My Love Affair

The more I think about it the more I can’t remember. I’m not really sure the moment that it began, or exactly how I got here, I can’t figure out what happened or which pathway led me to this point and conclusion but I am sure of this one thing… I am in love with WORDS!

Maybe it began when I was a small infant and I realized that with my first spoken words there was an instant reaction of delight and joy from others.  It could have been just the way my parents responded to my simple collection of words as a young girl, as I arranged them in my mind to begin to understand the new world that I was living in or as a teenager when I was able to use my words to express all the hidden feelings and emotions that were causing much inner conflict. Whenever it started I just know this one thing, WORDS captured me and mesmerized me and made me feel alive and full of joy.

I am and always will be a talker. Don’t be mistaken I am not your average everyday person that loves to talk, I am an extremely radical, wake up in the morning talking and don’t stop all day, even if I have to talk to myself kind of talker. Statistics say that the average person says 50, 000 words each day to themselves, well I say 500, 000. This is all because of my relationship with WORDS.

I love the way that WORDS roll off my tongue and wrap themselves around another person’s  ear and cause them to locate their own words of response and then the conversation begins as the words intertwine this beautiful thing of communication and understanding develops and begins to blossom. I find this to be one of my greatest joys in life as I open myself up and share my words with another living human being. I have purposely chosen to speak daily to the universe and use words to declare and decree what I believe or desire to see manifest.

In the Bible it says that “the WORD became flesh and dwelt among us”   The idea and concept of this excites me and as I read the words of Jesus my heart skips a beat as I underline and highlight certain words that reach out and grab my attention. Words like believe, faith, love, joy and heart are all circled in multiple colors in my personal bible. I love the way that the logos or written words become rhema or living words to me as I receive a new revelation that promises to transform the way I think and the thoughts that are constantly swirling in my mind. My mind is forever full of words that I have embraced and that have transformed into my beliefs that have eventually become me. I love these words that have made me who I am.

Words can be dangerous like swords or soft like feathers, they can harm or they can soothe, it all depends on how we choose to use them. I love the great power and strength I have found in my affair with words. If I choose my words wisely and not let them escape before their time they will become a cultivated treasure that no one can steal away.

 I love words so much that I have them inscribed on my walls, hidden in secret places for me to daily discover, printed on scented candles, cups, plaques and painted on canvas with unusual creativity. WORDS jump out at me when I go to my kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, laundry room, living room and even when I open the front closet as I exit out the front door. They creep up on me and cause me to remember a familiar memory.

My bookcase is one of my greatest furniture acquisition as it is a five tier shelved beauty that holds a multitude of amazing books of learning, inspiration, memory, history, language, and general interest. There are authors of all genres, ages, concepts and ideas represented in this seven by three feet  use of space. I love each individual book because they contain words that I have held dear.  These are the words that I have allowed to enter my mind, my thoughts, my heart and my life. They still whisper  to me as I remember how they delicately touched me.

I sneak away in the middle of the day and meditate over WORDS, I purse my lips and receive a kiss from the WORDS of life that leave my mouth, I rendezvous in the most elaborate places with books and phrases and spoken thoughts all to get a feeling of sensation as WORDS love on me and I love on them.

When I hold WORDS in my hands and smell the fragrance of the pages as they turn there is an emotion that is both nostalgic and futuristic. As I romantically unite with every person that has universally read or will ever read these words as they serenely float around softly in the atmosphere.

I am made of WORDS and words are shaping me as I write, words are allowing me to connect with people in all spheres of influence, in many different parts of the world, words are revealing my travels, my future desires, words are my friends, my family , my lover. 

I am in a love affair with WORDS.

The sign of a Good Mother

I have recently begun my certification as a Labour and Bereavement Doula and had the privilege of using this profession in my volunteer work at Vanier Correctional facility. I had volunteered at Vanier teaching Inspirational dance to the women for 5 years and was transitioning to help the many pregnant inmates in Vanier so that no incarcerated mother would have to birth alone. Being a mother of 5 children and having been an unofficially Doula for numerous family and friends for the past 20 years was an added benefit.

