-ies)] she knew and told her that each one of those women wore their hair straight even though their hair does not grow out of their scalp straight. She had had no clue. This is a woman, from New York City, with a Master’s degree and a host of ACAG friends, and she had no clue. So then I pointed to my curly head of hair and expressed that most of those women on the list had hair like mine, before they straightened it, of course. Her eyes widened as she said, “really?”   It was then, at that moment, that the gravity of the lie that black women tell everyday with their hair, hit me. It hit me how odd it was to have to use the disclaimer “natural” when talking about my exception-to-the-rule of a hairstyle, when the rule is not normal.  

I must give the following disclaimer: To relate the dysfunctional hair thinking of so many ACAG women, to my Indian friend, and so that ACAG women’s hair straightening addiction would not seem so fanatical, I said, “just like some Indians will not go in the sun for fear of being dark, and will even bleach their skin to be whiter (i mean lighter), so do ACAG women think straight is more beautiful than curly and will go to lengths to have straight hair.  At that, she understood the problem/ disdain for self that afflicted mine as well as hers.

So in 2010, the question begs to be asked: why are we, as ACAG women, still there, thick in the middle of a outward lie? Why have we not moved on, or rather, moved back [to the truth]? 

Maybe I would not ask this question, if I had not seen the movie [“Good Hair”].  But, I did see the movie.  While watching it, I had my turn to be amazed and clueless of the weave  world which I was now realizing I knew very little about.  I can tell you the difference between a full head weave and extensions and wigs and a cap and tracks; however, I did not know that there were some working class women--may I stress the words working class-- who would pay $1000 for their weave. $1000/ one grand/ a crap-o-la of cash! I could not fathom a working class woman forking over a mortgage, on the regular, for her hair. I began to envision women throughout the U.S going into debt for their hair. And the answer to the big WHY, was presenting itself to me, as a disdain for self.  I am not saying that ACAG women hate themselves, just their nappy, not-straight enough or loose and bouncy enough, Africa derived, kinky hair.  That’s when I thought, THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!  

The saddest part is that we ACAGs are the strongest defenders of the lie.  In the film, young ACAG teens comment about natural hair and professional appearance.  Each girl shown, expresses that she would not take a person seriously, as a professional, if they wore their hair in a natural style.  A few girls have no qualms about saying this, in the company of a girl wearing her hair in a natural coif. You can see in that one girl’s face: shock, uneasiness, insecurity, rejection.  

When I first started working in a very esteemed and professional environment, I was timid about my hair.  Without many examples of coiffures for people with my type of hair, that were both flattering and professional, I felt very much in the dark.  What was appropriate, I asked myself? The more I experimented, and the longer I stayed in that environment, the more I realized that the majority of the restrictions and taboos were in my head.  Most people never said anything about my hair. Many just commented that I changed it often.  And many others liked the ways I styled my hair.  I remember one day showing up with my hair in a huge, voluminous style--the night before I had done some extra-curriculars and did not have the energy to fight with my teased hair, in the morning.  So I showed up to work looking like Diana Ross, with my hair out to There. And you know what? For the most part, nobody said anything about my hair.  The one comment I do remember, came from a supervisor who said, “don’t let anybody make you feel uncomfortable about your hair, it looks great.” Bet you did not expect that comment, and neither did I. 

I’ll give you some more insight that you may not expect. A lot of non-ACAG people love natural hair--they are bemuzed by it and they will openly confess that they envy it.  I often get stopped by passers-by who feel compulsed to say, “I love your hair” or want to touch my hair.  Even though I have gotten used to it, I sometimes feel awkward when I am with a friend when this happens, mostly because my friend did not get the memo that he/she was going out with a hair celebrity that day. (LOL).  I was with the same Indian friend, mentioned above, when a car-full of women shouted from their car to hers, that they loved my hair.  Once, a friend who had witnessed several people, in the span of a few minutes, have visceral reactions to my hair, asked me, “does this happen to you a lot?” To that, I replied, “it’s happening more and more.” When I think on these episodes, I wonder, “do ACAG women realize that the world would accept them if they gave up the lie?” It hurts my soul to know what they do not know.  But unfortunately, standing in the way of that wall coming down is a host of ACAGs chanting “you can’t handle the truth”.

