IN SEARCH OF HIS FACE

Don't fight it!

2012-01-24T13:44:00.000-05:00

Umm…Happy New Year?!

(LOL)

Yeah, I know I’m late.

Yes, I know it’s been a minute since I’ve posted.

But the picture above is the most wonderful excuse ever.

My baby girl.

And of course, she’s also what brings me back to my blog.

So you would think that hearing God speak wouldn’t still amaze me especially after experiencing the miracle that is birthing a child. Maybe that says something about me or the frequency of my interaction with Him. Or more likely, it’s just that the crystal clarity, the certainty that fills me, is so overwhelming that I find myself still in awe of Him.

As I’ve noted many times over the years on this blog, while God is speaking all the time and in many ways, I generally tune into His Spirit during the seemingly most mundane activities. It’s like when I put on my special clothes, set my bible at just the right angle, and try to put on my posture of meditation…I get nothing but silence. But when I’m washing dishes or---nowadays---changing diapers, fire reigns down from heaven and revelation pours from the sky.

Or something like that. LOL!

Maybe that’s the only time I’m paying attention. In fact, it usually goes something like this: I’m washing clothes. Later, I write in my journal about my day---which consisted of washing clothes. I ask some significant question about my life. God says…ask the clothes. I ask the clothes and they say, “To get the most effective results, you must make sure that we are on the right cycle and setting. What setting is your life on, Tracey?” Then BINGO! I get my answer.

Yes, I made that up. LOL! It was just an example. But what’s true is…that’s how it usually happens.

Needless to say, giving birth to my first child last August and spending the last five months with her has created situations that are ripe with revelation. The other day being no exception.

When it comes to sleeping, MaKayla is a fighter. Girlfriend will stare at the plants and pant repeatedly in order to keep herself from falling asleep. Seriously! She’ll whine and moan and kick her feet until finally sleep overtakes her and her head just falls like a rock onto my shoulder. It’s actually funny to watch because I, being her mother, know that her fighting is in vain. That her body is going to give in to the Sandman, at some point. And yet every night, like clockwork, she goes through her ritual. I patiently bounce her on my shoulder as she gyrates and squeals until I hear that soft, even breathing that is my signal to put her down in her crib.

One day I was laughing with a friend a mine about it. I kept saying, “Why does this little girl fight so hard? She knows she’s tired but yet she pushes against the inevitable.”

And of course, that’s when it happened. That little voice that only I can hear…

“Why do YOU fight so hard?”

Huh? What? **shaking my head**

“You...like your daughter...fight against the inevitable. I call you to a season of rest and you choose to worry. I call you to harvest and you are still planting. I call you to ride the seas of my provision and promise and you fight fiercely against the current of your life. You moan and whine about being tired, not realizing that you are tired because you are moaning and whining. While I appreciate your ambition, it is not ambition alone that will help you fulfill your destiny. Just as you wish your baby girl would just relax and embrace her rest, I’m asking you to do the same. The light of the SON will let you know when it is time to get back to MY business.”

Uhh, ouch?

So this is the head space I’m in. I certainly have a lot of work to do. I have stories to write this year and other opportunities on the horizon. But I’m trying to be aware of the seasons of these things. I’m learning to stop fighting against what God is trying to do in my life but to embrace both the work and the rest.

“Just like you with MaKayla, I am patient.” – God

TMLG

EXCERPT #7 - The Sins of the Father - From my new book, “The Integrated Church: Authentic Multicultural Ministry”

2011-09-14T07:00:00.001-04:00

History, in general, is beautiful and ugly, broken and stable, insane and sane, and full of both the godliness and humanity of the people who have been made stewards over it.

If we consider American history alone, we have to celebrate the freedoms that came with the Revolutionary War, the conquering of the West, the writing of our Constitution, the industrial revolution and the democracy in which we now live, as well as acknowledge the long-term impact of slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese concentration camps, and immigration inequalities. If we expand our view to encompass global history, then while we celebrate the independence of nations like Haitior Nigeria and the technological advances of Japan, we also cannot ignore the significance of the Holocaust, the colonization and resource depletion of the continent of Africa, and other calamities executed by the hands of humans.

It is undeniable that there is physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual residue left behind by these historical events, and it is critical that leaders within the body of Christ not only educate themselves but also have a genuine sensitivity to these issues. Many minority groups, particularly communities of color, find themselves struggling with accepting the Christianity presented to them simply because, in some cases, a distorted version of the gospel has been used to perpetuate stereotypes and their feelings inferiority. This residue has now given birth to a remnant generation that is seeking God, even if unknowingly, but which has to reconcile its own past, laboring to put away their suspicions or skepticism about the authentic Christ and his followers. This is why a multicultural approach to ministry is even more important. It challenges the internal battle that has entrenched many minority groups.

In discussing the importance of acknowledging the more tragic parts of our history, I don’t want to imply that the need for a vision and church strategy that is multicultural and employs diversity at every level would only impact predominately white churches. There is a great need for churches that are predominately black or Hispanic to also take up the call and address the fears that keep their congregations from diversifying. While these fears might be the result of some of the very real injustices, horrific experiences, and negative stereotypes that have been endured by minority groups, God is still not a respecter of persons. Black churches as well as white churches (or Hispanic and Asian churches, for that matter) are not off the hook. The journey of each group might be filled with different experiences and perceptions of those experiences, but the destination is still the same. As challenging as it is, a multicultural strategy that will diversify our pews is very much God’s mandate for ministries that are predominately anything.

Get your copy today at http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/bhol/index.jsp

EXCERPT #6 – The Potter and the Clay – (from The Integrated Church: Authentic Multicultural Ministry)

2011-09-13T07:00:00.001-04:00

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. (Jer. 18:1-6)

If you’ve ever watched a potter working on a potter’s wheel, the one thing the potter does to perfect the piece he’s working on is stretch and pull out the clay knots that cause lumpiness. In other words, he pulls out the pieces that are resistant to him, shaping the piece to his liking. The message God intended to communicate through this illustration from ancient life was not, as some theologians argue, one of divine sovereignty. Yes, God is sovereign and will reveal is authority to us in many ways. A deeper way of looking at this in our multicultural context is the underlying message of grace. In our resistance to the transformation God desires for the church, God is still willing to begin anew with us and reshape us into the church he had in mind from the very beginning. This is something we should not take advantage of by extending our resistance until we are “comfortable” but by rejoicing in the fact that even in our mess-ups we still have the opportunity to look as he intended. As the scripture implies, God the Father is the potter and we are the clay. The tension that is created by the transformation toward a multicultural, multidimensional approach to ministry is God’s way of pulling the imperfections of segregation and fear out of us in order to shape us for the kingdom work ahead.

Get your copy today at http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/bhol/index.jsp

EXCERPT #5 - From my new book, “The Integrated Church: Authentic Multicultural Ministry”

2011-09-12T07:00:00.001-04:00

It is harder to overcome what you don’t know then to accept what you do know.

As observed earlier, in the attempt to create a climate of tolerance (vs. acceptance), many people make the mistake of negating or ignoring the background of the audience they are trying to reach. For example, a church with a predominately white congregation may take pride in the fact that they “don’t see color,” and while in theory that makes sense, “not seeing color” could actually mean they are missing all of the wonderful and potentially useful things derived from the different cultures that are a part of communities of color. Smart ministry leaders embrace the things that make their congregations who they are and seek to create a genuine interest in them, even if they don’t fully identify with them. Such leaders understand the value that these differences add to the kingdom agenda they have been given.

The Spiritual Impact

The gospel of “here’s how to go to heaven” doesn’t really require much of us in terms of diversity and reconciliation. But the gospel of “here’s how the kingdom of God can be manifest on earth” challenges us profoundly. To me, underneath our past failures to deal well with diversity lies a failure to grapple with the actual gospel Jesus preached, the gospel of the kingdom of God.

—Brian McLaren, author and pastor

Whether or not the church chooses to embrace a multicultural perspective in ministry will ultimately determine how far we are elevated in the kingdom. God has called us to walk in the spirit, which, in turn, requires us to see our neighbor through spiritual eyes versus natural ones.

For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. (Eph. 6:12, nlt)

Race, gender, and other culture-based subjects are flesh and blood issues, and while they might be important to certain social, emotional, or psychological needs we have, they are inconsequential to the spiritual battles we are called to fight. In fact, as the Ephesians verse implies, it is the very thing that the enemy uses to separate us. They are the tools he uses to fight us spiritually. He seeks to alienate humanity from God by disobedience, ignorance, and corrupted thinking. He tries to separate people from each other through alienating sins.

A resistance to diversity in church plays right into his hands by keeping us focused on natural issues rather than spiritual matters.

When “natural” issues become factors in how we worship and to whom we minister then we will ultimately find ourselves stagnant in our spiritual growth, never rising any higher than those issues will allow and never being able to use what we can potentially learn from those who are different from us, for the glory of God and the equipping of the disciples of Christ. We could also find ourselves “entertaining angels unaware” (Heb. 13:2). In other words, we must cultivate our spiritual eyes—seeing ourselves, each other, and the body as God sees us and not as a function of the myriad things we’ve encountered.

Get your copy today at http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/bhol/index.jsp

EXCERPT #4 - From my new book, “The Integrated Church: Authentic Multicultural Ministry”

2011-09-11T07:00:00.001-04:00

About a year ago, after a series of personal trials, I found myself examining the various relationships in my life. A question came to mind that was the catalyst for what I like to call a mental and spiritual shift in how I saw myself and others. I asked myself, How much of what people connect to within me is innate, genetic stuff I have no control over and how much are experiences I’ve accumulated over time that are similar to the ones they might’ve had? The answer was crystal. The relationships I cherished the most were developed, not because the people looked like me or acted like me, but because the relationships were born out of shared experiences, simple areas of commonality that provided a foundation for a bond.

One of the first steps toward being an effective church or ministry leader as it relates to attracting a multicultural audience is identifying the things common to us all. When working to find common ground with people of other cultures, it’s important to explore and highlight experiences we all share. Finding common ground on issues such as family, loneliness, joy, despair, success, and hurt will help to draw a diverse audience who can identify with these aspects of the human condition in spite of whatever culture they come from.

Start with the easy questions. How many people remember taking their lunch to school in a lunch box? How many people have had a bad breakup? How many people like to dance, sing, paint, or participate in any other art forms? How many people have every felt lonely?

Then gradually ask the harder questions, always keeping in mind Paul’s warning, “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:22-23). How many people have been neglected? Abused? Committed adultery? Committed murder?

While some issues are ones that we never hope to have in common with anyone, it cannot be ignored that, in most cases, people connect with others at their point of brokenness. Of course, this will require that you become familiar with your own wounds. If you are unable to face your own brokenness, then you will probably be unwilling to connect with someone at theirs. This kind of transparency often challenges church leaders, but in understanding the difficult circumstances we’ve all had to endure we can begin to identify with each other in a way that can only be enhanced by our cultural background instead of threatened by it.

Get your copy today at http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/bhol/index.jsp

EXCERPT #3 - “Our Church is Color-Blind” (from The Integrated Church: Authentic Multicultural Ministry)

2011-09-10T07:00:00.002-04:00

Before embarking on my own assignment to become a writer and educator, I spent two years working as an account consultant for a Fortune 500 company in New Jersey. During my time there, I established a wonderful working relationship with one of my colleagues and we often took business trips together to visit our shared clients. Wendy was a beautiful, white woman with long brown hair, a distinctively North Jersey style and attitude, and an outstanding outlook on life. I truly enjoyed knowing her. Yet out of all of the conversations we had about men and food and clothes and even faith, there is one that stood out among the rest. One day on the way to meet a client our conversation turned to race. Wendy explained to me that the reason she felt she could get along with almost anyone, including me, was that she didn’t allow herself to see race. She didn’t see me as a woman of color. She only saw me as a woman. A good woman with whom she’d developed a great working relationship.

At first, I was flattered. Theoretically, it sounded great and I believe she thought that what she was saying was true and good. However, after some thought, I realized that there is a real danger in “not seeing color” or being figuratively color-blind. If a person doesn’t see my color, if he or she doesn’t see my culture, then in essence, that person doesn’t see me. He or she has negated, or at least made inconsequential, a large part of what makes me who I am. While I currently reside in Philadelphia, I’m a native of Kentucky. A large portion of my personality and experiences are directly rooted in being raised as an African-American woman, coming of age in the eighties and early nineties and living in a suburban area of Louisville.

What’s my point? Many churches and ministries, in an attempt to have a more multicultural focus, make the mistake of trying to cancel out, ignore, or deny the background of their congregations as if by homogenizing their audiences they can increase tolerance. Paul Louis Metzger, a professor of Christian theology and theology of culture at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, Oregon, observes, “It is so easy for us in the church to prejudge and objectify people who seem all so different from us, when we don’t have exposure to them. Homogeneous churches do not help us move beyond objectification of people who are different from us ethnically. Once I enter into a relationship with a Hispanic or African-American person, a [white], First Nations or Asian American person, I can’t label him or her as a statistic or as a demographic datum.”

The fact remains that people, no matter the race or creed, desire to be celebrated, not tolerated. It’s important for churches to embrace the differences of their changing congregations in their journey down the road toward diversity.

Get your copy today at http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/bhol/index.jsp

EXCERPT #2 - Separate but Equal (from “The Integrated Church: Authentic Multicultural Ministry)

2011-09-09T07:00:00.001-04:00

“Separate but equal” may remind us of that dark period of time in the history of the United States when that phrase was used to justify and legalize segregation. It allowed for public facilities and the education of children to be separate based on race under the guise of claiming that the conditions of those facilities and the educational system would be equal. Yet, as we found out in 1955 during Brown v. Board of Education, in nearly all cases, conditions were not equal, and the separation itself had a profound impact on the way African-Americans were perceived, not just by whites, but by African-Americans themselves.

Ironically, the similarities between how the body of Christ justifies its own segregation and how society once justified legal segregation are astounding. Just like in legal segregation, some churches boast about being predominately white or black and glorify their perspectives on worship styles and the doctrines associated with those distinctions, all while in the same proverbial breath declaring, “We are all God’s children.” And similarly, these churches are spiritually unbalanced, causing a huge crisis of identity within the body of Christ.

