I will no longer take cuts with knives I sacrificed for and be hit with stones that I have the deed to. I must say so long to my “Job’s” friends (from the Bible, not work) who need to eclipse me in order to find shine. I will no longer fill voids and patch wounds while being left on battlefields alone. I can no longer be held hostage for my portion or my inheritance
I have never claimed to be perfect or to have all the answers. Life never gave me an easy button or a GPS. I never had the finer things but would give you the shirt off my back. Never had gold in my pocket but every penny you had access to. I did my best with the hand I was dealt. That’s all God requires of m, and in my matured year, I am learning that is a very good thing.
Lord, forgive me for hearing their voices over Yours. I return to the peace you purchased and the love you freely give. I am bruised but not broken. Cast down but not destroyed. Though I sometimes stumble, I will dance with the limp I got and to the song I write.
It was one of the oddest days of my life. Was sitting at my desk frozen when I got the call from my hometown, sherrif. My brain went into autopilot, and I kept trying to work with tears streaming down my face. My then boss had to force me to breathe and go home. The love my co-workers showed was unmatched. Could not have made it through the coming days and the funeral without them.
He was a complicated man that I did not get to know until he was an old man in need of redemption and forgiveness. In the beginning, I was an abandoned child, looking for answers, who only served him out of obedience to my God, and the Word said to honor thy father. In the end, I became the child thru whom he wanted to give answers and ask forgiveness from his other children thru.
We didn’t have time to become father/daughter in the traditional sense. What we did have was card games, sweet potato pies, road trips, old Navy stories, testaments of the grandparents I didn’t get to meet, and a soft spot for healing to begin. He became my Pop, and I became his church mother. LOL and inside joke between us.
I figure sometimes that I was the “Moses” baby. … shipped off with no knowledge of him…so I could return and become a path to his need for freedom. Though I 💯 validate it, I am blessed to never quite have known the anger my sisters and brothers felt for him. I suppose my heart was kept in reserve for the old man and young child of God he would become.
Still missing you, Pop. I thank you for the gift of the crazy brood of sisters and brothers I inherited 9 years ago.
I hope amongst the milk and honey that there is strong coffee and sweet potato pie!!
Edgar Jerome “Jerry” Franklin-Bradshaw March 1, 1944 – February 5, 2015
The last few months have been crazy busy with normal things and unusual situations. All resulting in a great rushing around town and telephones ringing incessantly while I wear my many hats as wife, mother, grandma, daughter, sister, employee, minister, caregiver, and advocate for the homeless.
In the midst of stress and exhaustion, there is one time I must pause every morning, typically at 4 a.m. During those wee hours, I don a compression garment that looks very much like a cross between the Micheline Tire Man and Robo Cop. I then connect it to a machine that forces a tight lymphatic massage from my feet up to my arms. Rotating in four zones.
Those one to two hours daily are not much fun. Confining and often sweaty. But nevertheless, a necessary evil to ward off any increasing lymphodema caused by the removal of 100s of lymph nodes during my cancer fight.
To make it less taxing, I typically light a scented candle, make a cup of herbal tea, pull up a sermon on YouTube and attempt to ignore phone calls from those who try to catch me while I am being held captive.
This particular morning was different. I had settled into my routine. Tired from a week of very little sleep, but content to have two hours of escape.
15 minutes in, I noticed that only one of the 4 compression zones was working. I kept changing positions, thinking I was laying on one of the 4 hoses. I shook my legs, hoping maybe kicking would jump start the machine. I am so glad no one could witness what a comical sight it must have been to see a robot dancing on a couch.
I looked at the machine’s monitor twice, and everything was cycling as it should, but I just wasn’t getting my prescribed treatment. I started to panic, wondering how I was going to replace a $5000 medical device. I then remembered I had a 10 year warranty on the thing, but nevertheless, I starting to fret over the process and expense it would take to pack about 10 lbs of equipment and mail back to the non-local service center.
