Love

Love is wide and deep an expanse no one can measure 
Sharp and soft with edges not to be touched 
Electrifying and of the highest possible frequency 
How powerful and great it is

Love goes beyond every barrier in to the smallest spaces 
Causing everything in its path to grow
It divides and unites and overflows
Love is full of tears and pain with a dull ache for more 
It is neither black or white for it knows no color
but is like the rainbow stretching across the sky 
It is a promise that is never broken

A delicate rose blooming to fullness by drops of dew so careful not to grasp at thorns
Leading footsteps on cobblestones of old and staircases with angels to heaven 
As it diminishes anger and releases forgiveness 
Being neither partial to wealth or poverty, abundance or scarcity
There is no force like love causing change to evil and injustice

Love can be found in the exchange of rings and the first cry of a newborn babe
In the look of exchange between mother and child 
Heard in the song of the birds in spring or the sight of icicles and snowflakes on a cold winter day
Love is home after a long visit , the light in the window at night

Love is a reproducer of love , a multiplier, infectious, contagious, transmittable 
How blind it is yet it sees everything… the past the present and the future
Love is so loud , yet it whispers and always speaks of love
As it is founded on truth and pivoted by deep secrets
Love is joy and hope braided together by peace 
A three stranded cord not easily broken 
Love believes all things, hopes all things, Love never fails.

Bad Boy Syndrome

I was reflecting the other day and looking back at my teenage years and the boys that I chose to date and be involved with before I met my husband and I realized that I had what they call “bad boy syndrome”.
Remember in the movie “Grease” Sandy being attracted to Danny? I was always involved with the Danny of my day.

Well I began to ask my older more wiser self why were you attracted to these boys knowing that nothing good could come from this? 

Well the sixteen year old me said “ They were fun, passionate, exciting and mysterious” and I was young and had this crazy idea that I could tame the flame but instead many times I just ended up getting burned. The bad boys I dated weren’t all bad and that what was attracted me to them. They let me into their kinder more softer and even intimate side. I am an optimist at heart and even at a young age I believed that people could change. These relationships were brief as my truth meter would always wake me up and help me to realize that if I continued it could end dangerously. 

Though many times my heart was broken in pieces and I cried myself out of the break up I always seemed to dodge the bullet. I dated a person that later became a drug dealer and died as an addict. I was in a relationship with a cheater that ended up having multiple babies with different women. Then there was the boyfriend that left me for my best friend, or how about the guy who ended up spending 20 years in jail. Then there was the bullet I wasn’t able to dodge in the boyfriend that raped me. I have a few more that I can only imagine how their stories ended.

But after all this I found the good guy in my now husband of 27 years. He was an answer to prayer but the more I look back and remember it I truly believe that my homing beacon knew that I could never accomplish my purpose in life if I was connected in covenant with the wrong person. Because I rejected the “bad boys” I was available to meet the “right boy”. I was also blessed that he had passion, excitement and was a bit mysterious. 

I just want to warn all you young girls and women out there that are interested in the good looking, hot passionate guy that has a bad streak. Listen to the truth you know and walk the other way. Find the person that will compliment your purpose , the one that will love you unconditionally, faithfully and that you can trust with your heart. Broken pieces are not easy to put back together but worse is a thwarted and delayed destiny. Don't let a bad boy cause you not to reach your full potential.

Broken Pieces

Broken Pieces

Today while having a discussion with a very close friend about forgiveness and the power of it, I received some mighty words of wisdom and a very powerful picture lesson.

 This is my interpretation of her explanation;

She said that every time that we have an interaction with someone and we take offence or are hurt we leave a piece of ourselves with that person and many times go away from that relationship because of the pain with unforgiveness in our hearts and we think everything is still OK. When in truth we have a lot of little pieces of ourselves with all of the people that we have not forgiven. The moment that we forgive each person those pieces of ourselves are returned to us and this is how we become whole.

As she was explaining this analogy to me something amazing happened. I began to see a visual picture of understanding of just how powerful releasing others is to being a whole person. I loved this word picture.

I have always embraced the truth about forgiveness but this picture added to the many instances that I have personally experienced the power of releasing someone that has done you wrong.  But something else was added to what she shared as well, I began to understand what happens when someone else has something against you and is holding a piece of you and refuses to let you go.

Now like everyone else I have forgiven many people not because they deserved it or even because I felt it would make the situation better. I forgave because I had a understanding of how bitterness can set in when we hold un-forgiveness in our hearts and minds towards another one of Gods children. I have done this to set myself free and to be able to love the way God says we as his Sons and Daughters should respond.