Pastor Stephen Rhodes, a leader in multicultural ministry for the United Methodist Church, drives home the inconsistency between what many churches advocated for during the civil rights movement and how we currently function: “We said to culture that it was a moral imperative to integrate our schools, workplaces and neighborhoods while simultaneously preserving the segregation that we practice in services of worship. By refusing to embody the truth claims of the gospel that we preached to our culture, we lost our credibility. Before the church can ask our culture to believe the gospel, we must show our culture that we believe it by how we live together.”

Whenever a debate about multiculturalism ensues, there is often a faction that questions whether there is even a need for such an emphasis. Do churches really need to “market” the gospel to a diverse audience and if so, why? It is easier to believe that if you live in a primarily urban community or in a rural one, you can silo your ministry and center its goals on only those in your immediate reach. However, that is not only unbiblical, barring any specific assignment or mandate from God, but also increasingly impossible to accomplish. The media, through television, radio, and the Internet, has exposed everyone to all cultures. Hip-hop, a phenomenon birthed in the African-American and Hispanic community, now counts suburban white kids as its primary consumers. Country music, a genre that thirty years ago rarely reached past Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry, now has American Idol and pop artists to thank for its popularity.

The growth of the Hispanic, African-American, and Asian-American communities in America has made what is still deemed a minority in the public sector a physical and economic majority for the population and gross consumer buying power.

Even if, to some extent, the images of these groups are still skewed and often stereotypical, there is no denying that this global exposure along with God’s global mandate makes rethinking the church’s position and relevance to the culture as a whole a necessity.

Get your copy today at http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/bhol/index.jsp

EXCERPT #1 – From my new book, “The Integrated Church: Authentic Multicultural Ministry”

2011-09-08T07:00:00.003-04:00

Mandy was about as different from me as a child could be. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Skin that looked like strawberry milk. Her mommy looked exactly the same. I looked like my mommy, too, only we had skin the color of fresh almonds, big, brown eyes, and hair that didn’t move in the wind. Nevertheless, Mandy was my best friend—at least as much as I knew about friendship at three years old. She was most likely my second friend ever. My first was another brown child who lived next door and with whom I rode Big Wheels on Saturday afternoons. No, Mandy was my school friend—the one I shared my three-year-old soul with during the hours between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. at our day care.

Mandy and I held hands at the playground and played tag with the others. We made sure our cots were next to each other during nap time so we could whisper our little girl secrets until our cheese and crackers finally settled in our bellies.

We didn’t know that according to the world in which we lived, we weren’t supposed to be friends. We didn’t know that our mommies would probably never be friends . . . except maybe at work where they had to be. We just bonded, drawn to each other by something altogether different, something higher and more special than the differences that, in 1978, should have kept us far apart.

I would not know Mandy in middle school, high school, or college. Too much would separate us. Our music. Our loves. Our church. All of it would fill the distance that would grow between her world and mine. Thankfully, I only knew her when I was three, and at three, she was my friend.

I wrote this when I found myself trying to remember a time when race didn’t matter. I searched my memories for a period in my life when the true spirit of a person was the only factor that determined how I would relate to him or her and whether or not he or she would be a part of my world. Sadly, I had to reach back to three, and even then there was, however slight, this acute awareness of the cultural differences between my friend and me that would inevitably only magnify as we got older.

I wish I could say that things were different at the church of my childhood, that there was some great spiritual equalizer that took effect as soon as one stepped into the vestibule of the house we said belonged to God. Yet, even there, I was inadvertently taught that God had different houses for the different kinds of people he created and that I just belonged to his black, Baptist house.

The issue of diversity as it relates to the body of Christ is one that is often met with either subtle skepticism or total denial. On the one hand, you have those who believe that because people are naturally more likely to gather in places with people who look, talk, and walk like them, churches will inherently follow suit. This leads to an almost Darwinist justification (as in the theory of natural selection) for the labels such as black church, white church, Hispanic church, and so on. We have succumbed to an “only the strong survive” reasoning for the self-imposed segregation of our worship experiences. Juxtaposed with this belief are those who are totally blind to the segregated nature of the body of Christ, claiming that color is most certainly not a factor while continuing to attend places of worship that are one-dimensional at best. This color-blind approach denies fully the awesomely powerful traditions of various cultures and how these can add to the work of the kingdom.

Unfortunately, both sides ignore the truth of what is happening during our services on Sunday morning, often quoted as the most segregated hours of the week, and what can happen if the church would relinquish the mistakes of its past and overcome the spirit of fear that seems to be at the root of many of our divisions. Simply put, we must align ourselves fully with the will of God. Christ is returning for a church that is without spot, wrinkle, or blemish (Eph. 5:27), and that church is dynamically multicultural, multiracial, and subsequently, multidimensional. It will take a church that looks this way to accomplish the will of God on the earth.

Get your copy today at http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/bhol/index.jsp

Restoring the Ability to Give and Receive Love

2011-08-26T12:48:00.000-04:00

When it comes to love--particularly my ability to receive it--I am a skeptic. I'm sure if you were to ask my husband, he’d tell you that one of his biggest challenges (even after three years of marriage) is convincing me that there is no ulterior motive to him loving me.

Even in my relationship with God, I'm constantly wrestling with the whole idea of unconditional love. It’s hard to believe sometimes that He loves me simply because of me; that he stands forever alongside me; that he loves me in spite of me. In fact, if you’ll allow me to take my halo off for a minute, I can admit that there have been too many times that I’ve “acted out” in order to test His love. Very much like a child would a parent, I suppose. It's like I'm trying to find God's breaking point despite knowing in my head that if there was ever a time for him to break because of my sin, it would have been on the cross.

But you know what's even more ridiculous? I wasn't always this way. There was a time in my early childhood when I was an open vessel for the giving and receiving of love. I reveled in it gladly and regardless to the form in which it would present itself. I knew peace and could see the good in anyone. I was, using a term my hubby says often, a “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” kid who somehow instinctively knew how to love fully and deeply and widely and had and the depth in me to receive the same.

In a phrase, it has always been in me to love.

And yet I suspect that somewhere between my teens and young adulthood, life (via the craftiness of the enemy) taught me something else. It taught me that the people who were supposed to love you could actually hurt you; damage you. It taught me that those that should be there to protect you, won’t. Or can’t.

My pastor recently said something that was quite profound to me. He said, “Experience is NOT always the best teacher. Sometimes experience is too expensive. It can cost you your life. I want my lessons and correction to be the least expensive. Some of us have too high of a pain threshold for stupidity."

And admittedly, that's me. So many times in my life, I’ve tolerated the distorted version of love that my experiences have presented---to the point that I’d actually come to expect it. I anticipated rejection. I found myself always looking around the proverbial corner of time for the “angle” or the “motive.” Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. So much so they even as God began to restore me, I was resistant. I fought against my true design even after it was revealed to me because I just couldn’t bring myself to trust it. To trust Him.

I forget sometimes that He created me to be one of the special ones. To be an extraordinary giver and receiver of His divine, unconditional love and to have the unique ability to mirror even the smallest of compassions. I keep allowing this to be stolen from me.

But God is passionate in His pursuit of my restoration. This much, I know for sure.

So now as I await the birth of my first child…my little girl…I can’t help but to wonder about this part of myself. I wonder if, when I look into her eyes, I will finally know unconditional love and be able to receive it fully. I know that she comes to me as a miracle with no angle and no motive. Just all love and need. The question is, will I be able to serve her without selfishness or suspicion?

I guess I'll soon let you know. :)

Tracey

Thoughts on the Greatest Gig I Could Ever Get

2011-06-13T17:25:00.000-04:00

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…” - Jeremiah 1:5

Right now, I find myself praying, “Lord, give me the words to say.” Something eloquent. Maybe even inspiring. I want to be verbose in my description of my emotions right now. But alas, it is not necessary. Not necessary because though my intellect desires exposure, my heart has taken over. It overflows with both gratitude and wonder. Though fear hovers along the perimeter, for the most part, I am pleasantly overwhelmed. Peacefully anxious. Skeptically sure. And any other contradictory phrases that I could try and impress you with. The bottom line is…in all my years of searching rather ambitiously for both significance and success, God has chosen to honor me with an assignment greater than any other thing I’ve ever done. A title that surpasses any other I’ve held. A role that I will play willingly, if not awkwardly, but with His Guidance at every turn. What is it, you ask?

Mother.

I am becoming a Mother.

Scratch that.

I am a mother.

Granted, I’m only seven months into the interview process for this gig (pregnancy) so I don’t know much. But the fact that God decided that he could trust me with one of his precious gifts, is beyond surreal to me. And it really is about that for me. Trust.

You see, I’ve accomplished a lot in my life. I’ve written books. I’ve spoken to audiences, both large and small. I’ve had great successes and, if I’m honest, great failures. But as King Solomon said in his wisdom, “It is all vanity.” Because if there is one thing that scares me, one thing that literally drops me to my knees in submission, it’s the idea…no, the reality now…of being a mother. Not giving birth (so you—yes, you—can stop with the horror stories). It’s all that stuff that happens after I take that 5 or 6 or 8 or…Lord, Jesus…10lb bundle of joy home, stare into her eyes, and say “Now what?”

I’ve always been good at pushing the limits of my ambitions. Doing what I wanted or felt led to do. And if I failed in the process, I’d simply shed my tears, get up, dust myself off, and keep it moving. No harm, no foul.

However, the stakes are so much higher now. NOW if I fail at motherhood, I do damage not to myself but to this human being that even as I type this is doing gymnastics inside of me. I could scar her. I could dash her dreams unknowingly. And the very thought of that overwhelms me. The very thought that my precious, beautiful, smart, and savvy baby girl (Speak those things…) could become subject to my insecurities; my fears; my ridiculous need for validation; my tendency to try to control my environment and the people in it; and all of the many other dysfunctions housed in this heart of mine---well, that’s just downright frightening.

Of course, I realize that much of this will be balanced by the positive things that I can give her. My love for God. My dogged pursuit of purpose. My resiliency. My capacity to love.

And I do get that no parent is perfect. No person is truly prepared for all that parenthood brings. But I guess I’ve lived the last 36 years of my life, at least the adult portion, needing to see further down the road then my headlights would allow, so to speak. Needing to manage expectations, control outcomes, and effectively plan for the good and the bad.

And yet it seems as though all of that floated down the toilet with other like matter during my first trimester. Shoot, I’m not even in control of my own body right now. I can’t move the way I’d like, sleep the way I’d like, eat what I’d like (So desperate for a large plate of colossal King Crabs!), and carry what I need to carry on my own.

But I should know by now. God is funny.

I am being forced to stop relinquish this pseudo-control that I think I have, and submit to this process totally and fully. Embrace it even. A lesson that I, until now, have absolutely refused to learn. Fought tooth and nail against.

A great lesson to learn in this season, I suppose.

How this journey will play out remains to be seen. However, if you see a brown lady with a big, brown belly wandering around the metro Philadelphia area and pulling her locks out one by one, just refer to this blog and give her a big hug.

I think I’m going to need quite a few of those in the coming months. :)

TMLG

The Morning After

2011-05-22T09:13:00.000-04:00

May 22, 2011 - The morning after.

I had to stop myself yesterday from mocking those that believed that May 21, 2011 was the day Christ was returning to earth to rapture the Church (according to the “prophecy” of Harold Camping).

Up until then, I’d laughed at all of the jokes and even cracked a few of my own. Then the Lord challenged me:

“Do you know how much faith one has to have in this age to get rid of everything in their entire lives in preparation for My coming?”

Sure. That faith was misguided at the very least and absolutely a distortion of the scripture. That’s obvious---we’re still here. But the sheer magnitude of the deception is what got me to examining my own life.

As followers of Christ, we are supposed to be living our lives in earnest expectation of our Savior’s return. The disciples did and while our earthly purpose is directed toward each other, our spiritual posture should always be heavenward. So while giving up my car and my job and all of my savings on the basis of one man’s unvetted prophecy may not be wise (and are likely things that God could care less about), what about my pride, my ego, my selfishness, my time and money to those less fortunate?

As I watch and read about people giving up their entire lives and spending their last minutes trying to reach the world, I had to ask myself: What have I really sacrificed for the cause and coming of Christ?

See this is the thing: Inherent to the scripture that clearly states that “no man knows the hour” (Matthew 24:36) is the fact that Christ could return for his church ANYTIME. Yes, there are signs. Earthquakes and wars, etc. But the minute and hour is undesignated. So you would think that Christ-followers would be in a perpetual state of preparation, sharing the love of Christ with others, and sacrificing our fleshly desires? Yet if I’m honest, cars and savings are the easy gives for me. My pride on the other hand? Giving that up has long been a struggle.

No, many of us ACT like we have all the time in the world to get it together. We live our lives carelessly as if we do know Christ is coming back---in our minds, a long time from now. And in that case, the only difference between those who believed the May 21, 2011 lie and us is that they shared their date with the world and we act as if.

Ouch.

Here’s the truth: Today, there are millions of people who have had their faith crushed to near non-existence by the enemy. As believers, do we call them stupid, ignore their brokenness, crack our jokes, and wave them away as hopeless and undeserving? If so, shame on us.

Or do we do the hard work of sharing the truth of God’s word and restoring them?

Your thoughts?

Tracey

Just one of those things we say...

2011-03-29T13:12:00.000-04:00

You hear preachers say it all the time.

“God will never give you more than you can bear!”

Well I’m no preacher but I say…”NONSENSE!”

Sure. It sounds good. And truthfully, statements like these, as common as they are, do provide comfort for those who might be going through something and wondering when it—whatever it is—will end. But none of that makes it the truth. The very premise of this statement assumes that we bear our trials and tribulations in our OWN strength. That it is solely up to us to carry our burdens. That we are in control. That we even have an understanding of what truly is bearable and what isn’t.

But the scriptures say otherwise.

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” – 1 Peter 5:6-7

So, I believe, as hard it is for us to fathom and as much we might seek the comfort of words, that God WILL give us more than we can bear.

To teach us that WE DON’T BEAR ANYTHING ALONE.

To bring us to a point of surrender that we otherwise would never come to if our trials only went as far as our human limits. For if he only allowed trials to come that we could handle (whether we know we can or not is irrelevant), then what would we need Him for?

Selah.

TMLG

He Loves Me (and You)...Regardless.