However, as I reached over to the machine that I was expressing anger toward, I felt a puff of air and realized that in my haste and distraction, I had only plugged in one of the four hoses. My machine wasn’t broken, I just hadn’t connected to it.
Immediately, in my spirit, I heard “yeah, kinda like us.”
A painful wave came over me, realizing that my failure to connect had spread to my relationship with my all-encompassing healing Savior.
In my rush and haste to perform “the have to” things in life, my personal time with Him was suffering greatly. He promised to be with me always, but I hadn’t always been with Him. Prayer and praise had been replaced with to-do lists.
Far worse, I had been complaining and pondering over promises and prophetic words that didn’t seem like they were working in my favor. Tired, spent, and joy decreasing. Blaming everything on the “machine” life can be, instead of connecting to the “Power”
As I replugged in the natural, I could also feel the Holy Spirit nudging me get my 4 zones in order : alone time with Him in true worship, more time in the Word learning about Him, re-establishing Him as priority, and trusting in His promise warranties.
I stopped a moment to apologize to Flexitouch Plus for failing to connect to it and narcissisticly making “it” the problem. Once I reconnected, it fulfilled all I needed to get back on track, and I always look forward to the release of pressure at the end of every session.
And yes, of course, I apologized to Jesus, and that release after reconnecting and being forgiven is amazing .
I can’t remember who’s social media page I saw it on, so I can’t give proper credit, but this paraphrased sentence shook me to my core.
“Never Tell A Person, ‘you got this’ when they ask for help because obviously they don’t or they wouldn’t be talking to you.“
I know it is something I have said thinking I was be encouraging, but could my pat on the back have seemed dismissive? Did I trivialize a pain that was greater for you than I feel in myself or for myself? Could you have needed a soft place to land and I simply elevated you to somewhere higher to fall from?
I think back to when I was at the height of my cancer battle. Folks would say “oh you got this” or “you are so strong.” In actuality, I was screaming on the inside, needing a shoulder to cry on and desperate for an old school laying on of oil anointed hands. When all my treatments were over, I politely smiled when asked if I was good now. I really should have loudly voiced, “oh heck no, I’m fighting extreme depression, I feel like I’m going crazy, please don’t abandon me.”
Ooooooo forgive me, I did mean well and I oft see past today and into your future. I still envision great things on the horizon. But at the time you need a Word, I will now tell you God got you and let’s see how we can walk through this.
There may be nothing I can do in the natural but be a voice in the darkness or a bit of sunshine clearing shadowing places. Truly, that may be all you need. Or I can point you to some resources beyond me. In wisdom, we will talk to the Father first about what is best for you.
Now bear with me, it may take me awhile to shake that cheerful cliché. But for today, I pray that whatever is disturbing your mind, your heart or your body be washed in the Presence of the Almighty. That you be hugged by the best comforting of the Holy Spirit. That the provision, healing, and freedom purchased by Christ at Calvary be revealed and afforded to you. That every wound be mended and every resource for a Balm in Gilead soothe every where you hurt.
I pray that today you see that God got this and God got you. And that you are never far from one willing to walk it through with you.
In less than 24 hours, he will be officially an adult, and I will be able to stop using my husband’s AARP card and have my own.
I helped deliver this marvel and he has stolen every birthday since. He was born a little blue, and the doctor said “here grandma, you wake him up.” So, I roughed him up with love and anointing oil on my hands….praying all the while and thanking God for that first cry. Ironically, he is the only one of my grands who actually calls me grandma. I guess he heard with the doctor said.
This morning, I take another first cry for a sweet boy who now becomes a man.
Happy tears because he is now smarter than I could have ever dreamed, more loving than I could have imagined, and his future is so bright that the sun has competition.
As joyful as this triumph is, a few nervous tears as he goes to college, achieves his dream career, meets his future mate, and perhaps a brood of 6.5 feet tall children like himself. Selfish, I know, but I will always want him to let me hold him in my heart the way I did in the pic below.
Thank you, Josiah Gillison and Teonna Tull-Roberts, for the best birthday present ever.
