So this thing keeps happening. My bed keeps slipping off of its frame. It’s been about a month, and I keep doing the uncomfortable laborious lifting to put it back in its place. It’s a pain in the ass.

Yesterday we put it back together. Usually it stays put for a while. Today it felt as if my head and stomach were connected with some torturous contraption whose maker had perfected the perfect balance of pounding tied to nausea. All day.

I decided that I’d stay in productive posture in the recliner instead of laid out on the bed. Both my body and the climbing toddler said no. So, I thought about going to bed. And I realized that my mind, though well on its freedom journey, was still looking for some publicly acceptable justification for rest.

I made lunch for the toddler; fed her while in productive posture in the recliner, and then rocked her to sleep in that position too, instead of following her example, and tunnelling into and wrapping myself in my bedding as she had. But my mind was likely protecting the space that I knew I needed.

Anyway, I had the toddler put in her bed, and then set out to walk to the nearby school to pick up that little queen. Because of course I could do it, and wasn’t good cardio the cure for everything? Thankfully, my Father kept intervening. He does that you know, as the One Who loves and sees.

So, five minutes into my walk, a call comes through; Leah on the line. “Hey girl. Are you sure that you wanted me to meet you at the school, or did you want me to pick you up at the house?”

Well, first of all, I overestimated my horsepower, and secondly I was in soooo much pain. And there she was.

By the end of our route I felt so much worse than I had at any point of the day. I barely made it up the stairs, and finally crawled into bed. Within a couple of hours, between a concerned tucker-in of a daughter and a boisterous toddler, plunk, there goes the bed.

I tried to shift it without calling anyone, because the talking, the concern, the well-intentioned movements to show love were just too much, and I’d have to either call out loudly or walk. Back on the wonky bed I went.

And as I lay there my ailing self said, “just get rid of it”. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that before?! “Well,” the more integrated part of me reminded, “you’d be too low. You don’t like that.” Oh yeah. But it’s not worth all this trouble, and it’s now so uncomfortable. Just get rid of it.

My annoyed self got up to do just that, when that more integrated me interrupted; “how about if we fix it? I bet you that it needs some nuts and bolts, and I bet you that you have something appropriate in that tool box which you fortuitously moved into this room last night.”

And so it was. Two nuts and bolts kept from a happily demolished piece of furniture. (Tip – don’t throw out the hardware.) Moving the mattress and box spring out of the way, I fixed the frame, and then put them back in place, on a solid foundation that will hold.

It occurred to me as I was finding the connectors that this was a significant lesson needed for life. When I initially finally crawled into bed to rest I was able to listen to a two-part podcast that perfectly fed my soul. Then, as I went to find the hardware, I wondered how many relationships have been thrown out because we keep trying to make things comfortable without real connection. Even though the two pieces of the frame fit perfectly together, until I was willing to actively insert strong connection the frame could not serve its purpose. A pair of connectors needed on each end: one bolt of love, and its corresponding nut of truth.

At least two people, each actively integrated with love and truth is the stuff of which beautiful relationships that support rest and a strong place on which to spread are made.

And now I’ll put the bedding back together, so that I can tunnel, snuggle, and be tucked in with no shame.

Even though disconnection and separation have been gifts of protection, it is in the moment that I looked life in the face, and said “It’s okay if you break my heart, I now know that I can rest, heal and keep going” that I truly belonged to myself, belonged everywhere, and nowhere, to everyone, and no one. Because the gifts of protection preserved me until I could belong and be in connection.

And this is the playlist because celebration and connection in music is how my Father and I roll.

Yesterday morning I took an alternate route to bypass construction traffic, and had the pleasure on the way of watching an eagle and a crow interact. I love being reminded whom I am, and why with the wingspan and strength of an eagle, I can soar without using energy to attack aggressors and risk harming myself.

When God spoke these words to me over a decade ago, He knew that as we journeyed together, I would understand the layers of meaning in these words. I was reasoning, more like angrily asking Him the why of many things. And this was His response – audibly.