2011-02-21T16:08:00.000-05:00

1 John 3:4-10 (New International Version, ©2010)

4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

We’ve all had those moments. The ones where we find ourselves begging and pleading for God to help us not do “that” anymore. Those times when we become so overwhelmed by our own sin that we wonder if we will ever get “it” right. Then we take a look back. Not to yesterday but to yesteryear. We see how far we’ve come and we find our breath, repent, and continue on.

That’s the beauty of belonging to God. To being born of Him as 1 John 3:9 states. That while we have not yet reached perfection, the grace and mercy and love of God prevents us from wallowing in our unrighteousness. We just can’t keep doing the same ugly things over and over again because of the friction it will create with the Holy Spirit that resides within us.

Sure, it would be easy for us to say, “Fix me, Lord.” Or, run to those that we love and ask them to help us fix our issues. We often try to turn our search for deliverance from our sins into something that we can manipulate. However, the true answer to our sin problem lies in the journey we take from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:16-18). It is in the exemplification of God’s love in our lives; which of course covers a multitude of sins (I Peter 4:8). And ironically, we are both completely deserving of it and terribly undeserving of it. In either case, His love is capable of inhabiting us fully and completely if we let Him and results in us being able to sin less, even if we are not sinless.

Because our very identity as children of God lies in our ability to grow, it’s important that all of us take a long look in the mirror and ask God to show us ourselves. Reveal to us the areas of brokenness in our lives so that we can begin the journey toward wholeness. We want to be whole in our relationships because it will be our wholeness that will be our witness, our testimony, to those who don’t know Christ.

TMLG

Blog Remix: Meet Mae Green

2011-01-12T18:10:00.001-05:00

I'm currently "across the pond" doing a writing residency in England so since I'm kind of immersed in my creative juices (which, of course, sounds really yucky -lol), I thought I'd re-post a short, short story I wrote last year. Enjoy!

Mae Green (a short story)

Seems like insecurity just leaped from the woman’s eyes when I nodded my request to sit in her row. SJust jumped right out at me, landing square between mine. In one quick move, she unbuckled her seatbelt and hurled herself from the window seat to the cramped middle one saying, as if it hurt to even fix her mouth to acknowledge me, “I’m with him.”

I mean, seriously, what did she really think would happen if I did sit next to her husband on the plane? Would all my fabulousness become so overwhelming to him that a torrid love affair would ensue right before her eyes? All within the span of a two and a half hour flight, no less? Hmph! Honey, I wish I had that kind of persuasion. I could think of a whole bunch of stuff I’d have in my life if I did, none of which would be some dried up white man that looks like he is only two days from being in the grave.

Oh Lord have mercy! I know I’m wrong for saying something like that. Shoot, that man has at least a couple of years. ;)

Anyhoo, her fear, the candy-coated kind, where smiles never quite reach the eyes, is actually pretty entertaining. It’s most certainly helping me keep my mind off of this terrible turbulence that’s rocking and rolling my stomach something awful. Maybe this is the rollercoaster route to the East Coast or something, I don't know. They gonna make me start pleading the Blood here in a minute. Truth be told, I done already drenched my hands in that anointin’ oil I got from Pastor last Sunday. Yep, made sure that I touched as much as that plane as I could as I was passing through the doorway and looking for a seat. Ain’t no shame to my game. Probably need to rub some oil on that white lady as well. She look like she need some healing. Especially since she keep giving me the side-eye like I’m some leper or something.

It’s alright though. ‘Cause that right there is hurt in her eyes. I’d recognize it a mile away. and the worse kind of hurt at that. The kind that just rests on you. Like it's part of your make up and you don't have no way to shake it. No way to rid yourself of this thing that plagues you.

Now if there is one thing I know for sure, it's that pain don’t discriminate. We’re all broken. Now true…some of us have more cracks than others. Some of us, well, we just plain ole' in pieces. But we’re all broken just the same. We all need Jesus for real. (Don’t y'all make me shout on this plane!) The truth is…folks are running around scared of each other and don’t know why. Hate to say it but us church folks can be the worst. Looking on the outside, talking 'bout I go to a black church or white one. Now Lord knows I love me some good, food stomping, hand-clapping praise but I don't think I'd mind sitting and listening to some opera or country or whatever white folks listen to when they go to the church house. But that's just me. Most folks that call themselves children of God sittin' around judging folks on stuff that really don’t matter in the long run. Sure ain’t gonna matter in Heaven when we get our new bodies and stuff. Which reminds me. I need to talk to God about getting an advanced copy of mine.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying race don’t matter. It does. Just not in the way that we think it does. See I’m a proud black woman. African American, as we call it now. Born in Birmingham, Alabama. When you look at me, I WANT you to see my baby smooth, blue-black skin; the soft, tight curls of my hair; the expanse of my nose and my hips. Especially that last one. I like to say I was made to breathe and birth…in the natural and the spiritual. (See there ya’ll go again…makin’ me shout!)

Go ahead and ask me why I pray the way I do, move the way I do, act the way I do. There’s a story in it all and I’d be sure glad to share it with anyone willing to listen…white, brown, yellow, or green. Okay, maybe not green. I ain’t talking to no green people.

Yep, got a great story to tell. But I suspect so does that white lady still sneaking peaks at me. Her eyes seem to be only a prologue to a tale I’d love to hear. But of course, that won’t happen. ‘Cause she’s scared. And if I’m honest, so am I. Might be for different reasons but I’m scared nonetheless.

So yeah, we’ll sit here. Cups filled to the brim with word blessings just waiting to be received by the other and yet neither one of us willing to get to pouring. All because we’ve been taught some stupid concept called tolerance. Yes, I said it. Tolerance ain’t worth a hill of beans! You tolerate a puppy peeing on your carpet. You celebrate human beings. I’m just sayin’.

Yeah, we’ll probably end up doing just that: tolerating each other for the couple of hours or so we’re on this plane and then going our separate ways.

But what will we miss, I wonder?

What kinds of revelations await us in the conversation we’ll never have? The relationship we’ll never explore. Well, we done already said so much with our eyes. Done exchanged pain and struggle and curiosity with just a glance or two.

Shoot, this is nonsense! I need as many blessings I can get before I see Glory. And the way it looks…the way this plane is bouncing around the sky…glory might be coming sooner than I’d like.

“Excuse me, miss…”

Don't Call it a Comeback: The Eagles, You, and Jesus

2010-12-22T17:24:00.000-05:00

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. - 1 Corinthians 1:27

If you didn’t see it, I’m sure you heard about it. Of course you did. :)

My (yes, mine –hush!) Philadelphia Eagles football team squashed the New York Giants last Sunday in a game that will definitely go down in the record books.

Not necessarily because we won. I mean, we’ve been doing that a lot lately (wink). But because we fought back from a 21 point deficit at halftime to tie the game with less than a minute and a half on the clock and finally, to win with 14 seconds left.

SN: I’m quite sure the 85 year-old that lives next door to me and my husband was not thrilled with all of our shenanigans …but then again, it’s Philadelphia, he understands.

And I promise you, I tried so HARD not spiritualize this game. With all of the Eagles jerseys and hats and flags on cars waving to me as I made my way into the office on Monday, I truly fought against it with all my might.

But the Spirit spoke. And I listened.

There are many metaphors for life hidden in the Eagles win but the one that stands out the most is the idea that victory can be ours regardless of what our circumstances look like. How many of us have had to face our own “giants” and found ourselves down and out? We may have lost a job, a home, a relationship. Or maybe we get to the midway point of our lives, our own personal halftime, and we realize that we haven’t pursued our dreams and passions. We stay in the game, though. Try to fight. But our offense…the things that we can do in our own strength to try to make the situation better…is getting smacked around by the enemy. And our defense is weakened with every bit of bad news, big bill, or overwhelming obstacle that comes our way.

By all accounts, it looks like it’s over. People have counted us out, said we’re done, that we can’t do it, won’t make it, can’t “survive.” And even in our own minds (much like the Eagles attested to afterwards), their assessment of our situation is reasonable: Game over.

But check the scripture up top...God is SO not reasonable.
Isn’t it just like God to put us in a position of absolute dependence on him only to end up allowing satan ---in his ignorance--- to punt right in our direction? An opportunity, resolution, or help comes out of nowhere and with angels by our side, we run that thing home and win. If, of course, we don’t give up. Keeping our head in the game is key!

What I found even more fascinating (the message within the metaphor, if you will) is that the Eagles would have probably been celebrated for simply tying the game and going into overtime. Hubbie and I would have still been screaming and it still would have been a huge feat. This is the same way we are often satisfied with a little progress. We are okay if God would just help us pay our credit card bill instead of praying for ways that we can get out of debt. We try to “get through the day” instead of “living fully and loving completely” everyday.

We are okay with just evening the score when God wants us to WIN!

Whew! Can you imagine what your life would be like if you had the dogged persistence of the Eagles during this game with God’s guidance and direction? Where would you be?

But how do I do this, Tracey?

Glad you asked. :)

We have the ULTIMATE model for overcoming in the Christ whose birth we’ll celebrate this weekend.

Yeshua. The Messiah.

He was born in a manger during Roman rule in Israel. He survived the genocide of baby boys by Herod. He preached a message that was revolutionary (love your enemies, turn the cheek) in a very legalistic and traditional environment.

Hardly not the best of circumstances.

I’m pretty sure the enemy thought he had this thing in the bag with the whole betrayal by Judas and crucifixion thing. Little did he know though…he was punting right in Jesus’ direction.

[Can’t you just see Jesus rising from the dead and running into heaven like it was an endzone, spiking death into the ground, and saying “Take that. Take that.” to satan?]

No? Too far? Okay, sorry. Getting a little carried away with the metaphor. LOL!

Bottom line…he won. We win.

And yes, Jesus could have just gone down in the record books as a prolific prophet. That might have been enough for some…even those he served. Reasonable even, given everything that he endured.

But again, God is SO not reasonable. He wanted us to win then. And he wants us to win today.

Today.

Like Michael Vick and the Eagles. No matter what it looks like.

Have a Merry CHRISTmas!
Tracey

Still Seeking/Moving Forward

2010-12-17T13:23:00.001-05:00

There is one thing that I know for sure. We will never understand everything about God. And you know what? That’s a good thing. A very good thing. The truth is…I don’t want to worship a God I understand. If I, with my finite mind and breath in britches, could understand and reason God then how would he be any different than me? He wouldn't. And that's why I love Him. Because he is so BEYOND me. He sees what I can't. It’s the mystery of Him…the incomprehensibility (is that a word?) that we mistakenly call contradiction and conflict…that makes Him even worthy of worship.

Oh…and the whole creating the universe and wrapping himself in flesh for a season so that he might die and rise and ultimately restore a broken humanity back to himself thing. Yeah. That was pretty dope, too. :)

Which leads me to wonder about the whole notion of seeking God. This very blog is named after this idea and I spend most of my writing time looking for Him behind my words. For the revelation in the mundane. Maybe even the mundane in the revelation.

So here is mine for today: The whole seeking thing is very good. Sure. You should be absolutely clear about the status of your salvation. But then as you walk this thing out, understand that God rejoices in us simply WANTING him. IN SPITE of the fact that the very words “want” and “desire” imply that there might be some imperfection; some places where we will fall short.

You see, having a desire for God, wanting to be close to Him and striving to do his will…is an absolutely wonderful place to be. As humans, I think that sometimes instead of enjoying the journey, we spend too much time looking for the destination. An end point. A place that we can point to and say that’s it; that’s where I’m going. Many of us are doing that now as the year closes and we revisit our goals. Spiritually, we have become like little kids in the backseat of our lives, screaming at God, “ARE WE THERE YET?" But I'll go out on a limb and submit that none of that is necessary. When it comes to seeking God’s face, desiring his presence, it is important to know that the destination is not a place we will ever reach on this side. And that’s okay. God knows this. You should, too. So just sit back and enjoy the ride...bumps and all.

Of course, not knowing the specifics of the destination or finding yourself in perpetual seeking mode is certainly not an excuse to give up. There are blessings to be had as we move forward along life’s road.

Which leads me to this: Is the greatest travesty of our lives all of the inevitable stumbles we make along the way or is it when we stop desiring God altogether? We can recover from a fall but what happens when---because we frustrate ourselves with what we don't understand about God---we sit down right where we are and refuse to move forward?

Are you just sitting there? Am I?

I would love your thoughts on this.

While you’re thinking…check out the song up above that inspired this post.

Grateful, Grateful, Grateful

2010-11-24T13:09:00.000-05:00

HAVE A HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Enter His gates with thanksgiving, And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him; bless His name.

Psalm 100:4

Today I'm grateful for my eyes. For the ability to see all of the beautiful faces, places, and things around me. For both my physical sight and my spiritual vision. What are you grateful for today?

Film Review: FOR COLORED GIRLS

2010-10-29T13:07:00.000-04:00

I write this having just returned from a special screening here in Philadelphia of the film, “For Colored Girls.” For those who may not know…the movie was written and directed by Tyler Perry and is based on the seminal work of author/artist Ntozake Shange: For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuff.

For me, Shange’s book (and later Broadway play) both shouts in the sunlight and whispers in the darkness all of the beautifully ugly journeys of the women of color that are her main characters. Given my dramatic use of metaphor it is perhaps needless to say that I admire her as a poet and artist. So much so that the off-off-Broadway play Khepera that I co-wrote with my cousin, actress/director Nzinga, borrowed heavily from her choreopoem format. So going into the theatre tonight, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I’ve seen all of Tyler Perry’s films and I believe, in spite of my critique of them, they have a place at the artistic table. However, I wondered if it was even possible to effectively translate writings like Shange’s into film.

So let me say this: The acting was phenomenal. These stunning brown and black and beige and tall and wide and short and lean women brought their A game. I respected their performances even more after hearing Kimberly Elise (a star of the film that did a Q&A after the screening) share how cathartic the process was for her and the others; how she still hasn’t been able to loose herself from the character she played.

In terms of directing and cinematography, I thought the film was well done. There were quite a few shots that had a very indie, art house feel to them and I appreciated the stretch Perry made in that area.