During a specific incident I had an individual that was very close to me refuse to forgive me for something she felt she was right about. I had over a period of time released her in forgiveness and had asked her to forgive me as well. She chose not to accept the gift I was offering and instead made the conscious choice to continue to keep a piece of me. Our relationship that was once very close was now estranged.

Even though we were not in constant contact I could feel that there was something that was still holding me and I needed to make it right. I am not into the practice of forcing anyone  to do something against their free will. So I began to pray and ask God to help this person to forgive me. It took almost 3 years but it happened.

 I saw her at many events but each time she avoided me and I could feel the pain of what she was carrying and it made my heart sad. I wanted to be free from her un-forgiveness so I continued to pray. Then one day while I was at a prayer event she walked in through the door. Somehow I knew that that day she would forgive me.

During a special prayer time I was asked to pray for her by one of the leaders and as I blessed her and spoke Gods word over her life something happened. Later that day she came up to me and spoke a word of blessing and release over my life and the piece of myself was returned to me.

Through this situation I began to understand not just the power of me forgiving others, but also the power of receiving forgiveness from others. These small pieces of myself can be used to torment and hold me from being the person that God has always intended me to be.

I began to start to pray for anyone that was holding anything against me in their hearts and minds.  I began to call back the pieces of myself that were being held hostage.

Then true freedom and the feeling of it started to flow my way.

My prayer is that this visual explanation would touch your life as well and that you would begin to call back all the pieces of yourself into position so that you can become whole again

Forgive and be forgiven and walk in the power of it.

In Kind

The value of money is the measuring stick that most people use to rate success. If you are one that is successful then you will have lots of money in your bank account. If you are good at whatever you do then someone should pay you lots of money to do it and the better you are at what you do the higher you should be compensated. And the more financial value you have then you are able to get or do anything that you want to that requires money.

My belief system is a bit different. I have deemed to value that every time I accomplish the purpose that I was created for that whether I get financial remuneration or not that that is success to me. I believe that God pays back those that sow generously. And many times he pays “in kind” not dollar for dollar value. Many of my time is spent volunteering at jobs that other people would never do if they were not getting financial compensation.  At other times I have received goods and services as payment for many of the goods and services that I provide. Many call this a bartering system.

                                                           

I was dancing at a Black History month celebration at Vanier Correction facility for women and was wearing a few African accessories, one of which was a very special cowry shell belt that had great significance for me. A friend mentioned my belt and I proceeded to share about the value of the cowry shell in ancient civilizations such as Africa and how it was as a form of currency.  To wear a belt such as the one I had on that had an abundance of shells on it meant in those days that I would have been considered an important wealthy woman.

I proceeded to do our dance presentation with the women that were being held in Vanier. Our theme and the song we did the choreography to was the “The color purple” and how it was a sign of wealth and that it was primarily worn by royalty or people of means and substance. Our dance and my poem was about the color purple being returned to people of color and also to all people that find God.

After the dance the co-ordinator gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers a gift bag with numerous small trinket items and a card thanking me for what I do in the prison.

When I was driving home, I picked up my eldest son and after he saw the items he asked me if I get paid for what I do in Vanier. I told him that they don’t have a budget so I actually pay to go and volunteer as I cover all my own expenses. But that they repay me with gifts “in kind”. I was so thrilled to be appreciated in this manner and began to think about what a blessing this was.  I went home and promptly displayed my blessings to remind myself of why I do what I do.

After meditating on my answer to him a little further I realized that the satisfaction that I receive from helping women like these to have some hope and to be courageous in the midst of very trying circumstances was actually payment enough.

The following day as I was speaking to the volunteer co-ordinator at the correctional Facility about my volunteer work as a Doula for the pregnant women, our conversation drifted to these thoughts that had been spoken the day prior. As I began to share a few of my experiences with the women and one in particular that had a full circle moment theme, I began to see the vast wealth that I possess and how God has repaid me many times over “in Kind”. I am a wealthy woman, rich beyond measure because of the spiritual cowry shell belt that I wear around my waist. People in today’s society may not understand the value of what I possess because they have traded in cowry shells for dollar bills as a means of value.

But to me every shell on that belt represents a wealth and success that cannot be quantitative in human logic or reasoning. It defies the logic and order of our financial world system that says that people provide a goods or a service and receive a monetary dollar value as payment and if you have a need for something then you need to have money to pay for it.