One of my first clients was a beautiful young First Nations woman who was pregnant with her first child. I was told by the case worker and the NILO on staff that this unborn infant had FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) and the ultrasound showed that it was missing limbs and would most likely die shortly after birth due to the many harmful defects. The mother had even gone into liver failure during her pregnancy due to excessive abuse of alcohol.
Due to this and among other factors her baby was going into the custody of CAS (Children Aid Society) as soon as it was born.

These circumstances were discouraging to me as I began to visit with this young woman to give her emotional support and childbirth information to prepare her for birthing her baby within custody.
We began to pray for her baby and that it would be born perfect and also for her emotional well-being having to release her baby 24 hrs after giving birth.

As I do with all of my clients I had encouraged her to give everything that she could to her unborn infant even while she was in custody.
So she took a prenatal class with me to help her with the pregnancy, labor and delivery.  We created a birth wish list stating her choices for a healthy natural labor and delivery.  She even decided to breastfeed her baby right after birth to give the baby the colostrum that it needed.
In her ninth month she was given another ultrasound and it came back with the baby in perfect health. We rejoiced at this miracle and prepared ourselves for the difficult delivery and release of this baby. She also found out that it was a boy.

At first she was unhappy that her baby was going to be with foster parents and that she would be coming back to the correctional facility fairly soon after giving birth, but she was learning different coping strategies to deal with the stress and seemed to be doing okay.
During this time I learned from her social worker that she was also in an abusive destructive relationship and this was compounding the reason that CAS was not willing to release her infant into family care.
I spoke to her about her situation and asked if she would be willing to do everything to be able to keep her baby and she seemed compliant but yet still hesitant. They were requiring her to enter a long term treatment facility after her release and also that she sever all ties with her boyfriend.
As we began to talk further I learned that in reality she was not willing to comply with the terms set out in the agreement to keep her baby and that she was considering adoption.

Needless to say as a prison Doula my job was not  to have emotional baggage about the choices and situations that our clients face, but to fully support them through the childbirth process with the outcome of healthy mother, healthy baby- awesome birth!

I did just that and watched as this baby was born healthy and this mother gave of herself selflessly, through eleven hours of labor, birth , breastfeeding, babies first bath, diaper changes, dressing in new clothes and blanket for the taking of photos as final memories.

She would love on this baby right up till the moment that the guards removed her from the hospital back to the correctional facility and CAS came and took her baby to be with foster parents,  We both had such a peace during this entire ordeal and when she signed the papers for the baby to be adopted I knew that this was her being a good mother.

It brought me back to a passage in 1 Kings 3: 16-22 where two mothers come to King Solomon to settle a dispute about one of their babies that had died throughout the night. Both mothers claimed that the remaining baby was theirs and in his wisdom to help make the decision King Solomon says that he would take a sword and cut the remaining baby in half and each mother can have half of the baby. On hearing this decision the true mother not wanting any harm to come to her infant, decides to give the baby to the other woman, This act of selflessness is the evidence of a good mother. Solomon returns the living child to the rightful mother.

Adoption many times is this same selfless act of knowing that to keep the child you may do it more harm than good and to give it away would take the love of a good mother. You would rather lose your baby than make it a half of a what it should really be entitled to. In making this very difficult decision you are in fact acting like a true mother, who always has the best interest of her child before her own.

My first prison birth would teach me an invaluable lesson and a few days later help me to pray for a Christian couple that after many years of infertility had recently adopted an infant and  during the 7 day required waiting period the young single birth mother would change her mind and take the baby back to live with her. This couple was grieving the loss of this decision and as I began to pray for them this same story would come flooding back to my mind. Miraculously a month later she too would decide to become a good mother and do what she felt was best not for her but for the well- being, safety and security of her infant baby, This couple would be allowed to parent this child because a mother again would surrender her rights and release her baby into what she felt was best.

I had begun a winding unpredictable journey with many new lessons to be learned and experienced as I received a complete paradigm shift about what a good mother really is.

5 Tips to a Clean Slate (How my life as a stool pigeon prepared me to fight temptation)

When I was a young girl I was known in my family as the stool pigeon. They used to call me by many slang names as well; betrayer, canary, deep throat, fink, informant, nark, rat, rat fink, snitch, squealer, stoolie, tattletale, blabbermouth, whistle-blower and even spy.  You see my siblings knew that I could not be trusted to hold any secret attached to our many childhood crimes. The reason was simple and little did I understand then that this would save me many times later in my life.