Definitely to be continued.....

Heart (dividend sign) 2

In my first entry, I wrote that I was “involuntarily single”.  The more accurate truth is that I walked away from love and was temporarily not picked up by another fish in the sea.  Maybe there is a sign on my forehead that reads: Unfinished Business, DO NOT approach this one.  (LOL).  More recently I have been overwhelmed by a wave of emotion and deluge of questions with uncertain answers.  Why did I walk away? Was he not right for me, or was I afraid? Did the voice of fear speak to me with confidence and blind me from what I should have seen? Did I run because things were not easy or perfect? Am I afraid to take real risks, like the risk of giving my heart away?  Was I pressured by people who did not see what I saw? Was I trying to live up to the standards of others, instead of allowing myself to discover my own desires?

I met a beautiful man who scared me.  He loved me so intensely, so quickly. He had a lot of the character traits that I was looking for, in a person that I would give my heart to; but he was like a bag of potential seedlings waiting to be sown.  That state of being in limbo scared me too. What ifs became a voice In my ear. What if he never used his potential? Who does he want to be? What if I will always want more for him than he wants for himself?  The questions scared me. Others saw that limbo state and raised concerns about it, and I could not subdue their concerns. One, told me a chilling story of love that went dry as one person’s path went from limbo to a direction opposite the person they were supposed to share their life with.  These two lived in the same house, but one desperately wanted to share certain parts of them self, that the other wanted nothing to do with.  This and their exhortation created the thought that if he was in limbo then he was not right for me. So I walked away, and in doing so, I broke my heart in two, and I broke his heart. For months I entertained all those questions, all those what ifs. Only to find myself realizing that maybe I, (me), did not care as much about those uncertainties as some others did. What if I allowed fear to tip the scale in the wrong direction and to drop a veil over my eyes?  What if love is the most powerful force on earth and in life? What if love is that force that sees us reach for the stars and touch them? What if all I really want is to be loved and to share who I am with someone? What if the resume is just a glimpse of where someone has gone so far, but not a predictor of where one will go?

At present, my heart is still torn. I’m confused and uncertain about many things.  I am in limbo, but I am focused on moving forward. 

Beth Moore writes that the greatest paradox is that healing can flow from a wound.  That idea made me wonder if God allows hurt and emotional wounding in my life to bring about a needed healing. Could it be that sometimes I’m only open to great healing when I am so hurt by a deep wound? Maybe my thinking needs healing. It is sad to admit but I often really reach out to God when I feel like I am in a low point, or ashamed of how I have muddied things in my life or when I am hurting. But sometimes I do the opposite too; I ignore God along with all the pain and lead myself into a numb cocoon.  When the prophet Isaiah writes of this savior person who “took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows” I think of Jesus and how he sympathized with the hurting and burdened his soul with the oppressed and overlooked.  I think, “Jesus can identify with me, He understands my broken heart”.  Jesus even quotes writings in Isaiah, of this person who took it as a mission to bind up the brokenhearted. It is as if He wants to be the glue that pieces my heart back together.  Hmm.

Ramblings

The heart doesn’t speak in intellect, it’s language is much more simple. Beat or not beat, love or hate. Truth or lie. 

Sometimes a princess meets a King and becomes a Queen. But what happens when a prince meets a Queen? Is a Queen only meant for a King, or can the prince rise in stature? 

It’s scary to take a chance and invest in human potential. What if they decide to squander and be lazy? Man, I wonder if God’s intestines are in a knot, watching and hoping for mankind.  But if you don’t take a huge risk, you lose the possibility of reaping a huge reward.   

I have to ask: why was the tree in the garden? I mean really, why put it there if not to tempt? And it temptation was intended, then can one really disappointed at any choice that is made, or are all choices valid? What if life is an exercise in making choices and seeing what they produce?

What if God is a bystander?