Now the writing. It was…alright. Not quite “great”. But certainly well above “It didn’t suck.” I think the challenges Perry faced was one that any screenwriter would have in adapting this kind of literature (poetry is different from novels or memoirs). In order to honor the material…which he definitely did…he was inevitably going to lose the fluidity that viewers are used to. The choppiness in many places are reflective of that. Shange’s book and play are essentially a series of monologues, so again, to stay authentic to the material (which I sensed maybe he tried too much to do), the traditional screenwriting story arc suffers. There is an arc. But it is faint. This, I think, may result in some restlessness in those who just may not be familiar with the original work or who aren’t like me and are just madly, enamored with elegant, poetic words and phrases.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some really powerful, raw, and poignant moments in the film. Moments that will stick with you long after the lights come up. But you will have to wade through some longer less-moving stretches to get there.

All of this being said, I must say that while watching this film I came to an understanding about this movie, Tyler Perry and his body of work. There is more of difference than I ever realized between writing and storytelling – particularly the kind of storytelling that comes out of the African oral tradition. The kind that often makes no literal sense with all of its disorder and exaggeration but yet still can prick your emotions. There is no structure to this kind of storytelling but it moves you just the same. It’s grandma talking about moving from Carolina to Chicago back in ‘39. No neat 3 acts. Inciting incident all in the “wrong” place. But yet, tears still flow. Passions still flame. You still feel it. I think that’s what Perry has tapped into. He doesn’t write in the way that us writers have been taught in our workshops and MFA programs or may have learned through literary reading and discourse. He tells stories. Stories, as in this case, that have been told before. Stories that caused many people in the audience tonight to sob audibly at different points in the film.

I would encourage everyone…colored or not…to put aside whatever skepticisms or reservations you may have about Tyler Perry and go see this film when it releases next weekend. Why? Because it’s really not about him. It’s about the dialogue that I believe will be created around issues in the community that we haven't seemed to be able to shake even since the 70’s when Shange wrote the poems. AND it’s about the doors that the success of this film will open to those writers who just might be able to better blend the writing and the storytelling.

There is one thing I know for sure. This film, in its imperfections, reminded me of why I do what I do. So that God can use my words to expose humanity’s brokenness, minister to our souls, and hopefully, in spite of the many critics I’m sure I have of my own writing, restore and reconcile us back to Him and each other.

That’s my take.
Tracey

Why Religion Doesn’t Work (and other thoughts on evangelism)

2010-08-18T12:26:00.005-04:00

I do not prescribe to Religion (with a capital R; as construed by general society). I do pursue (follow, worship) Christ religiously. Big difference. One is a noun that often implies that my practices and activities alone can get me to God and Heaven. The other is an adverb that describes the intensity and consistency of my desire for the things that can only come from Him to me. The latter indicates a relationship not unlike a child's pursuit of a parent or, if that doesn’t grab you, a lover of their beloved.

However, I do think it is important to examine our notions about religion in order to understand and position Christ as a viable option to those who are skeptical of Christianity as a Religion.

My first thought when I hear people say that religion is the "opiate of the masses" is...then why isn't everyone high? Because according to its definition, we all participate in religious activity...even the Christopher Hitchens' of the world. Yep. I said it.

Religious: scrupulously faithful; conscientious; something one believes in and follows devotedly; ritual observance (dictionary.com)

In other words, most of us spend our lives pursuing [fill in the blank] religiously. If that weren't the case, then some of us --- not me, unfortunately--- wouldn’t show up at the gym at 5am in pursuit of health, or maybe less prudent, the ideal body. Others of us wouldn’t show up at work on time, everyday, sometimes early --- again, not me --- in pursuit of money or purpose. Sundays find just as many people parked on the couch waiting for the next football game as it does people parked on a pew waiting for a sermon.

None of these are wrong (in and of themselves). Yet only one is scrutinized as foolish.

The difference between how people view these everyday things and the assessments made of those of us who follow Christ is the perceived value of these actions in relationship to the outcomes. When you go to the gym, to work, or watch a football game, there is an immediate satisfaction of a need or want through your own actions. So the idea that one’s spiritual hunger can be satiated by no action of their own...by something as seemingly abstract as God 's love and grace...is difficult to accept. Particularly in a world that, at best, identifies love as transitory and grace as unwise.

There's a saying: Everyone wants to go to Heaven but no one wants to die. Well I submit that this is more of a problem for believers (who, in a post-restoration state, experience fully the struggle between their flesh and spirit) rather than non-believers. For those who are seeking, it's more like this: Everyone wants to go to Heaven but EVERYONE wants to Drive. You see, we humans understand religious activity quite well. It's the reason why religious institutions have been so powerful for so long and why we rebel against it so ardently. It's the whole love, grace and mercy thing that we struggle with and against. And that’s what an authentic relationship with Christ conveys.

Therein lies the greatest opportunity to act out Christ's great commission (Matt. 28:19-20). No matter the challenge or the push back we may get from those who have only seen our Religion (capital R) as representative of who we are… we MUST focus on sharing and showing God’s love, grace, and mercy. We must live it out in front of the world daily, in spite of our discomfort with the very people, places, and things that need Him the most. The Body of Christ can distinguish its Faith from other inconsequential religious activity and traditions (including and especially our own) by sharing the exponential value of the outcomes of accepting His free gift - an eternal relationship with Christ and the Father and the trustworthy guidance of the Holy Spirit day-to-day - all without doing anything but saying YES with your whole heart.

Your thoughts?

TMLG

Blog Redux: My Talk with God

2010-08-16T11:26:00.000-04:00

Tracey: Lord, fear has been incredibly difficult for me to get rid of in my life.

God: Incredibly difficult? Yes. Impossible? Certainly not.

Tracey: Well…of course nothing is impossible for You. Me, on the other hand…

God: Well…if you surrendered your fears to Me, YOU wouldn’t have to worry about how difficult it is, would you?

Tracey: **blinking back tears at the truth of that**

God: Daughter, do you remember the word I gave you to help you deal with your fear?

Tracey: Yes. 2nd Timothy 1:7. “God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love, and sound mind.”

God: Good. What’s the most important part of that scripture?

Tracey: Uh, power, love, and a sound mind?

God: No. Not for you, it isn’t.

Tracey: **shrugging** I never get the easy stuff!

God: **laughing** This, my dear, just might be true.

God: The most important part of that scripture for you is that I did not GIVE you fear. It does not come from me. Power, love, or a sound mind has never been something you didn’t understand. The problem for you is that you’ve been existing as if these fears come from Me. As if you deserve them somehow. You should know that it doesn’t…and you don’t.

Tracey: Then…where did this fear come from?

God: Your life. In those dark moments when you thought you were disconnected from me. When you believed the lie that I was unavailable to you. Whether it was your own choices or the sins made against you, your life gave you fear, Tracey, not me. But, of course, I come…

Tracey: …that I may have life more abundantly?

God: Yes! Absolutely! Which means what?

Tracey: A life without fear.

God: Very good.

Tracey: **breathes deeply**

When I reminisce over you...

2010-07-27T11:17:00.000-04:00

Last night, I found myself sitting on my couch watching old music videos from the 80’s and 90’s. Why? I don’t know. It just kind of happened. One minute I was watching the Bachelorette (Don’t judge me) and the next minute SWV and Roger were serenading me about how “so into me” they were and how this “computer love” drives them crazy. Yeah. Weird, right? But as I continued to watch I became amazed at the way the music triggered so many memories for me. It was like each song sent me back to a specific place and time in my life. It wasn’t about whether it was a good or bad memory so much as it was the fact that the songs allowed me to take a journey with myself into myself. Then I got all creative and stuff. Decided to write a poem. It’s been a while since I’ve toyed around with verse even though that is where this writing thing began for me. So I’m sharing it with you today. Just because I feel like it. And I think you might understand.

The music chases me.

Stumbling back into long forgotten memories

And I willingly fall.

Gladly, even.

Reveling in the melodies of my youth.

Of naiveté laced with the purest of innocence

Of the unsure shrug of a stonewashed, bobbed out,

cabbage patchin’ brown girl from Kentucky.

Cracked but not yet broken.

I peer into days when lyrics and beats

and synthesized, New Jack rhythms echo my girlish hopes and dreams.

Dreams so transparent that the Son seemed to shine through so easily.

So clearly.

So sweetly.

Unknown and Ungrown

Undeterred by even my earliest trials.

Each verse of each song tracing an outline of an identity unformed.

Undefiled.

Though I now have filled in many of those empty spaces

with other less melodic concerns.

It’s the music that provides the soundtrack

of a past most unperfected

But most certainly…

lived.

Diving Heart-first into the discussion about who’s reading BLACK and/or WHITE Books

2010-06-28T16:05:00.005-04:00

The picture above is from my book signing at Borders in Louisville, Kentucky. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Recently there have been a couple articles and blogs that I believe have expertly explored the inequities found in publishing as it relates to the perception and treatment of writers of color (African Americans, Latino, etc) and the question of whether readers prefer to read books that reflect their own cultural experiences or who have characters that are of the same race. Bernice Mcfadden, a favorite writer of mine, wrote THIS piece in the Washington Post on the former while Laina Dawes explores the latter over HERE at BlogHer.

Take a few minutes to read both…but make sure that you come back now ya' hear! :)

In one of the comments to Laina Dawes’ post, MochaDad of www.mochadad.com says the following:

I was at a Barnes & Noble and I noticed a table where a black author had set up her books for autographs. Many people walked to the table, but no one walked away with a book. I overheard a couple of white women say, "The book looks interesting. Too bad it's only for blacks."
Ouch.

While I don't necessarily have a problem with there being an African American book section at the bookstore (as I understand the psychology in branding, marketing, and delivering products), I do take issue with what I see when I go there; a significant percentage of books whose themes are generally related to drugs, sexual promiscuity, and violence, or if not, have covers depicting this. The implication that this is the totality of African American culture versus a very small albeit troublesome outgrowth of systemic and generational breakdowns, is devastating for me as a writer who already finds herself struggling to balance telling the truth of my characters with managing the perceived value of the images I present. Borrowing from Carleen Brice's hilarious video short (see it HERE), I do want white people...and anyone else for that matter...to feel comfortable in the "black" section of the bookstore, but how can I encourage their comfort when in many cases I'm not?

Hmmm. I’m admittedly challenged by this. My hard-earned MBA degree tells me that some of this is an issue of supply and demand. If you demand better…better will be supplied. Especially if you are willing to pay for it. At the same, I can’t help to believe that some of the consumer “demand” is created by publishing companies who choose not to look for another…possibly even more profitable…consumer. (I know…the chicken and the egg thingy)

And I get the whole I relate better to people who look like me perspective. There is certainly validity to this. Seeing or reading about someone who looks like me and is from where I'm from definitely helps fortify that need for identity in me...as long as it is accurate...or at least diverse...in its portrayal.

However, at the same time, I don’t know if I experience the most growth this way. I've found that the people who we call great read all kinds of books, by all kinds of writers, with all kinds of characters. We respect their minds for this very reason…they’ve seen and explored more…even if it was only thru the eyes of a character in a book.

But please don’t mistake this as some kum-bay-yah via literature post (although a little hand-holding and sing-a-long never hurt nobody – LOL!)

I have readily admitted this before: it is true that people want to read fiction with characters that they can relate to. However, what most publishing companies fail to realize is #1) No culture is monolithic. The multiplicity of a particular culture should be reflected in the types of books published and the marketing of these books must also reflect that diversity. That, I believe, is the ticket to the elusive and misunderstood "crossover" success. It’s not rocket science. It’s the same thing that’s done in any business that wants to introduce a product to a new market. Consequently #2) the notion of what is "relatable" often (though sorrowfully not always) transcends race or gender. Humans (those of us who are willing) connect at the soul level. So themes like love, fear, relationships, childhood, etc., can successfully coexist with any character or cultural descriptors if written well.

Oh…and the picture up top? Who knew that an 80 year-old, white woman from Kentucky would want to read a story about a thirty-something African-American woman from Chicago?
I do now. ;)

Tracey

Book Review - God Alone is Enough: A Spirited Journey with St. Teresa of Avila by Claudia Mair Burney

2010-06-24T14:00:00.010-04:00

This is the 11th day and 22nd stop on the “God Alone is Enough” Blog Tour and I’m SO excited to review this debut non-fiction work by my writer-friend, Claudia Mair Burney. So let’s get to it….

When it comes to saints and such, I am admittedly a skeptic. Not because I believe that these men and women did not do great works or live great lives but mostly because of my fear that they are somehow exalted higher than God because of those works...as we humans often do with those we admire. But something about St. Teresa of Avila in all of her fierce love for our Savior and her willingness to stretch herself beyond herself to seek His face in prayer intrigued me...convicted me even...as I'm sure Claudia Mair Burney knew that it would; as it is quite evident that it has done for her.

"God alone is enough" the blessed saint says. In the book, Burney reiterates this by giving me peeks into various recollections of her own journey. By doing so, she and St. Teresa caused a shift in me that was, at the least, unexpected.

In a blink of an eye...or rather the turn of the page...my post-modern-evangelical-Baptist-with-a-touch-of-Pentecostal skepticism was transformed into something well outside the confines of religiosity. Beyond my narrow view and understanding of Catholicism, I, in opening myself up to the intersecting journeys of St. Teresa and Sis. Claudia, felt this overwhelming need to experience the kind of passionate contentment (a contradiction in my mind before reading this book) that these women of God spoke of. The realization that one can really know God with such a spiritual intimacy shined a harsh but loving light on all the reasons why, too often, peace escapes me.

In earlier chapters, I discovered that there was something very intriguing about this woman and all of her ideas, visions, and revelations. Teresa was a woman who revered the words of holy men found in books thought to be well above her pay-grade as a woman in the 16th century and yet was still able to extract meaning from a lovers’ tender embrace in the romance novels she read with her mother as a young girl. That duality, revealed through the eyes of Burney, drew me even closer to her story and her thoughts. It made me okay with her becoming my guide on this new pilgrimage towards a more profound prayer life. Even more so, it was her frailties that helped me pack my bags. Her brokenness, in spite of my perceptions of her sainthood, looked eerily like my own. Her need for praise and validation and her uber-aware struggle against that other part of herself had made us sisters---500 years apart.

Viki Hurst in her Personal Pilgrimage series says this: "There are inspirational guides all around you, and you never know when they will walk up and surprise you with quiet yet brilliant words of wisdom, meant just for you and your journey."