My mother had this very simple rule in our home. If she found out about something and she asked you to tell the truth she would be more lenient with her discipline or sometimes beating if you confessed rather than if you denied it and somehow we all knew she would eventually find out the story without our confession anyways. Now my mother was like many of the mothers I knew and she had an uncanny way of finding out the truth like she was a secret FBI agent with resources worldwide. I don’t really know if it was my conscience, fear or just wisdom but I found that when I agreed with my mother and asked for forgiveness for what I did and just received the correction even if it meant a lashing, it usually was never as bad as what she would do to my siblings.

Now my brothers and my sister om the other hand had one simple rule- Lie, then deny, deny, deny. I am telling you, my mother would lay out exactly what we had done play by play and my siblings would deny that they were ever involved, even after she had gotten a full confession out of me. Now I only could tell my mother what I had done because my siblings never let me be involved in the fullness of the crime. You know how when the bank robbers are robbing a bank, there is this one person who sits outside in the getaway car? That was me. I was involved with our shenanigans but they never, ever let me know the details of what was actually done. They knew I would crack under the pressure of my mother’s voice asking me to tell her the truth. So the less I knew the better it was. Then I could only confess to the crime that I had committed which was usually small and didn’t always implicate guilt for my siblings.

Like the time my siblings broke into my mother’s room and stole some of her precious stash of special herbs. My mother trusted me so I was made the keeper of the key when she was not home and there was no way they could have gotten into her room without me. They tricked me by telling me that they needed to put something back into the room and that if I would open the door then they would pay me in candy. Well my mother was not fooled and after only a few minutes of grilling me I squealed like fast tires coming down the street. I had opened the door for them, I was guilty. Later my brothers gave me a good beating for snitching.

In my preteen years I did attempt one solo crime that I will never forget because it became legendary gossip in our family from that day forward. Once I stole a $100 bill from my mother’s purse to buy a new pair of white ice skates. All the children at school had a pair and I wanted to go ice skating with them. My brothers had done this misdemeanor many times and they never got in trouble because my mother could never tell who had done it. And of course they would never confess. Well after I took the money my mother was cussing and screaming at my brothers to give her back her rent stash and the guilt took me so bad that I cleaned that whole house till it was shining. My mother knew something was up but before she could even come and ask me I confessed and gave her back the money crying and begging for her not to whip me.   My siblings teased me about this all of my life. They were so ashamed of me. I was a disgrace to the family delinquency.

Fast forward a couple years and this is how I would come to realize the full impact of what my mother had taught me by allowing me to confess to my part in my treachery with my family. I began to notice that anytime I did anything wrong or temptation was at my door that I would find someone of importance to confess to. I would tell on myself so that there would be no way I could follow through with the actual act or any future acts of similarity. Let me give you a few examples. Now please as you read on be careful not to judge me for the thoughts or decisions that I made that may seem like colossal mistakes to you. What is it they say "You never really know what you will do till you walk a mile in someone else`s shoes". 

  

Please note that all names are fiction as to protect the fellow collaborators identities.

Now Sharon, Tina and I would be talking, ok more like gossiping about Mary and what we felt she should do. I would feel badly that I participated in this act as Mary was a close friend but rather than just privately confess in the confession booth at church to an unseen priest. I would take it upon myself to go and tell Mary that I had participated in this act of treason. Now true to what I had done with my siblings I wouldn’t give any other names as I asked Mary to please forgive me for this indiscretion. Well you think it would just end there. But in true fashion to gossipers, Tina would be talking to Mary and begin to gossip about what I had said about Mary, trying to stir up trouble and disunity. Now Mary would realize who the true friend was as she first hand witnessed one of the other culprits participating in the act that I had privately confessed to 3 months prior. I was safe, but Tina and Sharon on the other hand are no longer friends with Mary.

Another example that could have completely backfired on me was early in our marriage my husband had a close friend who made a pass at me once and  I asked him to please tell my husband what had occurred as I knew he had just made a wrong judgement and I may have even led him on unintentionally. He chose not to take this way of escape, so rather than letting this jeopardize my marriage I told my best friend right away and my husband when he returned home from a business trip. We would later discover that this friend was having numerous affairs on his wife, but due to the way I handled it I was not among the list of victims.