It is so easy for me to want to be frustrated with my situation of singleness and to be frustrated with God. Sometimes I do not want to talk to God about my frustrations and that just leads me to feel more isolated and alone, walling off my deep trueness behind guarded detachment. But today I wondered, “what if God is a bystander to my life?” What if God is watching and waiting to see what I do. What if God is waiting to see what choices we make and then what we do with the consequences of those choices? What if the day- to- day choices and courses are up to us, and only huge/ affect- the -world- and- all- it’s- inhabitants events does God navigate? What if the rest, God leaves up to us?

Is Marriage Hype?

Would men and women really live together if there weren’t so many novels and movies and magazine articles dedicated to highlighting the joyful pleasure of heterosexual relationships? Maybe we women have all been brain-washed. Maybe it is all hype. Maybe if I had never been deluged by all the propaganda I would be perfectly fine living single and sharing moments of my life, every now and again, with my friends.  

I mean if marriage and romance were all it was crapped up to be, why would I have had several married women tell me to stay single as long as I can, or not to get married at all? It is as if there is a final chapter to the saga on love, romance and marriage that no one ever writes about. We watch these movies in which the happy ending is when the guy and the guy confess their love for one another, and they embrace and the credits roll. Our imaginations keep the story going with endless bliss and undying love. So if it is so grand a fairy-tale, why am I encouraged to prolong getting married by the older, more experienced generation? How come all the media hype leaves that side of the story out?

Until the last few years, I had no real desire for relationship or romance. So what changed? Well, I think that on top of being set up by the media, God set me up with these so-called hormones. The media brain-washing was by accident. I like girly magazines, and wedged between beautiful fashion spreads that tantalize my occular senses, are blurbs on how to make things “hot” and new sex tips and what a turns a man on. As I graze through a mag, it is so easy to casually read a few lines of the blurb. Then over the course of a year or even two years, those little seeds start to sprout fruits of desire.  Oh and I cannot forget the romance movies that I like to watch. At the end of one movie I am suddenly wanting a man that I did not want before the movie started. Lastly there are the hormones that have a mind of their own.  It is like they turn on without asking my permission and then run rampant.  

The whole thing is a divine set-up. If women did not enjoy chatting about men and hormones did not lay siege to our minds, women would not live with men---they would have no need for them. God knew that life would end after one generation if there was not some draw that entangled men and women, so God set us up. 

I say women have been brain-washed because they definitely seem to get the short end of the stick in relationships. They get the project of helping their dude be civilized, get to carry his child for nine months, plus the pleasure of pushing out it’s big head, they get to be a glorified house-keeper, cooking and cleaning and child-rearing and such.  Look how much stuff we get in return for marriage.  With that in mind, who wouldn’t want to get married? LOL.

I just thought of some more things that entangle us: fear of disease and religious principles.  Actually the two can go hand-in-hand. I have heard justification for monogamy and only having sexual relationships in marriage because it is healthier (one is less likely to get STDs). So what if there was not the fear of STDs or the rules about sex and marriage? In that world, maybe men would be in one camp and women in another. Maybe women and men would only come together for sexual recreation or for procreation. Maybe the women would keep the girl babies and give the boy babies over to the men’s camp (if not right away, maybe after thy were weaned). Either way, women would not live with men.  I bet women would live to see one hundred years and men would die in their thirties.

We have been set up. I have been set up, and I know it. Unfortunately, in this case, knowing is not half the battle. Even if I avoided all the media hype, I would still have those blasted, raging hormones. Man !

Frustratedly single

I'm 27 and i'm tired of being single. I'm also tired of people asking me whether I fight guys off with a stick, or if I turn a lot of guys down, or if I date a lot of basketball players (because I'm 5'10"), or if i'm single because i'm focusing on school right now. I'm tired of those questions because the answer is an enthusiastic and universal, "NO".  Today a lovely married mamma slapped that paper-cut of a sore, when she made a comment that I had also heard too many times: "well you're a catch and maybe guys are intimidated." To that I responded, "well isn't it a shame that a catch should be off limits."  I had already been thinking recently about this phenomenon of the beautiful, successful and involuntarily single woman.  I  think I have been inducted into this sisterhood by default. I am 5'10", with a lion's mane of dark curls--that everyone seems tempted to touch, a ridiculous amount of facial freckles, a modelesque body, enough brains to be a doctor in T minus 6 months, risky yet fabulous fashion sense and an opinion on everything.  Oh yes, and drum roll please.....I'm single, go figure. 