My value system says “give and it shall be given to you, pressed down shaken together and running over, shall men and women give to you” or “ better is it to give than to receive” . “If you believe then nothing shall be impossible for you”  and “ the just shall live by faith”.

I have settled this issue but I am still putting it into real life application as I oppose the system that says that it can’t be done. Somehow I know that what I believe is truth to me.

FROZEN

I was frozen. I was stuck and couldn’t not move or talk or think.  He was on top of me and after a few minutes of struggle where he was overpowering me physically some internal instinct of survival told me to stop wrestling and accept the inevitable and live to tell the story by just staying still, by staying frozen.

This was the story of my rape. (Rape is unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent)

I was 17 years old and dating the star basketball player at a rival school. He was tall and good looking and all the girls were crazy for him. We began going out and he seemed to be a nice enough guy. He took me on a few dates and that summer was looking like it would be a lot of fun.

That same summer a friend of my mother had given me a house sitting job while she was away visiting her family in Jamaica. She lived on the 10^th floor of our building and she asked me to weekly get her mail, water her plants and dust her furniture.

I made the mistake of telling my new “ boyfriend” that I was doing this job and  he came up with a great way for us to spend some private time together. He would meet me on the 10^th floor during one of my visits and we could be together. Now I wasn’t a virgin I had lost my virginity and had sex already with a previous boyfriend but I was not planning on having sex with a guy I had just begun to date. I had the thought that we would kiss and hug and maybe fool around, but I made a foolish mistake as we didn’t have any discussion about this.

So he arrived at the apartment and I let him in and he watched while I did the chores and then we began to fool around like young teenagers do. I don’t know when it changed for him but I remember when it changed for me. There was this one moment when I began to feel like I wasn’t comfortable anymore and I tried to move off the couch. He grabbed my hand pulled me down and before I knew what happened he was lying on top of me and I began to tell him that I wanted him to stop and I writhed my body underneath his and tried to move my position and instantly realized that this 6 foot 2 tall guy had me pinned down like we were in a wrestling match.

I asked him to get off me a few times nicely and softly , maybe I wasn’t stern enough  as I fought to remove him off of me and then it happened, I froze. As he continued to quickly remove my clothes and began to have sex with me I became as stiff as a board and went into survival mode. This was a learned behavior from my days as a young girl when my stepfather would sexually abuse me at night. I would leave my body and my mind behind and go somewhere else so that I could cope with life when he was finished. And now this coping mechanism was failing me at a time when I could have and would have screamed, punched and told this guy to get the hell off of me. I was frozen and didn’t have the skills to do anything.

When it was all over I was like a robot and my memory now fails me as to what happened next. All I remember was the next day him trying to call me and me not ever wanting to talk to him again. I never did.  I told my best friend what happened and cried for two days about how stupid I had been and that this guy was an over privileged jock that felt that he had a right to treat young women like pieces of flesh and not like l was a real person. Needless to say many of my female friends were shocked that I had let a good looking catch like him get away. How could I share with them that he had left me… “frozen”.

This is similar to the story Frozen by Disney of Elsa’s response to a traumatic event – She caused everything around her to become frozen.

I have since dealt with the pain of this incident in my counselling sessions about my sexual abuse and have many years ago disabled the frozen mechanism within that had helped me to cope with some of the most horrible memories that I had experienced in my life.  Yet I still wonder what would have happened to me if I had chosen some different tools that others use to deal with this type of abuse. Many turn to drugs, alcohol, withdrawal, sexual promiscuity and other means just to live another day. So in some ways I hated being frozen but this state of being actually helped me to get to the very moment in my life when I could be thawed and warmed by love. I may never know what would have taken place had I been able to make some other choices but that isn’t my story and it isn’t my ending. I have since forgiven that young teenage boy full of hormones and ideas about what sex was like. I have also forgiven myself for yielding to a frozen state of being.

Gods plan for me was never that I become frozen and locked in a tower trying to stay away from those that can hurt me or those I may possibly hurt back. I was made to have a heart of flesh and to use the power of love to release my voice to speak, to be heard and not to allow vulnerable situations to render me powerless.

Maybe you have never experienced a situation like this or maybe you have, my message to you is that survival isn’t the only way to live life. God has a bigger plan so don’t stay frozen or numb. Don’t let shame, pity, guilt, anger, vengeance, frustrations, flashbacks, triggers or any other kind of abuse render you immobilized and unable to live.  Use that energy and force for good and channel all the love in the world towards yourself.