And so it is with this book. St. Teresa's words…particularly as it relates to our communion with God…is brought to life by Burney. The notion of what is now called contemplative prayer is explained simply and without cluttered metaphors or boring, uninviting narrative. In early chapters, Burney shows us how Teresa was captivated by the nature of our souls; believing that they are like gardens, planted by God and ideally, tended to by us. The vessel by which we are to water our tender soils? Prayer. But not exactly the rote, practiced soliloquies we might be familiar with. No, this is something else and as you read further in the book, you’ll find yourself drawn to following St. Teresa and Burney on the journey to revisiting how we pray.

But hold up! There’s stuff you got get through first. And it isn’t always pretty.

In the beginning of Chapter 11, and taking her cues from the writings of St. Teresa, Burney fully “goes in” on us about our notions of sin. Reading this chapter, I have to admit that I found myself wading waist deep in conviction.

***taking my halo off***

So many times I’d succumbed to the belief (even if never spoken aloud) that I was somehow more righteous than another because I’d stopped drinking, didn’t do drugs, was abstinent for a significant amount of time before marrying, blah, blah, and more blah. I’d attempted to categorize myself out of the line of God’s judgment, not realizing that I still had some big ticket sins (as Burney notes) ---you know the “besetting” kind that the bible talks about---still on the table. Shoot! Truth be told, I have enough on the table of my past that without God’s grace and mercy…well, you know.

So what, you say! We all have our stuff, right? Yes. But Burney via St. Teresa notes that for us to not be fully aware of how we grieve God (particularly in our intentional sins) and how we separate ourselves from Him, is akin to the proverbial slap in His face.

Which, of course, is the perfect segue into the discussion of “dwellings” noted in the mid- and latter parts of the chapter. These dwellings are the various areas located in our “internal castle,” Teresa’s metaphor for the soul. Each has several rooms --- some dark, some only appearing so. Through prayer we explore these dwellings (particularly the initial ones noted in this chapter) and in the midst of such exploration, we must face ourselves completely, digging through all of the pride, all of our “attachments to worldly pleasures”, and all of the things we lust after. We do this while simultaneously dealing with all of the demons, snakes, and other vermin that we allow to keep us from getting to the most desired of all of the dwellings in the castle/soul---the place where God is waiting to meet us and establish a relationship uninhibited by all of our stuff. While the pull of His love is what guides us through each of the dwellings, it’s in THIS place where He waits to heal us.

Deep, right?

Yep.

So you all know I could go on and on…but I won’t. :) Summer’s here. It’s a new season...on the inside and the outside...for me and you. If you need a bit of a stretch in your faith? Buy this book. Today.

About the Author

Claudia Mair Burney is the author of seven novels, including the Amanda Bell Brown mysteries, and Zora and Nicky, and Christy Award finalist in 2009. Readers familiar with her style will enjoy this rollicking journey through their own interior castles. She lives in Kentucky, where she also authors the popular blog, "Ragamuffin Diva."

Shifting

2010-06-08T12:12:00.002-04:00

Shifting [life] gears is a critical act to prevent stalling.

When sadness hovers just beyond my soul waiting to pierce my heart, I must shift. When the edge of sanity appears to be only steps away, I must shift. When circumstances overwhelm me and the fulfillment of my hopes & dreams seem as far as the horizon, it's time to shift.

Shift perspective. Come higher. Greatness awaits us.

TMLG

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." - Ephesians 3:17b-19

A Crisis of the Soul

2010-06-02T12:17:00.004-04:00

“My spirit is still heaven-bound. My body will recover. My soul, on the other hand, is in crisis.”

I wrote this in my journal about a week ago after experiencing one of the worst trials of my life. Pain, loss, and confusion consumed me and continues to try to penetrate my heart as I fight my way back to peace. I’m constantly hearing people say, “Don’t give up” or “Keep the faith” and it finally occurred to me a few days ago that I never intended on giving up or losing faith. That wasn’t my issue.

Lately, I’ve begun to realize that for most of us who are believers, there really isn’t such a thing as a “crisis of faith.” Inherent to true faith is the fact that it doesn’t go away even in the hardest of times. So to say that one is having a crisis of faith is a misnomer at best. The reality is…the soul, which houses our mind, will, and emotions (some call this the ‘heart’), is where the conflict usually lies. We don’t really reject God. We might be angry with Him. We might not understand Him. We may not even want to talk to Him. But the very fact that we respond to Him when we are troubled in this way, shows that we still believe that He exists and is active in our lives. It is still a show of faith. A mustard seed version, but faith nonetheless. Even the physical manifestation of our tribulations…whether it is sickness or loss…is exactly that-physical; a natural response to some kind of internal or external stimuli and therefore can be rationalized as part of the process because quite frankly, we can SEE it!

But the soul? That’s so much trickier. Our minds, our will, and our emotions often are the first place of attack when we are, what I like to call, being broken for better by God.

Think about it. Our minds twist and turn with imaginations, our will fights against anything that will force its surrender, and our emotions are scattered and unpredictable. These three parts of our soul, when hit with inexplicable pain, also have a tendency to turn on each other. Our emotions and will begin to toy with our minds making us think we are going crazy. Our will, finally realizing that it is clearly not in control of much, finally decides to surrender. Only it’s not to God. Our will gives in to the other confused parts of the soul and so we find ourselves unable to resist the deception of our emotions or the finite rationalizations of our mind and we end up willingly acting out in ways that we never thought that we would. How many of us have said, “I don’t care. I’m just going to do X,Y, or Z!” only to realize later that it was the pain talking? I have. And not only does that create more confusion, it also causes a trickle-down effect because now not only is my soul a mess, my spirit is out of alignment with God.

Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flows the springs of life. – Prov. 4:23 AMP

Yes, most of life’s issues lie in the chaotic crisis’ of the soul where we are being broken by God in order to be better and stronger. So what is the solution? How do you deal with it?

Well the “church” answer is…Trust God. Allow Christ’s love and peace to reign not just in your spirit but in your soul. Don’t be deceived by the confusion created by the conflict that exists in the three parts of the soul (mind, will, and emotions) as they compete for prominence and rule in your trial or situation.

Yep, that’s the “church” answer. But as absolutely RIGHT this is, church answers disturb me because they are often rote and practiced clichés spun flippantly from the lips of those who haven’t taken the time to hear and/or discern the pains of your broken heart. When you hear the church answer, you just want to just roll your eyes and say, “Okay. I know that. But what does that have to do with me...right now.” Am I right?

So here is my heart answer, fresh from my own hurts and my own search for a soul restoration.

Be still. Be still enough to hear the difference between your own inner dialogue, the conversations of your confused and hurt soul, and that of the pure and loving voice of God. Pain is like static interference between the voice of God and the voice of our own flesh. It makes hearing Him quite difficult and receiving the direction needed to heal nearly impossible. So stop everything. Quiet yourself. And listen. Tears may flow as the pain passes but as soon as it does…clarity will come. I pray it so.

Healing,
TMLG

My Talk with God

2010-05-17T13:00:00.002-04:00

Tracey: Lord, fear has been incredibly difficult for me to get rid of in my life.

God: Incredibly difficult? Yes. Impossible? Certainly not.

Tracey: Well…of course nothing is impossible for You but me, on the other hand…

God: Well…if you surrendered your fears to me, you wouldn’t have to worry about how difficult it is, would you?

Tracey: **blinking back tears at the truth of that**

God: Daughter, do you remember the word I gave you to help you deal with your fear?

Tracey: Yes. 2nd Timothy 1:7. “God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love, and sound mind.”

God: Good. What’s the most important part of that scripture?

Tracey: Uh, power, love, and a sound mind?

God: No. Not for you, it isn’t.

Tracey: **shrugging**

God: The most important part of that scripture for you is that I did not GIVE you fear. It does not come from me. Power, love, or a sound mind has never been something you didn’t understand. The problem for you is that you’ve been existing as if these fears come from Me. As if you deserve them somehow. You should know that it doesn’t…and you don’t.

Tracey: Then…where did this fear come from?

God: Your life…in those dark moments when you thought you were disconnected from me. When you believed the lie that I was unavailable to you. Whether it was your own choices or the sins made against you, your life gave you fear, Tracey, not me. But, of course, I come…

Tracey: …that I may have life more abundantly?

God: Yes! Absolutely! Which means what?

Tracey: A life without fear.

God: Very good.

Tracey: **breathes deeply**

Called Out by God

2010-05-05T13:51:00.003-04:00

The Woman at the Well – John 4:13-26, 28-30

Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

___________________________

Hmmm. We all have stuff we are trying to hide, don’t we? And yet, God knows our truth. We go about our everyday lives secure in our knowledge that nobody really knows what’s going on at home or in our hearts. That somehow we can just move through life “under the radar.”

And even if everyone knows our secret sorrows or sins, it is easy enough to pretend as though we don’t care. We shield ourselves from our pain by creating our own personal cocoon of guilt, shame, and condemnation.

But then one day, in the midst of our denial and/or hiding, Christ shows up and calls us out.

Not in a way that is humiliating but in a manner that suggests that he is hip to this game we’ve been playing with ourselves; this sick and twisted cycle of hiding and not caring that we claim as our fate.

The good thing is…after calling us out…he doesn’t leave us there. He exchanges our temporary fixes with something that is alive and everlasting. His “living water” sustains us not for the moment (like the food that we stuff ourselves with for pseudo-comfort); not for a season (like those unhealthy relationships that failed so miserably); not even for a lifetime (for God is not bound to our earthly notions of time). His love and grace and mercy is eternal; deeply penetrating our current existence but extending greatly beyond it also.

Our response? Well I certainly hope to do exactly as that Samaritan woman did.

Go tell someone all about it.

TMLG

Re-Thinking Purpose

2010-04-19T14:42:00.002-04:00

Let’s get right to it.

Lately I’ve been wondering if we try to over-specialize when it comes to our purpose and destiny. We hear preachers belting out proclamations of God’s purpose for our lives and we get nervous. We anxiously ask ourselves, “Am I living in my purpose? Do I even know what my purpose is?”

Sometimes I think that our very human need for distinction and individuality and uniqueness overshadows what God is trying to accomplish in our lives in general…and keeps us from the real freedom that comes with His positioning and guidance. We frustrate ourselves by trying to nail down our purpose to a specific job, career path, or art-form when quite frankly, I think it is much simpler than that.

First of all, our primary purpose…the heart of our very design as humans…is to give God glory. That’s pretty straightforward. Obedience gives Him glory. Kindness gives Him glory. Love gives Him glory. Seems like a great starting point to me. Secondly, when it comes to our individual day to day assignments and how these relate to some overall legacy or purpose…could it be that we’ve just gotten to deep for our own good?

In my own life, I’ve done that. I’ve desired to top both the NY Times best sellers list and sit on Oprah’s couch. I’ve made those things my evidence of achieving my purpose. I’ve also battled with whether I write better fiction, poetry, or nonfiction even though I know that the season I’m in personally often determines where I’m the most powerful. It doesn’t help that the inclination of the publishing industry is to box you into a specific genre or platform. Especially since my very nature seems diametrically opposed to anything that has to do with a box. :)

So what if I…and we…have gotten this whole searching for purpose thing all wrong?

What if my purpose is simply to serve? I don’t mean serve in the way that we are all asked to do so as followers of Christ. I’m talking about that above and beyond, extraordinary servitude done on behalf of the Father that some people just do well. Maybe instead of seeking some deep and overly specific purpose and legacy, I should focus on serving people powerful and life-changing words of encouragement, motivation, inspiration, etc. etc. So much so that it doesn’t really matter the type of writing I do…whether it is a novel, some poetry, a business plan, or an email…as long as God through me is able to meet the needs of those who read my work. Sure, I have to know what season I’m in. I can’t be working on a screenplay when God has called me to finish a novel. But at the same time, I can’t get hung up on any one manifestation of my gift…worrying that I’m losing something because I’m working on that novel and not a screenplay… because ultimately it would be the service that matters.

Let me put it another way. In the college of life, my major would be service and my minor…or concentration… would be writing. That’s it.

Wow. I feel free already.

Here’s another example. Some of you are called to teach. Again, not in the everyday way that Christians should be sharing with others. But in that… "wow, no one could have taught me that but you”…kind of way. Teaching is your life’s “major.” Unfortunately, it will be easy for you to allow frustration or hopelessness to overcome you if you try to categorize your teaching based on how society, your parents, or your own mind says your teaching should look. And yet, the bottom line is still this: you are called to teach. Regardless of what that looks like. In one season of your life, your teaching may manifest itself in the Sunday School classroom while in another it might be in a public school setting. Your call to teach may reveal itself in your work as a corporate trainer or as a stay at home mom who trains her children in the way they should go. For some of you, your job might be working IN a school as a janitor. You might moan and groan about how you are not fulfilling your purpose as you watch the students run to class. But are you totally missing the fact that your teaching reveals itself every day that you share a little wisdom and guidance with the guys on the street corner as you wait for the bus to take you to work?

Yeah, I think we have to re-think this whole “search for purpose” thing. It would free us up so much if we focus on #1) our primary purpose of giving God glory no matter what we do and #2) finding our general purpose and allowing it manifest in our lives in the many fulfilling ways that it can. This will give us the flexibility to do the multitude of things that God has placed our hearts to do and explore the multitude of gifts that He has given us. Why? Because our life’s major…or our main purpose…will be a theme throughout anything we do and every season we’re in.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” – Eccl. 3:11

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

TMLG

New Life vs. New Threads

2010-04-03T14:45:00.002-04:00

I used to be the main one screaming at the top of her lungs about the commercialism of Easter. Ranting about how some church folk use this solely as an opportunity to show off fancy clothes instead of worshipping a risen Savior. Moaning about how department stores and companies take advantage of that fact.

And all of that, unfortunately, is true.

But recently I began to reconsider the symbolism of getting "extra" dressed up on Resurrection Sunday. In fact, now I kind of like the idea of this being the one Sunday when you wear your new garments. A Sunday where it doesn't matter what you wore the days before. The newness of it all.

Because quite frankly, isn't that what Christ's death, burial, and resurrection really means? That an innocent man took our filthy rags, washed them in his blood, and now, through Him, we are brand new. It didn't matter what we did before, what we looked like before. If we accept what he did in these three days...we are eligible to receive His "new" life.

So if you so choose... go ahead and rock your new threads this Sunday! Just make sure that the newness of your outside matches what has occurred on the inside. And if doesn’t? Just holla at your girl offline and I’ll hook you up! :)

Happy Resurrection Sunday!!!