To the surprise of many, i've been more single than anything else since i've been an adult. Only three boyfriends in over a decade, for a cumulative total of less than a year of my life EVER spent in a relationship. A natural assumption would be that I'm hard to get along with, which is why I am single, despite possessing several attractive qualities.  I could vouch for myself and say I'm very easy-going, but maybe that would seem like I was partial to myself. So, instead, I'll give the testimony of my own brother, who enjoys having passionate debates with me, and would be the first person to say I was difficult, if in fact I was such a thing.  He once told me that he would love for me to marry a man from a certain ethnic background (which will go unnamed), because he wanted such a man to have the privilege of a woman who was not nagging and negative, like he thought too many women from that group were towards their men. So there, i'm not difficult. To be honest, I am probably too easy-going and do not have enough expectations for the guys in my life--maybe that is what allows them to feel comfortable with me.  If I had not ended every relationship that I did not think was the right fit for me, the guys I was either talking to or dating probably would not have broken things off with me. Honestly, i'm really easy to love.  And yet... and yet.

So that brings me back to this intimidation issue. Why should a man be intimidated by a beautiful woman who is successful at her endeavors? What part of the equation makes the woman intimidating, her beauty or her success? Is success really the issue or is it that she seemingly does not need a man? Are men only attracted to women that they think need them? I don't know, but I wish I knew.  When I gave my universal "No" answer to the older gentleman who asked me if i dated a lot of basketball players in Miami, he followed with this question, "are they blind?" To that I replied, "I don't think the guys of my generation have courage anymore". The word courage seemed to resonante with him, and he needed no futher explanation.  What do I mean by courage? It is the guts to risk your pride to make it obvious to a woman that you only have eyes for her; to make the first move; to approach a woman who seems independent, not being nervous that she won't need you, because you realize the asset she is to any strong man. Courage is Barack approaching Michelle, before he was Obama.  Too often the only guys who seem to have the guts to risk their pride are those who are shameless.  Like the guy on the street who cat-calls to anything with a vagina and legs, or to the guy that could be my dad's uncle's age, and you can just tell he's got a lot of baby-mama-drama in his life. But what about young professionals or young men of integrity? What is their deal? Honestly, I think many of them are lazy. Many are waiting for a good woman to find them.  Well, if he is waiting for this catch-of-a lady to vy for his eye, he's just going to keep on waiting. Which stinks for him and also stinks for me.

I don't think i'm old-fashioned to believe that a man should be the one to pursue a woman worth knowing; rather, I'm biased by my own experiences. I have three brothers who are all exceptionally good-looking. When I was in high school, the house phone rang non-stop with teenage girls calling for my brothers. I heard how my brothers treated those girls, what they said within my earshot about them, and how they were nuisances. I also saw one brother chase after a girl, not because she was cute, as my other brother quickly pointed out, but because this girl had not given my brother the time of day. So to all those guys who say they like women to make the first move, I say, "you're full of it. Tell the truth and shame the devil. You know that in the end you are going to end up with the girl you pursued. Everyone else might just qualify to be kept around for fun or for a booty call."

Not every beautiful and successful woman gets inducted into this involuntarily single sisterhood. I have a friend who is sexy along with being very successful, and she can't go a day without being single. She once told me she did not understand why some women were single and could not land a man.  For her, the phone does not stop ringing.  Now that I think of it, maybe it's like the phenomenon of Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston.  Both successful, both stunning, but the one that oozes sex appeal never sleeps alone and the other is involuntarily single. Am I a Jennifer? And if so, what is wrong with that from the man's perspective?
hmmm...