“But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭40:31‬ ‭NLT‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/116/isa.40.31.NLT

I’ve begun to run, figuratively, and not grow weary. Actually when I did run at my pace every morning in reality, I also did not grow weary. I let other people’s weighted shade create the ball and chain which wearied me. That dude who walked by and said “You call that running?” I don’t even remember his face, but I certainly remember how he made me feel. Aunty Maya is right again.

But back to God and the 🦅 eagle. I am living and learning to fly higher and higher with figurative crows on my back, or flying around me, trying to obstruct my path to the nourishment of freedom, love, and healthy connection. This is literally what crows do to eagles to prevent them from feeding on publicly available carrion. Eagles keep rising, and they never use their energy to fight the crows. They just keep flying higher and higher. Their energy is focused on living and finding the way upward.

I am not calling any person a crow – just to make that abundantly clear. Crows are the traditions, fallacies, and traumas that try to ride on our backs, try to obstruct our paths, try to prevent us from reaching the nourishment of publicly available truth that will help us soar to freedom, love, and healthy connection.

I am so incredibly grateful to God for the gifts that He packed in the earliest days of my seclusion, as David describes in Psalm 139. And I am incredibly grateful that I have accepted His invitation to unpack those gifts with Him. Our unpacking parties have given me the ability to find the road less travelled; and when l drive down that road there are always treasured moments like these.

It’s so worth unpacking with Him. Your eagle strength is waiting to be unboxed.

God is horrified by the destructive behaviour that humanity has called His ways from Adam to now. The Bible is a compilation of stories that show how patient and loving He is with people who continually misuse His name as a means of control.

It shows us how humans kept getting most things wrong until Jesus came to show them and us the difference between the God whom they had been taught about, and Whom God really is.

Even then Jesus told the people that their religious leaders were not truly a good picture of God’s love even though they had some things right. Jesus told them that they had mixed truth with their own selfish controlling destructive laws, and He was here to free them from the false narratives of power and control.

““What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel! “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence!”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭23:23-25‬ ‭NLT‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/116/mat.23.23-25.NLT

And they killed Him for promoting freedom in His Father’s love. By dying and taking up His life again, Jesus and His Father agreed that this would be the ultimate example of what true love and power actually look like.

““For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”
‭‭John‬ ‭3:16-17‬ ‭NLT‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.3.16-17.NLT

It helps to read the compilation as stories written with culture and tradition in the language and style of their era, over thousands of years of God continually trying to show what love really is as they mess things up.

Then Jesus came to show what love really was.

And the letters after Jesus is the recording of humanity still trying to do their best with a more complete revelation of love.

Notice that they move from genocide, death penalty, and empty rituals, to a gentler and still imperfect way of being.

The coming of Jesus to show what love is, is the difference between the brutal powermongering of the Old Testament and the attempts to live in a better way in the New Testament.

And Jesus told us to seek the input of the Spirit of God who is with us instead of trying to figure it out on our own, and we still stupidly try to do it alone. And now we are in almost as bad a place as they who were in the Old Testament.

It doesn’t have to be this way, look at Jesus. Study His life. That is where love is to be seen.

God is all about being in a loving relationship with us with freedom as the central pillar of our relationship.

The Woman at the Well ran to tell her neighbours, “Come see a man who has told me everything I have ever done”. Period. She didn’t say come see a man who has told me how wrong I am. Just come see a man who has treated me with pure love and respect even though He knows all the things that I have done.

This is the point of the Bible. Come, see God Who is patient and loving with humanity even though He knows all the things that we have done.

““For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”
‭‭John‬ ‭3:16-17‬ ‭NLT‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.3.16-17.NLT

My friend for life interacted with this thing that poured from my heart on to her Facebook page two years ago. Memories matter, because they remind us that we have been living for quite some time already. And so we can continue. I’ll share it here so that I can be reminded when I forget.

April 20, 2020 – on concerns about manipulated perspectives and lost freedom:

If you watch the game closely enough, through the Master’s eyes you will see. You won’t see everything, but you will see enough to know what matters most.