I believe almost every member of my family has the giving bug that was gleefully transmitted by my grandma, Alice Gillison. Though only Goochland Christmas for one year in the early 80s, she continued to do the organizing and giving right up until 19 days before she died. She was better than Oprah with “every child gets a gift” campaign.
No matter how poor we were (and we were close to dirt), she believed that giving was living.
I first picked it up on a small scale in memory of her . Then again, because I wanted to adopt a little boy for Christmas after my beloved grandson, Emmanuel slipped away to heaven. My husband and I blessed a little boy with “Manny’s” share last week.
The collections get larger every year. For the past 5 years, I have said each year that I wasn’t going to do anymore. Each year, I Iie to myself.This year, I tackled doing this for two organizations. I have decided that I am nuts, but I love it. Lol.
Though this is the last day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the fight for “Pink To Just Be A Color & Not A Diagnosis ” continues. As exhausting as this month has been running everywhere being #rudeaboutboobs, having women along the way promise to get that overdue #smashagrams has been worth it. Even had a lady almost 20 years overdue with a high family history, bite the bullet and be overjoyed that fear turned into a clean report. This month was about You, Your Loved Ones and keeping alive the ones who hold the family together. Today’s Pink is dedicated to Me. Not ego tripping. Just loving on the girl I almost lost and the Warrior she has become.
Yesterday, I had an elderly woman who had been raising her son alone for 42 years call seeking to place a help wanted ad. Her son is extreme on the spectrum, non-verbal, rigid and combative. She was desperately in need of help but kept saying nobody will want this job. Her husband had even left her 30 years ago when she would not institutionalize the son. I let her talk and took notes as I went.
After she composed herself, she apologized and I let her know that no apologies were necessary. I then proceeded to read to her the ad copy I crafted while I had been listening. She was surprised and asked me how I could possibly read her mind like that. ” Was I a magician?”
After my chuckle, I explained to her that though my situation is not as extreme as hers, I have two special needs adult sons in my home and I have understood the challenges, the fears, the isolations, but also the hopes, loves and joys.
We went on to talk about an hour for what should have taken 5 minutes. But I knew this customer was going to be the most important one of the day. As, we finally got to the conclusion, she tells me that her son gives her one bright spot everyday, he refuses to go to bed without giving her a gentle kiss on the cheek. She then told me that God had sent me to be her extra bright spot for the day.
It took me an extra 5 minutes after we hung up to pull myself together. She has no clue that God sent her to remind me that I am more than just a worker bee or a hamster on a wheel. I needed to know at that very moment that I have purpose beyond the bottom line.
Virginia’s quest to erase the enslavement of human beings from memory will not make it cease to have existed. I don’t teach this to my children and to their children to foster hatred but rather to show them how incredible our people are to have survived and thrived despite circumstances forced on our ancestors by american greed. Yet no one asks my Jewish brothers to forget and water down the Holocaust. No one asks the american Japanese to deny the California concentration camps. No one asks my Indian heritage to dry the Trail of Tears.
We are watered down because whenever we choose to remember we become powerful. An attempt to drown us in engineered miseducation. Reminiscent of our bloodlines drowned in the Atlantic for being too strong to make passage.
Fearful folks discriminate and suppress what and whom they are intimidated by most. Black History Month is about strength and success against incredible odds. Slavery is american history dripping in greed, oppression and supposed superiority. No need to sugar coat it or pad it with cotton. My ancestors cultivated both of those.
Oddly, the State of Virginia worried about a recent governor in “black face.” Need to be more worried about the one who has no problem showing who he really is.
Once again I want to thank you, my heartbeats, for all the love shown this week. My 54th year started off a wee bit strange with major changes professionally and personally. Made my knees shake but my faith ain’t fake. No worries babies. God is in the details.
I have come to realize that I am a full year older than my mother was when she died and God has brought me back from more near misses than I can recount here. I owe it to her, to God and to myself to make this year count!!
Pulling back a wee bit so I can move forward. Choosing the fast God chose for me and using this time to straightened my crown.
defygravitywithoutwings.com 