It gets even better… years later after coming into relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son and Holy Spirit my best friend. I practice a truth that lines up with my mother’s teachings and my new found faith.  In 1 John 1:9 (Voice) it says But if we own up to our sins, God shows that He is faithful and just by forgiving us of our sins and purifying us from the pollution of all the bad things we have done. .

I had somehow learned the art of confession, the power of forgiveness and the beauty of grace all beginning from how my mother handled her children’s shortcomings and mischievous deeds.

I also understood and fully embraced 1 Corinthians 10:13 (Voice) where it states  Any temptation you face will be nothing new. But God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can handle. But He always provides a way of escape so that you will be able to endure and keep moving forward.

I have learned that my thoughts can lead to my beliefs and my beliefs can lead to my actions but all of these must line up with what God says is truth. By the power and conviction of the Holy Spirit I can stop myself anywhere before the action or even afterward by confessing my error. God by His sons sacrifice forgives me and my consequence or discipline is always less when I confess my indiscretions. When I acknowledge my wrongdoing in any situation I stand a much better chance of being acquitted by the only One whose judgement truly counts.  He also works out the situation for my good.

So take it from a stool pigeon, better to have others think badly about you than for you to sear your conscience and to go down the path of destruction. My encouragement to those of you that are like my siblings and are choosing to live a life of Lie and Deny, in truth you are only harming yourself, because the consequences are not the worst thing that can happen to you, the result of this type of living is separation from Truth. Over a period of time you will be unable to discern between what is truth and what isn’t. The lies become so numerous that you cannot unravel them. Others will be unable to trust you or your motives.

Now please do not mistake me, I am nowhere near sainthood because I confess my sins. But my slate is cleaned every time I do. So here are 5 tips that can help you to begin again as if those things never happened.

1.     Ask God to forgive you for your sins

2.      Forgive yourself as you receive His forgiveness through Jesus sacrifice

3.      Forgive others and judge them not

4.      Ask Holy Spirit to help you to stay sensitive to truth 

5.      Repeat this process daily

Excerpt from Where the Sunflower Grows  by Charmaine Hinds

Ugly Duckling Beautiful Swan

Last year I had a pivotal moment in my life. I was at a conference and the guest speaker called me out and spoke to me about being an ugly duckling and about the jealousy and conflict I had to endure all my life because of my beauty and that it was now time for me to begin to call forth my tribe and then and only then would I feel like I truly belonged.

Now I consider myself by the world’s standards a fairly beautiful woman. Even at 47 I am still very youthful looking. I was a model as a young woman and if I wanted to I could model again. I have hazel eyes, light clear skin, full lips and long thick hair.  I am tall, thin and these attributes meet a lot of the standards for outward beauty. Not to mention I have learned the amazing magic tricks of proper makeup application and finding the right clothes for my own personal style.

Yet as I heard these words I had a distinct memory flashback. As a young girl I was unique in my looks, I was mixed race, hazel/green eyes, large lips, fuzzy thick curly hair, I had an awful over bite, was tall and skinny for my age and all of this attracted a lot of attention- good and bad. All of these attributes were just underdeveloped and in time would become some my best features. In addition to this my single mother was unfortunately living in poverty so my clothes weren’t fancy and designer. So I considered myself an ugly duckling. I didn’t feel like I fit into my circumstances, my family and due to certain abuse issues, even my life.

 For those of you that are not aware of the story of the ugly duckling it tells of a homely little bird born in a barnyard who suffers abuse from the others around him until, much to his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a beautiful swan, the most beautiful bird of all. The story is beloved around the world as a tale about personal transformation for the better.

As I seriously pondered this I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten that I used to feel like I was an ugly duckling as a child and even as a young teenager. It was because of the amazing changes that had happened within me over the years why I didn’t even remember this. I felt beautiful! No one that knew me now would even have any idea that I once felt this way. I even had to call my sister to clarify some of the memories that were coming back to me.