TMLG

A New Day

2010-03-23T15:18:00.002-04:00

Spring is here! So instead of me going on and on about something or another, I've decided to post a poem. So here goes...

A New Day

As day breaks
my being awakes
to the sound of it.

The sun rises
and begins to spin tales
of my people who have gone to live beyond the clouds.
each limb I stretch toward an unseen satisfaction
and I wait.

And pray.

And wait.

Pray, wait, pray, wait
Until it washes over my soul like a spring shower
Filling me with pure joy
Like chocolate milk to baby boys
Like candlelit dinners or romantic gazes from my king
Like writing checks that never bounce
And having cupboards that are never bare

It baptizes me in its purity
And I stand at my bedside ready to face
all of that which will bring me back to slumber
that which will exhaust even the reserves that reside in my heart

“Now I lay me down to sleep”
My dreams are the bridge to the new joy that lies on the other side of night
And I look forward to being filled once more
in the morning with peace.

(c) 2008 - Tracey Michae’l Lewis

You Have to KICK to Move!

2010-03-18T13:25:00.001-04:00

If you have been following my blog for any length of time then you know that I am a firm believer in accountability. And while truthfully I don’t always walk the talk, I still believe that there are some things that God placed in us from the very beginning. There are some things that we just don’t have to pray or plead with God to bring into our lives because quite frankly He has designed/created us in such a way that some of what we need is within us ---or within our ability to obtain.

Side note: Isn’t it funny that we pray to God for things that actually require us to take some action ourselves but don’t pray for the things that require Him and Him alone? Peace and joy can only come from the Father but we will skip over those things in favor of praying for material things that sometimes only require some sweat equity of our own. My pastor, Rev. Alyn Waller, made a powerful point not too long ago, “Sometimes it is not about us waiting on God. Sometimes God is waiting on you.”

Anyway, in a previous post, I talked about how God has known us “even in our mother’s womb.” So it makes sense that some of what we need in this life…we already have. And yet, I think what often happens is we allow our hurts and pains and experiences to become like sediment that over time covers the precious gems that make up who we are. For example, after being hurt by your parents, you decide that you can’t trust anyone in authority. Therefore, while you know that going back to school will help you obtain the job you desire, you refuse to put yourself in a position again where someone is telling you what to do. Then you pray to God that he will open a door for you to get a better position or a higher salary. The problem? The doors ARE open. Right downtown at the college.

Sure. God could crack to sky and make things happen for you. I do believe that His divine intervention happens. That He “makes a way out of no way,” as grandma used to say. But I also think that we should consider whether or not it reasonable to scream, pray, and plead with God to give us a house when we are unwilling to change our spending habits or do what it takes to better our 400 credit score. Or…and I’m in the middle of this now…beg God for better health and a baby but be unwilling to live a healthier lifestyle. Let’s make the first steps toward action and then trust that God, in that supernatural, omniscient way of His, can fill in the impossible gaps.

This became even clearer to me when I was swimming at my gym. Don’t laugh. Yes, I swim. Kinda. :)

Swimming laps has always been a great form of exercise for me. At least it has ever since I learned how to swim four years ago. I still have real trouble with deep water but since my gym’s pool only goes to five feet, I’m good. I’d actually stopped swimming for a while because I have locks and it became difficult to care for them swimming 3-4 times a week. However, now that I’ve found an extra, EXTRA large swim cap, I’m back in the pool and, of course, making the experience all deep and revelatory, as usual. :)

If you think about the act of swimming, it really can be a metaphor for how we should operate in our lives. The biggest thing that stands out to me is the fact that YOU HAVE TO KICK TO MOVE!!!!

YOU HAVE TO KICK TO MOVE!!!!

When I swim laps, I move the fastest when my feet are kicking in a calculated manner and in concert with the rest of my body. If I stop kicking, then I slow down and eventually stop. If I kick awkwardly or improperly, I move…but it is usually in circles or backward.

God, the creator of all, has provided the water of your life…the avenues by which you can reach your destiny. But, if you don’t kick…if you don’t ACT using what you have available to you (in this case: feet), then you won’t move forward. This is a shame because most of the time you have been placed into an environment, no matter how good or bad you perceive it to be, that is conducive to forward movement. The ebb and flow of your life, just like water, is designed by God to carry you to your destiny. It’s up to you identify the environment God has placed you in and to kick in such a way that you achieve His purpose for you.

Don’t get it twisted. You can’t operate in your own strength. Don’t try to leave God out of the equation. God will provide or allow the context, situation, or environment AND He will direct you as to what kind of “kicking” you need to do. Kicking alone won’t move you forward. If that was the case, I could kick myself right on out of my office chair. Not going to happen. My office and this chair is a context where that kind of kicking is not productive. What also won’t help is kicking wildly; without proper form as they say in swimming. Without direction and purpose, you could end up spinning or going backward.

Another thing. Sometimes we stay in situations or environments longer than God intends. I’m not a fish. I have to get out of the pool some time, right? That environment serves its purpose and then I move on to the next. Same thing happens in our lives. Sometimes we ARE kicking purposefully but still find ourselves stagnant; not going anywhere. Well, I would challenge you to check your environment. Is your job conducive for your kicking? Is your church conducive for your kicking? Is your relationship conducive for your kicking? In other words, if you kick where you are…will you move forward? Does every area of your life support your energy, passion, or actions? Is there any progress or are you going in circles or even feeling like you’re going backward? I can assure you…that is a surefire way to exhaust yourself.

What do you think? Are you not moving forward because you are not kicking? Are you kicking wildly without God’s direction or purpose? Are you kicking properly but in the wrong environment? Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a few of you out there that are moving through life…swimmingly. :)

TMLG

Time to Get to Shoveling!

2010-03-15T16:27:00.001-04:00

The view from my car in late Feb.

So after getting slammed with nearly 80 inches of snow this winter, this is what we were left with just a few short weeks ago: Mounds of mountainous snow that was ice hard and filthy. Not to mention a bear to shovel or remove. So you know me with all my deep thinking and stuff, right? :) After driving by what felt like my hundredth ice mountain, I began to ponder the lesson in it all.

Think about this: How many times in our lives has the “stuff” that we thought would go away on its own… actually over time become big, filthy mountains that were incredibly difficult to remove and even worse to navigate around? You know what I mean. It’s kind of like that relationship or friendship that you are sitting around hoping will dissolve on its own instead of doing the work necessary and shoveling that mess yourself. Now you have this big ole’ communication- blocking, I can’t see you and you sure can’t see me, mountain of relational problems that keeps getting dirtier and dirtier by the minute.

I’m guilty. There are things (habits, attitudes, residue from the past) in my life that I’ve quite frankly underestimated. Sins and/or strongholds that, on some scale or hierarchy of my own distorted creation, seemed like not all that big of a deal at their inception…and yet in the long run became something too vast to deal with, leaving me susceptible to all kinds of other filth, and making it extremely difficult for others in my life who have the misfortune of having to navigate around my issues.

Could my “snow mountain” have been my selfishness that I often disguised as “doing me?” Maybe it was my misplaced ambition? Has what once was just this itty, bitty, self-defense mechanism that I should have “shoveled” early on, turned into a great wall of ice that I use to keep even those who mean me well from knowing the real me?

How do these mountains that we allow to sit around in our lives impact our relationship with people, and most importantly, God?

There is hope.

Just like the sun melts all snow including the hard, yucky, dirty kind we had piled up all around Philly, the SON (Christ) can also remove the big, dirty stuff in our lives. I’m most certainly grateful for his grace and mercy in that regard.

But, for me, there is an accountability issue here. While yes, God will heal (melt) our stuff (snow). That process usually takes time. Not because He isn’t capable of doing it in an instant but because there are lessons to be learned in that process. I sometimes think that that some of the deliverances we hope to see in our lives are slow going not because God is powerless or toying around with us but because we refuse to engage. You see, even in winter weather, it helps when you are proactive and begin to shovel the snow early or lay down some salt (word) to begin the melting process that the sun will continue later on. Therefore, I can’t help but wonder if we can shorten the amount of time that it takes to receive our healing, restoration, etc. by simply dealing with our stuff as it comes up versus waiting for it to harden us and/or attract other dirty issues.

I’m a firm believer in the grace and mercy of the Father made real to us through our savior, Jesus. I acknowledge the fact that His strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). But I have to ask the question: How much of our weakness is a result of our authentic brokenness and how much of it is a result of an internal laziness---our unwillingness to “get to shoveling?”

A Winner from the Start (Conceiving Victory)

2010-03-08T14:31:00.002-05:00

I recently read the following in an article titled “In My Universe” by Kathleen Wiebe in Natural Health Magazine:

I explained conception to my older son, Primo: “There’s one egg and a million sperm. And the sperm race each other to see which one can get to the egg first. And when it touches the egg, the baby begins.” He absorbed this, was quiet for a while, and then he said triumphantly, “So I won!”

Woah.

From the mouths of babes.

I couldn’t even read the rest of the article because these two words spoken from a child who was, in the purest of ways, simply processing what happens to all of us as we enter the world. My spirit was rocked.

Why?

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart…” Jeremiah 1:5a

This is why: Because what came from the heart and mouth of this child and what God said in his word creates an equation with only one result.

God made me a winner from the very beginning. It was written in the symphony of my very conception.

In spite of sin’s reign or even the circumstances that may have surrounded our birth, we are designed to be winners from the start. By virtue of His love, grace, and mercy, we are ONE in a million and purposed to do ONE in a million things.

Whew!

Now there’s nothing left to do but to start acting like it.

TMLG

Something is radically wrong

2010-02-27T23:58:00.006-05:00

A writer-friend of mine, or lovie as she would say, has unknowingly referred me to one of the most transformational books I’ve read in a long time. I say unknowingly because Claudia Mair Burney (a fabulous writer that you must check out if you haven’t already) named her blog The Ragamuffin Diva and has written about the revelations she’s received from the book The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brendan Manning in such a way that it piqued my interest. So no, she didn’t say, “Yo, Tracey. Read this book!” LOL. However, I do believe that the Holy Spirit heightened my curiosity about it as a result of my following her blog. And for good reason!

Have you ever read something that was both fascinating and challenging, freeing yet convicting, all at the same time? Yeah, well if you haven’t and you’re up for a real shifting at both the mind and heart level then this one’s for you. The Ragamuffin Gospel is exciting to me because it addresses this restlessness that I’ve felt for a while now about “church as usual” and the lack of real, Godly, love among those of us who profess to know Christ.

Here’s a couple of excerpts. I’d love to know your thoughts.

“This is the God of the gospel of Grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.

The God of the legalistic Christian, on the other hand, is often unpredictable, erratic, and capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we feel compelled to engage in some sort of magic to appease Him. Sunday worship becomes a superstitious insurance policy against His whims. This God expects people to be perfect and to be in perpetual control of their feelings and thoughts. When broken people with this concept of God fail – as inevitably they must – they usually expect punishment. So they perservere in religious practices as they struggle to maintain a hollow image of a perfect self. The struggle itself is exhausting. The legalist can never live up to the expectations they project on God.

If your God is an impersonal cosmic force, your religion will be noncommittal and vague…But trust in the God who loves consistently and faithfully nurtures confident, free disciples. A loving God fosters a loving people. The fact that our view of God shapes our lives to a great extent may be one of the reasons Scripture ascribes such importance to seeking to know Him”

There's more...

“We…have twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondage and distorted the image of God into an eternal, small minded, bookkeeper. The Christian community resembles a Wall Street exchange of works wherein the elite are honored and the ordinary ignored. Love is stifled, freedom shackled, and self-righteousness fastened. The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.”

Woah.

Disclaimer: The book doesn’t in any way imply that all Christians or all churches function in this manner. But I think it’s safe to say that this hits home in many, many ways. As the book so simply states in the first chapter: Something is radically wrong.

Your thoughts?

Remembering Rejection

2010-02-24T13:25:00.011-05:00

I don’t know what it is but I guess I’ve been in a storytelling mood here lately. It may have something to do with the fact that I’m “fingers deep” into my latest novel. Anyway, I recently asked the students in my English 101 class to write a description of a childhood memory and as I often do, I decided to write with them. This particular memory came to me, I think, because I recently found myself uncovering the various ways I’ve allowed rejection, real or perceived, to influence my life and impact my destiny. Here goes…

He was the cutest boy in the neighborhood. At least he was to my nine-year old eyes. As if he was dipped into a vat of caramel icing, his skin was smooth. Smoother than any other 13 year-old I’d seen. He was also the Pastor’s son. Don’t know why that made a difference but it did. Maybe I thought that made him closer to God or something. In hindsight, his intentions were as far from Godly as anyone can be but hey, I was nine. I didn’t really stop to ponder the theology of it all.

He also had the best bike in the neighborhood. A 10-speed that was jet black and whose shiny wheels whispered when he whizzed by us girls playing double-dutch or hopscotch or hand games.

I liked this brown boy very much. So much so, I was willing to risk the lightning fast whip of my Aunt’s belt in exchange for “borrowing” my cousin’s bike and answering his call to follow him into the woods near our neighborhood.

There I am, breathing heavy and pumping hard on the pedals of a BMX bike in order to make it up and down the steep hills that brown boy, with his gear shifts and all, seemed to navigate with ease. Dark and shadowy figures appeared to be hidden behind the tall trees that smothered this part of Vine Grove, Ky. My real home was in Louisville but I was being forced to spend what I thought would be only one summer with family who lived “in the country.” Anyway, in truth those dark figures I saw were probably only a few deer or a raccoon or two. Yet even back then I had a very vivid imagination and preferred to think of them as ghosts; anything that would heighten the element of danger in my adventure.

When I reached the edge of the woods, I jumped off the bike and followed the distinct scent of boy. I found him a few minutes later standing in a clearing next to an old wooden shack. The air around us seemed heavy with awkward anticipation. And it was…only for different reasons. I didn’t really know what to say to him since, in actuality, I’d only ever spoken to him at church. Praise the Lord didn’t seem appropriate at all. Nevertheless, I ventured forward hoping only for a smile or a hug or maybe a kiss; something that said, “I like you too.” His mission? Something entirely different.

Long story short, brown boy looked me over and then grinned. I grinned back. So far, so good, I thought. Then he asked me…no, dared me…to punch out the glass in one of the squares on the ancient, wooden shed door. Huh? Of course I didn’t understand why. It sounded strange even to someone as young and naïve as me. But I was in the woods with a boy I liked and while fear may have kept my heart beating like African drums, so did my nine-year old love.