Like the famous song out of the Frozen movie it is time to just “Let it go”.

Freedom

I was taking a course to become a bereavement companion and was at my weekly training class and the instructor that week was running us through an exercise that taught me something so valuable about what I believe.

She handed all of the students, twelve small pieces of blank paper.  She then instructed each of us to write down three people we love , three things we have that are important to us , three activities we enjoy doing and three quality traits about ourselves, all each on a separate sheet of paper. This took a lot of thought for me and in a short amount of time I wrote down the following.

3 people I love - I chose Wayne my husband because he is my soul mate and very important person in my life. I have five children and could not choose between any of them and so I left them out. I choose my mother and one of my girlfriends.                                                                                                                                

3 important things to me - My wedding ring, my writings, my bible,                                                                                     

3 activities I enjoy- dancing, writing, talking                                                                                                                      

3 quality traits about me- intelligent, creative and free

After this she asked us to close our eyes and she began to walk us through a visual meditation and gave us instructions as we moved along.  

You are not been feeling well and have made several visits to the doctor and are now in his office where you have received a fatal diagnosis. Take a moment and breathe and pay attention to what you are feeling.  You leave the doctor and get in your car you are finally alone, what thoughts are coming to you? You arrive at your home and begin to process this information before sharing the news with your family. How will you tell them? How will they respond? What are you feeling now? Days begin to pass and you begin to experience the loss that comes with this illness. At this point she asks us to throw away any 2 pieces of paper.  

Now I am a very visual person and because I meditate often, I was very much involved in this exercise. My whole being began to see myself with a fatal illness and I began to experience the feelings of helplessness. I took time and thought in what I would throw away and discarded 2 pieces of paper.

As she walked us through the rest of the exercise going into detail about what someone who has a fatal illness experiences and then gave us the choice to throw away pieces of paper that represented “you” it became more difficult and harder to throw away. I also began to understand that this was all about the loss that comes with death. We were finally down to three pieces of paper and all this time I had been thinking and prioritizing the order of what I would choose next and slowly letting go of the loss of things that I thought represented me. Then suddenly she sprung a surprise on us that caused me to gasp so loudly that everyone in the room looked my way to see if I was ok.

She was going to come and take the next piece of paper.

Right then I lost something that I realized was very important to me. I didn’t have any more choices. This profoundly impacted me and I began to pray as I had three things left that were very important to me.  The three pieces of paper were Wayne my husband, my Bible that represented my faith and the quality of free which represented my freedom.

I quietly under my breath began to say take my Bible or Wayne , take my Bible or Wayne , please don’t  take my freedom. I wanted to be left with my freedom, because I felt I knew the word in my heart and that was enough for me. I knew I was one with Wayne and I was willing to let him go as well.

Sure enough she picked the piece of paper that said Bible and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was even sweating at this point and was very heavily invested in this challenging pretend exercise.

Now she had come to the end of our journey and we were near death and at the hospital and she would come around again and remove another piece of paper. I was a bit more relaxed this time around as it worked out ok the last time and I just believed that just the thought that I wanted her to take Wayne was good enough and as I looked at the last piece of paper in front of me- there was the word Free. I was so happy that I had my freedom and that no one could take that away from me.

Then she told us to rip up the last piece of paper because we had now died. She told us that everything was gone and nothing was left.

As I slowly ripped the paper containing my freedom I had a thought, then a feeling and then a revelation. I would never lose my freedom even in death I would still be free or maybe even freer than ever before, because of my faith and my beliefs about death. I would gain back everything and more of what I had lost. I was so happy and relieved at this point that my heart became full and I began to smile with my teeth showing!

She gave us a few moments to sit quietly and to process this exercise and then asked us to share with the group anything about how we were impacted by the exercise. I shared what happened to me and was able to use this as a platform to share my faith in the midst of this class that had many different types of people with different beliefs about death and the afterlife. But this would also set the undertone for my work in bereavement. Freedom would be a pillar of my belief surrounding death and loss. I would use it to frame my life work in every way as I could now see the importance of this state of being to me. This thread has been woven throughout the course of my life and is my eternal message to the world. I am free to be me, you are free to be you and no one can take that from you.

I would have never imagined that one of the greatest lessons I would learn in my life would come from a pretend exercise to help me understand how to be a compassionate bereavement companion.

I was my own Drug Dealer

Now I know what your first thoughts must be when you read a title like this one but read on before you make any assumptions, judgments or refer to your already established preconceived ideas and beliefs about drug dealers.