If 40 people wrote a book about their interaction with your daddy, inspired by his deep investment of love in their lives, none of those 40 would have a complete understanding of who your daddy really is. But someone who read through the entire book, would see his character, and understand his values. He believed in love, freedom, and unity, and because he travelled widely, he understood that because of culture and tradition, love, freedom, and unity would be understood differently in different places. So in each place, he spoke love, freedom, and unity in language that the people understood.

But some people tend to be greedy, and want control of truth to amass wealth and power. So they picked one single story, and tried to convince everyone that your daddy, who was the epitome of love, is this one thing. And then they figure out that to build wealth and power they must create a system that has just enough of your daddy’s ways of being, combined with their own cleverly designed psychological, spiritual, and physical traps to keep generations of the yearning masses focused on their single story.

So your daddy and your brother decide that your brother, who is the spitting image of your daddy, in character, will come in person to live with the people so that they can see and hear the fullness of all the stories for themselves.

All your daddy really wants is to have the people see the great value of love, freedom, and unity.

The power seekers cannot abide the thought of losing their power and wealth. They see that if pure truth is told their single stories will crumble. They do not see that they will gain love, freedom, and unity. They only see their lost power. And so they conspire to kill your brother, to maintain control of their wealth and power. They do not care that the masses will lose out on the great treasures of love, freedom, and unity.

But because your daddy is the epitome of love, there will always be those people who are drawn to the whole book, the full story. They see how his love continues in the same pattern. He speaks to people in the way that they understand. He speaks through their cultures and traditions, and as has always been the case, his love, freedom, and unity eventually help the people to shed traditions that do not build love, freedom, and unity.

Those who grasped for wealth and power conspire to do everything possible to keep focus off of the whole story. Some people see some things, because your daddy’s love is such that no person is ever blind, unless they choose not to see. They see that there is conspiracy. But instead of focusing on the whole story, they become consumed with conspiracy, and they begin to teach that conspiracy is everything. They too seek power, the power of being the truth-tellers, of their incomplete stories. They wish to highlight the importance of freedom, but they forget, or choose to ignore, love and unity.

Through all of this, your daddy is still hoping that more people will be drawn to the whole book, so that more will be willing to share his deepest desire for all to reap the benefits of living in love, freedom, and unity.

Love. Friday.

Having spent Thursday night in agony at the thought of so many things many more than I can fathom –
betrayal
separation
the grief of those who loved Him
the shame of those who supported His death
the cover-up
the persecution of those who shared His ways
the coming siege of Jerusalem
the thousands of years to come where the light of love would be dimmed (but never extinguished)
chattel slavery
human trafficking
sexual abuse
spiritual abuse
physical abuse
emotional abuse
financial abuse
paedophilia
residential schools
colonial torture
cultural hegemony
generational trauma
and so on and so on and so on

And thinking of the depth of pain that He would physically endure, Jesus still chose to follow through with His appointment to fight death so that humanity would see love. For how else could we experience pure love but to see pure hate in action. The light shone into the darkness, and it did not once curse the darkness.

Love shone through agony. That resolute agony is the core of love. The choice to stay in love no matter what. It was a Good Friday. It was the Best Friday Ever.

It was not easy, but it was so worth it…

Can I challenge our wretch with love this morning please?

On that crucifixion Friday so many years ago Jesus chose to die because we are so very worthy of love. He made that choice even before the first one of us ever lived, because we are worthy of His love.

Jesus did not die to save wretches. Jesus died to save His beloved children who had lost sight of their worthiness. This is why He shared His very last meal before death with the one who betrayed Him misguidedly. Judas was worthy not wretched. He had just lost sight of his worthiness, and he had been searching for it in so many wrong places.

My loves, on that crucifixion Friday so many years ago, Jesus allowed Himself to be killed, so that once and for all we would have proof that we are worth everything to Him. No wretches. All so worthy.

The beauty of grace is not that we do not deserve it, but that our Father and His Son, and all of heaven gave us all Their love while we, having run away from love in shame felt that we did not deserve it.

We deserve love because we exist as a part of the Essence of Love. We are already made of love, and we cannot deserve anything less than that of which we are already made.

Dying was worth showing us this truth. And defeating death by peacefully laying His life down and then taking it up again to prove to death that it had always been powerless was worth it.