So I punched out the glass.

Hard.

Probably as hard as he laughed.

My eyes bulged as I watched blood pour out of my hand, down my wrists, and onto my clothes. They finally burst with tears as I also watched the brown boy who, in that moment, didn’t appear quite as lovely as before, jump on his perfect bike and speed out of the woods. He left me standing there, hand and heart both hurting something fierce.

Sadly, It wouldn’t be the first time this happened.

The evidence...25 years later. Faded scars are still scars.

Meet Mae Green

2010-02-22T08:00:00.011-05:00

Last Thursday, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to a roundtable of church communicators, leaders, and pastors in Indianapolis regarding how to develop effective strategies for Multicultural Ministry. On the plane ride back to Philly, I felt led to write a short story that creatively summarized some of the things we discussed during my presentation. This piece is written from the point of view of the fictional character, Mae Green. Mae is a woman who is on a flight from Birmingham heading to Baltimore to visit her grandchildren. I do plan to write the other side of the story in a future post. Enjoy!

Mae Green (a short story)

Insecurity leaped from the woman’s eyes when I nodded my request to sit in this particular row. She quickly switched from the window seat to the cramped middle seat saying, as if it hurt to even acknowledge me, “I’m with him.”

I mean, seriously, what did she really think would happen if I did sit next to her husband on the plane? Would my fabulousness become so overwhelming to him that a torrid love affair would ensue right before her eyes? All within the span of a two and a half hour flight, no less? Ha! Honey, I wish I had that kind of persuasion. I could think of a whole bunch of stuff I’d have in my life if I did, none of which would be some dried up white man that looks like he is only two days from being in the grave.

Oh Lord have mercy! I know I’m wrong for saying something like that. Shoot, that man has at least a couple of years. ;)

Anyhoo, her fear is actually pretty entertaining. It’s helping me keep my mind off of this terrible turbulence that’s rocking my stomach something awful. Maybe this is the rollercoaster route to the East Coast or something. They gonna make me start pleading the Blood in the minute. Truth be told, I done already drenched my hands in that anointin’ oil I got from Pastor last Sunday. Yep, made sure that I touched as much as that plane as I could as I was passing through the doorway and looking for a seat. Humph! Ain’t no shame to my game. Probably need to rub some oil on that white lady as well. Especially since she keep giving me the side-eye like I’m some leper or something.

It’s alright though. ‘Cause that right there is hurt in her eyes. I’d recognize it a mile away. One thing I know for sure is…pain don’t discriminate. We’re all broken. Now true…some of us have more cracks than others. But we’re broken just the same. We all need Jesus, for real. (Heeeeyyyy, don’t y'all make me shout on this plane!!!!) The truth is…folks are running around scared of each other and don’t know why. Hate to say it but us church folks can be the worst. Looking on the outside…at color of all things… and judging folks on stuff that really don’t matter in the long run. Sure ain’t gonna matter in Heaven when we get our new bodies and stuff. That reminds me. I need see about getting an advanced copy of mine. Ha!

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying race don’t matter. It does. Just not in the way that we think it does. See I’m a proud black woman. African American, as we call it now. Born in Birmingham, Alabama. When you look at me, I WANT you to see my baby smooth, blue-black skin; the soft, tight curls of my hair; the expanse of my nose and my hips. Especially that last one. I like to say I was made to breathe and birth…in the natural and the spiritual. (See there ya’ll go again…makin’ me shout!)

Go ahead and ask me why I pray the way I do, move the way I do, act the way I do. There’s a story in it all and I’d be glad to share it with anyone willing to listen…white, brown, yellow, or green. Okay, maybe not green. I ain’t talking to no green people.

Yep, I have a great story to tell. But I suspect so does that white lady still sneaking peaks at me on this plane. Her eyes seem to be only a prologue to a tale I’d love to hear. But of course, that won’t happen. ‘Cause she’s scared. And if I’m honest, so am I. Might be for different reasons but I’m scared nonetheless.

So yeah, we’ll sit here. Filled to the brim with word blessings just waiting to be received by the other and yet neither one of us willing to get to pouring. All because we’ve been taught some stupid concept called tolerance. Yes, I said it. Tolerance ain’t worth a hill of beans! You tolerate a puppy peeing on your carpet. You celebrate human beings. I’m just sayin’.

Yeah, we’ll probably end up doing just that: tolerating each other for the couple of hours or so we’re on this plane and then going our separate ways.

But what will we miss, I wonder?

What kinds of blessings and revelations await us in the conversation we’ll never have? The relationship we’ll never explore. Well, we done already said so much with our eyes. Done exchanged pain and struggle and curiosity with just a glance or two.

Shoot, forget this nonsense! I need as many blessings I can get before I see Glory. And the way it looks…the way this plane is bouncing around the sky…glory might be coming sooner than I’d like.

“Excuse me, miss…”

To be continued.

The Prophetic Voice of HGTV

2010-02-15T08:51:00.005-05:00

Embedded in most 12 step programs is the concept of admitting that you have a problem. So right here, in broad internet daylight, I will make a confession.

I am a HGTV junkie.

From House Hunters to Designed to Sell to Holmes on Homes (the sweetest tough guy ever), I can watch the channel all day long. The recent blizzards in Philly have offered me an opportunity to completely binge out on my favorite episodes and, of course, drive my hubbie up the wall by sending dagger-like looks his way if he even tried to touch the remote. :)

In fact, I would go as far as to say that beyond learning how to drywall a basement or what colors work best in a master suite, I’ve also acquired some great nuggets on life itself from the network. Don’t believe me? You will.

On the shows where people are struggling to sell their homes, one of the most important things we are taught is that staging makes a big difference in whether a house gets sold quickly (urgency) and for how much (value). For those of you who are not HGTV-nista’s, home staging, according to stagingbug.com is “the process of preparing a home (and everything within the home) for sale, with a particular focus on presentation.”

Alas…revelation! I’ll explain.

You see after watching these shows, I had to ask myself, and now you, “Are you staging your life so that people can buy what you’re selling…with urgency and for what it is worth?”

I can hear you now. You’re shaking your head saying, “I don’t care what people think about me!” I get it. And you’re partially correct. How people view you shouldn’t define you; it shouldn’t impact your self-worth, sure! However, how people “see” you is important to those of us who claim to be representatives of Christ. No, you may not lose sleep if so-and-so doesn’t like you. Like is such a flaky word with a variety of meanings depending on who you talk to. Yet, you just might want to care how they see you if they, intentionally or unintentionally, have identified some new area of brokenness in you that has been left unaddressed. You know the feeling. We think we got it together; that, as grandma used to say, our witness is strong. Then out of nowhere some issue comes up as a result of someone else’s observation or a relationship that pulls on our weak spots and we are blindsided by our own stuff. What do we do? Well some of us, in the name of our version of Christianity, put on the pseudo-courage that we use as a mask to cover up our real selves---never really surrendering or dealing with the issue. Sadly, by doing that we also negatively impact and influence everyone around us; including those who are looking at us for the authenticity that only comes with Christ. Translation: Because of you, they’re not buying!

And by the way, the whole mask thing? That’s the bootleg version of staging. The kind that’s not used to enhance the real value of the home but to cover up major problems like water damage and mold. Yuck!

So, in an effort to stretch this analogy as far as I can, here are a few more critical lessons learned from those prophetic staging experts over at HGTV. Enjoy!

1) Clutter sucks: I don’t know how many episodes of Designing to Sell I’ve seen where people who are trying to sell their home have a million toys covering their fireplace or large clunky furniture that takes up the entire room. Inevitably, the designer will stress to them the importance of de-cluttering so that the buyer can see past your stuff and actually envision themselves living there.

So that got me to thinking…can the visitors in our lives, including those who truly want to believe, see themselves serving Christ also based on how you present Him? Or, do you have so much of your personal junk in the way that they actually miss the heart of who you really are and/or have become in Him?

2) Neutrality is not the same as indecisiveness. – Some people are okay with plain white walls. For some, it is a design choice but for most others it is a function of not knowing what color really works. Many designers stress neutral tones when trying to sell a house but they don’t necessarily encourage blandness. In other words, they don’t want to overwhelm the buyer with bright colors that may not be “where they are” in that moment but they don’t want to bore them to death either. Again, it is about creating a balanced experience that can help the buyer see themselves in the house.

Well, how about us? Do we overwhelm the people that we meet, beating them over the head with our religion instead of soothing them with His love? Are we bright and sunshiney, which by itself is not a bad thing, except when we become so consumed by our own brightness that we can’t recognize and eventually address someone else’s darkness. Or worse, are we just so undecided about our own spiritual state that we would rather remain bland and boring…borderline irrelevant? That’s definitely not attractive to anyone who is trying picture themselves serving God and are using our lives as the model.

3) Personalization is great if you’re planning to live there…not so much if you’re trying to sell: Beyond the issue of clutter, some people just like wall paneling in their basement. Or floral wall paper in their dining room. Or shag carpeting in the bedroom. And according to the design prophets, that’s okay if you are planning to live in the home yourself. But those “personal” tastes can sometimes take away from the heart of the home when you are trying to sell it.

So how many of us have said, “I am who I am. Take it or Leave it.” Yep. Me, too. But unfortunately what we forget to share with people is that who we are is a mean, jealous, conniving wretch of a person. Sure. “Being you” works if you plan to live in that place your entire life; never growing, never allowing God to transform the hurt, sin, pain, and anguish that shapes all of us at times, into the authentic, loving person he designed you to be. Why do we run from showing “our bones” as they say in the design world? Yes, some aspects of our personality are God-given distinctions but others are simply a function of what we’ve acquired throughout of life, some of which can distract others from seeing how God is using you to bless them.

I could go on and on really. I could talk about how stagers emphasize the importance of having lots of light in your home or how both historic homes and newer construction have different needs. Whew, there is SO much there! Well, maybe I’ll continue this another day…

Would love to hear your thoughts!

TMLG

Coming Full Circle

2010-02-12T09:00:00.006-05:00

"...I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." - Deuteronomy 30:19b

I was registering to become a professional member of SistahFaith (btw, an awesome org with a powerful new book release) when one of the questions on the application asked, "In what areas of your life are you trying to come full circle?"

Woah.

This was my response.

"I'm in a lifelong process of reconciling my fears with my faith, my intellect with my passion, my pursuit of success with my pursuit of significance. I've been standing at this intersection for a while now and it is time to choose in order to reach the next level of my assignment."

The words just kind of poured out of me. Simple truths escaping an often crowded mind. The tension between all of these things has truly been my journey. To me, coming full circle means (re)discovering the woman God created me to be...the original blueprint. Before I took it upon myself to conduct unnecessary renovations and reconstructions with limited knowledge or tools. Before the distractions and sediment of my life became my preoccupation. So, yes, I can talk about my past, the sins made against me, and all of the "root" issues until I'm blue in the face...and I probably will because I think there is value in some of that…however, how much more important is it to be clear about where you stand TODAY? What are the choices you face TODAY? Where do you go from HERE?

This moment is really all we have. And every 60 seconds, even that is gone…

TMLG

Life got in the way

2010-02-11T14:06:00.003-05:00

Okay. I just thought this image was hilarious. And very much how I feel sometimes. The whole accountability thing.

Anyway.

I think we (meaning me, of course) should stop saying "life got in the way" when we try to explain why we didn't accomplish something on time or at all. Maybe life didn't get in the way. Maybe WE got in the way of our life. Maybe we keep trying to accelerate when God wants us to coast.

Or vice versa.

Just a thought.

TMLG

A Way to Hide Our Pain

2010-02-07T17:42:00.004-05:00

Self-medication is the use of drugs, including alcohol, or other self-soothing forms of behavior, to treat a perceived or real malady. Self-medication is often referred to in the context of a person self-medicating, in order to alleviate their own distress or pain.

People self medicate in a variety of ways. The obvious vices are drugs and alcohol. For others of us, we use food to hide from our pains or to suppress the emotional issues that we need to face and don’t. And since the content of food has becoming increasingly drug-like, those of us who try to eat our way out of our hurt can get a double hit. The act of self-medicating is also thought to be a form of self-control, as in a way for one to create the semblance of control in the midst of a situation or circumstance that is very much out of control.

Now I’m going to step out on a limb and say that in addition to food or drugs or alcohol, there is another, less obvious form of self-medication going on with some of us. For many people, the medication of choice is their own gifts.

Whaaaat??? I know. Sounds crazy. But give me some room to explain…

I would like to submit that some of us self-medicate ourselves with our gifts, our talents, our abilities. Did you know that you can make your gift, the very thing that God gave you to give Him glory, an idol? So…this means that if you are a singer, dancer, writer, or doctor you can become SO consumed by your gift…a subtle distraction by the enemy…that you begin to serve it versus using it to serve God or the people God has placed in your path. You can also find yourself using your gifts and abilities as a way to divert your own much needed attention away from the broken places in your life. To try to retain some kind of pseudo-control over a chaotic emotional state.

So what does this kind of self-medication look like?

For me, writing is a gift that I’m very clear has been given to me by God. However, I also know that even in the midst of what I call success, God has not been able to get the full and maximum use of it. Why? Because of my need to control my gift. I’ve taken control over what I will or won’t write. I think I know what people will or won’t like; what they need to read from me and what they don’t. How many of us who are writers have, deep down beneath our own will, felt strongly that we were being led by God to write on a specific topic or write a certain kind of book but because of external factors or our internal issues, we chose not to? That is an example of attempting to control your gift versus allowing God full control over it.

I believe that our gifts, no matter what they are, are the vehicles by which we reach our individual purpose and destiny on earth. Therefore, we should be flexible in our operation of them; they should remain accessible and moldable to the hands of God. In fact, the scriptures state that God’s ways and thoughts are much greater than our ways and thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). Yeah. I’m guessing this probably means that how He plans to use our gifts is probably going to work out much better than our own plans for our gifts. I also deduce from this that maximum creativity comes from being able to be flexible within the will of God in terms of what He wants to do with our gifts. I can write poem after poem or book after book and become so consumed with my own ideas, the actual act of writing, and the manipulation of words that I lose sight of the purpose of the gift of writing in the first place. Not good. So not good. I liken that to overdosing. For real.