Truly the love of God had transformed me into the beautiful woman I was on the inside and I allowed that to be seen now on the outside. And greater than this I began not to care if others saw the beauty in me or not. I knew I was beautiful and of value and that was enough. I walked in this confidence and that was what was beautiful to so many people.

But these words were touching another area of my life. Deep inside I had always felt like I didn’t belong. My thoughts and beliefs were different than my family, my husband, my church and others, I have always felt so unique and this had a huge effect on me. It took me 47 years to become comfortable with my identity and who God made me. To be able to say “I don’t have to change me- I like me!”

This word from this speaker was from God, It was for me to give me hope. I was going to encounter my Tribe, my Karass, that group of people that were called to the same purpose as I. After this my inner beacon began to send out a signal calling out for the ones in the world that were just like me. I was now ready to attract the right type of people that would help reinforce who I am by being a mirror for me. This was Gods design. Ducks and Swans are different and Swans don’t grow well in barnyards trying to become Ducks. It is possible but in the end the Swan flourishes best in the company and environment that was always meant for Swans.

So if you are reading this and maybe you have been living in a barnyard, or you keep seeing Swans and know that though your time of maturity has not yet arrived, that you are in actuality one of us or maybe like myself you have had insecurities about your looks and your purpose because you know you are definitely not just like everyone else. Whatever the situation, circumstance or emotional state you find yourself in I would like to call forth your inner Swan to the place where we swim, Join us in the place where we are free and full of grace. Finally, for all of you ugly ducklings, JUST WAIT… you are being transformed into a Beautiful Swan.

Lead Me to that Place of Wide Open Space

I believe that we learn about life not just from formal education but also from our everyday life interaction. There are lessons to be learned through nature, relationships and daily observations, if we just tune ourselves into the multiple messages being spoken to us every day. My husband and I were travelling to an appointment when all of sudden there seemed to be traffic. He noticed that we were being funneled and channeled into one lane and this bottleneck was the cause of us slowing down and delaying us to get to our desired destination on time.

In his frustration he asked more to himself but still out loud “Why is the road only one lane on such a busy street?”  As I surveyed the area more thoroughly I realized that they were expanding the road and that to do so they had to contain the lanes so they could have enough room for the expansion process. They were going from two lanes to four lanes but before that they had to go to only one lane. As I shared this out loud I also said “So everyone has to go through a small space and the inconvenience for a short time so that later there would be a larger space after the work is completed”.

 My husband got a hold of this internally and with me being a Doula he gave an example that really resonated with me.  He said “It's kind of like when a baby is being born, they start off small and then they grow until they fill the space and then they go through a small space (birthing canal) to be able to come out to the world which is a much wider space”

 This spoken revelation was awesome because it spoke about how growth happens in many areas in our lives. As human beings we all usually get frustrated when we feel we are being slowed down or channeled in any given area. It may be happening in our business, personal life or even spiritual growth.  When sometimes in actuality what truly is occurring is the “growth expansion process”.   For us to be able to come out into wide-open spaces sometimes we have to go through a narrow space so for a time we may feel confined as we prepare to be birthed into something much bigger. This uneasy, unfamiliar, messy, uncomfortable and sometimes even painful place may cause many of us to want to make a U-turn or even plan an easy exit route. But there is a purpose in the process! A plan in the pain!  A destiny in the delay!  We must begin to trust that we will get to our destination on time and that there is a reason for what we are going through.

There are now proven studies that children that are brought into the world by C-section, which is sometimes a short cut into the world, though may sometimes be necessary, may start life with insufficient intestinal bacteria flora (microbiomes). These bacteria are known to play a part in protecting children from developing allergies and children who lack them may be at higher risk of other health problems.

During a regular vaginal birth infants come in contact with a rich dose of their mother’s bacteria as they are pressed through the birth canal. C-section babies don’t get this exposure, which is likely to be vital in developing the immune system and helping it to mature.

When we relate this process to our everyday life we see that even the things we don’t understand while we are going through this tight confined space that they will eventually help to make us stronger and more immune when we come out into the bigger wider open spaces. If we do not struggle or resist, or try to circumvent the process no matter how difficult it may seem. If we yield, resist the fear and just let nature take its course, then and only then will we enter the other side from one lane to four lanes of wide open space and freedom.