Family, can I challenge your wretch? Do we see whom we really are?

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes would live forever and ever and not die. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world, through Him, might be saved. John 3:16-17

Come, see a man who has told me everything I ever did. He loves me.

People for Preschoolers. This is not “People for Dummies”. It is People for Preschoolers because I think that the best thing is saying a thing in a way that even the littlest people can understand.

Once upon a time, I AM made people. He started with two, a man and a woman, because all other people would be made from these two people. Sperm and egg. The first.

I AM has unlimited creative abilities, and so even though these were the first two people, He had infinite varieties of people waiting to be made. And He gave people the ability to be His partners in creating these infinite varieties of people.

Just like potato chips. What’s your favourite brand, Lays or Pringles? As long as there are people, potatoes, and sources of flavour there will be new and exciting varieties of chips being produced. Regular was only the first.

People be people. I AM defeated death and made sure that we would never be extinct. So Happy Easter. Death is defeated. People be people and we will always be.

This message filled my heart on Wednesday. I recorded it then, and I’m sharing it with you now.

Have you “Marie Kondo’d” your heart today? Seriously, fam. It’s important that we declutter our hearts, because as my old friendly acquaintance Solomon says, our hearts determine the course of our lives. A heart that is full of the toxic energy that is the by-product of the hustle for worthiness never has enough room for the fuel of joy which allows us to enlarge our territory of love as we focus on our appreciations instead of fighting to defend or meet expectations.

In my journey through life I have found that pseudo-friendships tend to create the most clutter. And so I have had to learn how to know the difference between people who are friendly and those who are my friends, because friendships refresh your soul, and you are always perfectly enough for your friends.

“Just as lotions and fragrance give sensual delight, a sweet friendship refreshes the soul. Don’t leave your friends or your parents’ friends and run home to your family when things get rough; Better a nearby friend than a distant family.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭27:9-10‬ ‭MSG‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/97/pro.27.9-10.MSG

“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭4:23‬ ‭NLT‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/116/pro.4.23.NLT

#YouAreEnough

Let’s dive into the conversation about emasculated Afrocentric men who play small and either make clowns or emotionless scholars of themselves so that they can survive in a white patriarchal world.

Let’s dive into the conversation about emasculated Afrocentric men who have too often turned their self-loathing about being unable to stand up for their women, while they were whipped, raped, or staring at the possibility of a literal or figurative lynching, women whom they have historically been unable to defend.

Let’s dive into the conversation about emasculated Afrocentric men who choose relationships with Caucasian women over Afrocentric women at whom they sneer, and whom they insultingly call loud with bad attitudes, because Afrocentric women have had to develop the strength to tend to and protect their wounded boys and men in a deliberately racist world designed to brutally subjugate and disempower them.

Let’s talk about all that and hear Sister Tiffany Haddish say: “When I saw a Black man stand up for his wife. That meant so much to me,”…“As a woman, who has been unprotected, for someone to say like, ‘Keep my wife’s name out your mouth, leave my wife alone,’ that’s what your husband is supposed to do, right? Protect you. And that meant the world to me. And maybe the world might not like how it went down, but for me, it was the most beautiful thing I ever seen because it made me believe that there are still men out there that love and care about their women, their wives.”

Was the slap beautiful? No. The hope of support was the very beautiful thing.

Let’s dive into the conversation about Afrocentric women who refuse to be infantilized and stereotyped, and who have begun to call our men out to stand for us as women, as we have stood for them.

Having been unable to defend his own mother from his self-loathing father, and having digested Queen Oracene’s pain as she called out King Richard for his failure to acknowledge her significance as a cornerstone in building the Williams family legacy, Will Smith’s well of pain at being the shrinking Afrocentric male who clowns or who over intellectualizes to survive overflowed as he saw yet another broken Afrocentric man insult his queen, and especially about that beautiful crown of hair which has been another source of Afrocentric female pain.

Hopefully someone will prominently position that slap in its proper place so that it will have the incisive impact that it needs to have to effect change.

Look at that slap as the whips with which Jesus created space in the temple for inclusion. Own and use anger as it was meant to be used, to create change – without sin (Ephesians 4:26).