I was a drug addict and I was addicted to the drug Fiorinal. It came in a pill form that is taken orally that contains butalbiltal, aspirin and caffeine.  It was prescribed for me by my heath care professional as I was a chronic migraine suffer. Now for those of you that have never suffered a migraine you may have some difficulty understanding how I could be a wife, a mother of three, professional business woman and a Christian leader and still become addicted to drugs. But if you have ever had one migraine or like myself suffered daily with a pain so excruciating that you thought your head would explode and that surely you had a bomb going off in your brain and this was it- your last moment on earth. Or at the least you felt like you wanted it to be. Then you will fully understand my story.

Now all drug addiction starts with one main ingredient- pain. You have some sort of pain and you want it to subside, go away or just be able to forget it for a while. My pain wasn’t just internal, it wasn’t imaginary, neither was it getting any better, as a matter of a fact it was getting worse and more frequent. Like every human being that suffers, I really just wanted it to stop. For many years I tried natural ways to handle the intensity of these headaches that were quite debilitating and most of the time I just suffered through the pain and became more resilient.

So when my doctor offered Fiorinal to me I thought about it and felt that the benefit to me would be worth any of the risks of the side effects. Never did I once imagine that becoming addicted would be a side effect.

This is what happened. The Fiorinal actual began to work. Whenever I felt an aura or the beginning of a migraine coming on I would take a Fiorinal and sometimes it wouldn’t go any further and if it did then it would just be a light headache and end very quickly. This was a miracle drug to me as I had suffered with migraines from a very young age and nothing had ever given me this type of result.

But then after renewing my prescription a few times I remember my husband asking me if I thought maybe I was taking too many of them. I became irritated and angry, I even suggested that he was more worried about all the money they were costing than he was about me. Yes as any drug addict can tell you money wasn’t an object to stop me from getting my next fix. Fiorinal was not cheap, it was pretty expensive but it was worth the relief or at least that was the lie I was telling myself so I could live supposedly pain free.

 In truth I had increased the dosage prescribed, I was taking it more frequently and even if I had a thought that my head might begin to hurt I popped in a pill. After some secret soul searching I had to admit to myself that I was addicted. But what was I going to do? I couldn’t go back to the pain.

In here lies the dilemma that every addict asks themselves- do I go back to the way it was? What do I do now? I was faced with the truth that I was addicted but felt powerless to stop. As I put the pros and cons on the scale to measure it was very imbalanced. The drugs were heavily winning. In my mind I needed these drugs to continue with life. Or did I?

I was brought back to my early childhood when I was a thumb sucker for comfort. Sucking my thumb was something I began as a baby in my crib all alone to soothe and comfort myself when no one was giving me love and affection. It continued into my childhood and even adolescence until I was 12 years old and my buck teeth began to protrude out. Then one day I just threw away the embroidered pillowcase that I used to scratch when I slept and sucked my thumb. I had tried everything to stop up until this point. I had put the most disgusting things on my thumb, wrapped it up at night, hid it under my pillow while I slept , but every morning when I woke up my thumb was still in my mouth. Then one day I just decided that I wasn’t ever going to suck my thumb again and I stopped. I never sucked my thumb ever again. Cold turkey is what they call it. I made a decision and I stuck to it.

That was what I would do now. So I fired myself as my own personal drug dealer. I flushed away all the pills I had left in the toilet and to this day have never taken another Fiorinal or other drug for the migraines. The withdrawal symptoms were difficult but I was determined to beat this addiction.  I was also willing to face the pain and instead of masking the hurt I would go on a search to find the root cause of why these headaches had such control in my life. I am glad to say that I am no longer a migraine sufferer but the way I received that miraculous healing is for another story.

  They now have a warning attached to Fiorinal -This medication may cause withdrawal reactions, especially if it has been used regularly for a long time or in high doses. In such cases, withdrawal symptoms (such as nausea/vomiting, mental/mood changes, seizures) may occur if you suddenly stop using this medication. Consult your doctor or pharmacist for more details, and report any withdrawal reactions immediately. Though very unlikely, abnormal drug-seeking behavior (addiction) is possible with this medication.

I really wish that this warning had been on the bottle I began using when this drug first arrived on the market. But then I wouldn’t have had the understanding or the courage to face the truth about the pain that I was experiencing that was the catalyst for these migraines. Truth comes to us in many ways and my prayer is always that no matter how difficult or painful the process, that aligning my life with Truth would be a foundational principle that I choose to live by.