So this begs the question: Why do we o.d. on our gifts? Why do we try to maintain control of our talents?

Well, that brings me back to the concept of self-medication. I think we become consumed by or controlling of our gifts out of fear of what will happen if we allow ourselves to be the fully open and complete vessels for the message of God. I think that I, and maybe you, are afraid of how great we can be, but we are also afraid of the hurt that we may have to re-live in order to get there.

Nine times out of ten God is going to use the very pain that we are running from (the same as anyone who abuses drugs or alcohol or food) as the avenue by which we will travel and be delivered to our destiny. So by trying to maintain some control over our gifts, we think we can control the how, the why, and the way of that trip. Yet, in doing this, we are essentially saying this: “I don’t want to deal with the pain of my childhood. I don’t want to deal with the pain caused by my own choices. I don’t want to experience that rejection or this feeling and so yes God, I’ll write about, sing about, dance about, this but I will not write about, sing about, dance about that. Because IF I write about, sing about, dance about this then I can keep some kind of control over my emotions; suppressing the pain.” The result? My journal and my books become my bottle of Hennessy; the place where I can hide my pain in superficial and powerless words instead of exploring the transformational stories that are embedded in my own. For the painter, the canvas becomes your cocaine; the space in which you can indulge all the notions and observations that don’t matter and that serve no purpose instead of seeing the beautiful images that are amazingly reflected from your own hurt.

Unfortunately, all of this keeps us from be the great [fill in the blank] that were created to be.

Still not sold? Let me ask you this. If it is possible to express ourselves through our gifts, isn’t it also possible to suppress ourselves with our gifts?

TMLG

Ever wonder what a child sees in you?

2010-01-26T17:03:00.001-05:00

This much I know for sure.

The woman I am is a result of the girl I was.

The things I saw and how I perceived them, the experiences of my childhood and how they affected me…all of these things have influenced the “sight” and perspective I have today. Some of these experiences were good. Others…not so much. This is true for all of us, I believe. Yet, if God does not lie than all of it works together for the good of those who love Him (and I do desperately)and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

But here’s the thing. I can’t help but to wonder if there is another level of accountability and responsibility to considered. Meaning…it’s easy to say “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” This is often true in the aftermath of a traumatic situation. But I also think that this statement implies a certain lack of the use of wisdom. Yes, some pain is inevitable in this life. Even Christ acknowledges this in scripture (John 16:33) But some pain seems to have been transferred to us by the adults in our lives who used statements like the one I mentioned above to justify or reconcile their actions (or non-actions) against the smallest observers—the children around them.

When it comes to the hurt of the children within our direct reach, there seems to be an unconscious ambivalence. We’ve heard it. Maybe even said it. “They’ll be alright.” But this is not necessarily used as statement of faith but as an escape from the real work that comes with helping children to heal. But “They’ll be alright” is not enough; especially since in recent years, it’s obvious that many of us are not alright. The perceptions that frame our adulthood were, in many cases, shaped by the lack of accountability or consciousness on behalf of the adults that were placed around us. And I DON’T MEAN JUST PARENTS, although I guess they are our first filters. What I really mean is our community. I’m talking about our teachers, pastors, deacons, neighbors, the local police, etc.

Children are always watching adults. They are watching what we say and how we behave. They are observing how we respond to pain—ours and others. They mimic us. And even if you don’t have children of your own, I’m confident that there still is a child watching you. Maybe they see you every morning on the train. Or walking by their daycare center. Wherever. They are looking at you and to you for some intelligence on what it means to be a grown up.

I know I was. As much as I remember Mrs. Randall at Klondike Elementary in Louisville, KY and how great of a 2nd grade teacher she was; how she nurtured my love for writing and reading early on… I also remember the neighbor down the street who used to catch bunnies that would find their way into her yard, put them in a plastic bag, and bang them against a tree. (Yeah. Wonder what that taught me.)

I believe that God gives you an assignment during your stay on earth; a destiny. But I also believe that he gives you the freedom to choose your route. So in hindsight, as I look in the eyes of my three year old self in a yellowed photo from my mother’s house, I wonder if that three year-old Tracey, after being set on an awesome path by God almighty, was sidetracked on her journey and forced onto a detour that would take her on a longer route to her destiny… because of some of the things that she saw around her.

And I’m not even just talking about the traumatic experiences, although many of us have had those as teachers as well. But maybe it was the subtle things that I noticed and then acquired that made a difference in how I chose to live my life once I was old enough to make my own decision. Did the responses made out of fear that I viewed as a child, impact my own responses to similar scenarios? Did the low self-esteem and poor relationships I perceived around me influence my own?

There must be a connection.

Yeah, I know. We can’t change the past. As adults, we are accountable for our actions. We have to let go of the things that may have beset us in our past. But then again…MAYBE I CAN CHANGE THE PAST! I mean, not mine of course. But maybe I can change the past of that three year old that sat next to me in the doctor’s office. Or the little boy who stared unblinkingly at me from the across the room at the restaurant. Maybe I can change the past that they will eventually have by shifting from the woman I am to the woman God initially created me to be.

Yes, it does seem cyclical, doesn’t it? By my surrendering my past and letting go of the negative things I saw or perceived as a child, I can change some present child’s eventual past and positively influence their future.

What do you think?

This blog is SO not about Whitney Houston...Okay, maybe a little bit.

2009-12-22T17:41:00.004-05:00

Earlier this month, I was driving the winding road known as Lincoln Drive here in Philadelphia when Whitney Houston’s song “I didn’t know my own strength” came on the radio and I began to ponder this woman. Now Whitney and I are not friends nor have I ever known her (except in my head at 12 when I use to sing “The Greatest Love of All” and “Saving All my Love” so feverishly that you would have thought I had millions of loves and had lost them all on the same day). Yet, for some reason while driving down a road I’d driven a thousand times, I began to think about Whitney and her story. Her life, particularly her recent comeback, seemed to take over my brain.

Recently, speculators have made some harsh judgments regarding the quality of her voice on this newest record. Some have said that her voice is not the same as it was during her “heyday” and others have made veiled comments; insinuating that her admitted past drug abuse had taken away the awesome range and rich tone that she once had.

And if I’m honest, I found myself wondering the same thing. You see, as much as I love these new songs, the same question kept popping into my mind every time I’d see her perform. Where were the notes that she hit when she sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl? What about the way she pierced our hearts on the Bodyguard Soundtrack?

Bottom Line, I wondered, had Whitney Houston lost her gift?

Then, of course, I was checked rather quickly by God (SO not the best feeling in the world).

This is what I heard: How are you (or anyone else, for that matter) any different from Whitney?
How is Whitney Houston any different from any one of us who have found ourselves caught up in our sin, only to find out that the very gift that God had given us had been diminished by our own actions? You see the trick of the enemy is his ability to convince us that somehow our sins (the hidden stuff that doesn’t get shown on National Television) are somehow less damaging and therefore not as bad as Whitney’s. He keeps us pointing the finger outward so that we never take a moment to see the reflection of ourselves shining brightly from those stars we so love to talk about.

satan comes to Kill, Steal, and Destroy (John 10:10). He wants your gift. For Whitney, it was her voice. For me, it is my mind and my pen. For you, it is [fill in the blank]. He wants it because he knows that it is our gift that God will often use to accomplish His purpose on Earth. To build His Kingdom. It is through the use of our gifts that He receives glory. So satan is literally hell bent on getting us to forgo our gifts in favor of some temporal pleasure; our inability to resist him (James 4:7)

For example, I am a writer. God uses my writing to inspire, educate, enlighten, and bless people whether I’m writing a business plan as a consultant, a Christian fiction novel, or a scholarly paper. However, when I find myself deeply beset by sin (not our daily shortcomings but more of a dwelling in sin; an unwillingness to relinquish or repent from it) then my writing fails me. I still write. Some people still even like it. But as a Kingdom scribe, I am ineffective. My work doesn’t accomplish what it was intended to… it falls short of the glory of God in the same ways that I have fallen short of His Glory through my sinful behavior (Romans 3:23).

So before I could think of all the ways that Whitney Houston’s situation was different from mine or yours, I realized that it really wasn’t. She is no different than any of us who have fallen away from what we know to be true and right and as a result, our gifts, the thing that God has given us to use, has been rendered temporarily ineffective.

But did you see that? Read that last line up above. What word glares back at you?

Yes! Me, too! Temporarily.

I serve a God of healing and restoration. His grace is oh so sufficient for me (2 Corinthians 12:9)…and for Whitney.

How do I know? Well, I recently watched Whitney perform on the American Music Awards and while there was still that different quality to her voice, something absolutely amazing happened. As she sang, it seemed like her voice began to get stronger and stronger until she ended the song so powerfully that my eyes welled with tears. My soul just leaped because I felt like I was watching a woman having her gift restored right in front of me. And, in a way, her voice was better now. The superficiality of “pop” was gone. There was a deep, roughness that said, “Yes, I’ve been broken. But in my brokenness, God can still use me.”

With every note that Whitney sang, every time she shared her testimony through song, I believe that the Lord was slowly but surely processing her sin and was giving her BACK her gift.

Can we praise God for restoration? Can we praise God for the fact that He loves us so much that even when we fall away from Him, if we come back humble and sincere, with a repentant heart, He will not only give back to us the gifts that were lost but he will make it stronger, more powerful, and more of a blessing then it ever was before?

So I say to Whitney and all the rest of us who are “recovering” from something…if you continue on this path of righteousness (and that is key) then as the bible says, your LATTER days will most certainly be GREATER than your FORMER days (Haggai 2:9).

TMLG

What are we going to do about our broken “body”?

2009-12-17T17:18:00.005-05:00

Believe it or not, this used to be a place of worship. A place where people went to worship God. I’ll admit that I’m not really sure why the church is being demolished only that for the last six months I’ve driven by it on my way to work. I even remember reading an excerpt from one my books at an event at the church several years ago. Back then, it stood strong; weathered but strong. Like many of the older church buildings in the city of Philadelphia, it had endured the various environmental, political, and social seasons of the city. From wars to riots; from migration to development.

But now it stands in a strange uncertainty; connected to the past but certain that no future (except the one of being a half-demolished historical structure) exists. So I ask you…would you like to worship here today? Would you like to serve in this temple? Yes, I realize that there isn’t a front door, maybe a few rats, and the pews are strewn about but seriously…would you like to meet me here on Sunday, sit amongst the filth and decay, and give God some praise?

Yeah, I thought so.

A thought, as sure as the locks on my head, came to me as I sat in my car, stopped at the light on the corner where this church half-stands.

Is this how the world views the Body of Christ? Is this how the “Church” is perceived?

Yes, after 2000+ years, we’re still standing. Yet, how much of what we are known for, what is acknowledged as true about us is connected to our history? Even atheists believe that the “historical Jesus” existed. It’s the whole Son of God thing that they can’t wrap their mind around.

I know the word “relevant” is so cliché when it comes to conversations about the Body of Christ but I do ask, are we relevant to those that we are called to reach or are we just an institution that has been beat up and half demolished by sin (from within and without) yet still calling for people to sit in our pews and worship God as if they don’t see the destruction, the filth, the rats (!) around them?

Are we accessible? Are we inviting? I don’t mean inviting as in the kind of superficial clean-up that we do when unexpected company comes. Throwing everything in the closet so that they can’t see what is just beneath the surface. Nor do I mean that we should compromise the message of Christ in order to appease people. I DO mean inviting as in being the vessel for the love of Christ to a world that is hurting; whose reflection looks much like our own faces before (and after, if we’re honest) we met Him.

Are we standing strong in some areas (like the back part of this church) but in other places…specifically our front door …we are broken and impassable? Do we grieve the Holy Spirit by making entry difficult, giving only the most savvy (and least sincere) of sinners back door/VIP privileges?

Something has to change.

I know this sounds negative. That is not my intention. In fact, a part of me thinks that maybe the whole “all things work together for good (Romans 8:28)” thing is what’s in effect here. Maybe the church as we knew it to be NEEDS to be demolished. The one thing that stands out to me about this picture is that the whole reason why this church remains standing in spite of time, weather, and wrecking ball, is that most likely it was built on a solid foundation.

And so it is with the Body of Christ. Our foundation is Christ. Without a doubt.

However, what we’ve built on that foundation just may need to come down (along with some of our unbiblical traditions and mindsets) so that we can build anew according His word. And I know what you’re saying. Yes, we should honor what has come before us…the people that have laid the groundwork. To a certain extent, I agree. Our past is an important reminder of the victories and testimonies that have happened before but it is also a clear picture of our brokenness and our need for healing in many areas. While we honor our past, we don’t worship it. We don’t build monuments to it. The fact is…any good that came from it was ONLY because of an alignment with Christ. And as long as we maintain that alignment, then change and rebuilding; the shift that we all feel but are too fearful to grab hold of…doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

If Christ is coming for a church without spot, wrinkle, or blemish (Ephesians 5:27)…shouldn’t we stop sitting around half-demolished and get on with the re-construction?

My Blog Favorites

2009-12-03T15:21:00.003-05:00

I know, I know. I haven't posted in awhile. I could say that I've been super busy but I don't think that is a valid excuse anymore because truthfully, you're busy too, right? Right. And yet you still check in to see what or if I've posted. (note my look of pure gratitude)

But I can say that I have some good stuff in the works. Yes, that means that I'm not posting all of that good stuff today. But it does mean that it is coming soon. Very soon.

In the meantime, I decided to take a moment and honor a few of the blogs that I READ on a weekly, if not daily, basis. As not to offend all of my writer friends out there, I must say that this is not an exhaustive list. There are plenty of spots that I visit occasionally on the web...these just happen to be a few of my favs. Some are writing/publishing industry related, other are the blogs of the writers themselves. Some are Christian, others...well others, not so much (guilty pleasures). I won't tell you which is which so if you are sort of Pharisee-like, you may not want to click randomly. :)

All are either informative, revelatory, or just plain out hilarious. Enjoy!

In no particular order...

Blog of Author Claudia Mair Burney
http://ragamuffindiva.blogspot.com

Blog of Chip Macgregor, Literary Agent and Publishing Industry Professional
http://www.chipmacgregor.com

The Master's Artist Blog
http://aratus.typepad.com

Blog by Writer Denene Milner
http://mybrownbaby.blogspot.com

Blog by Writer, Mary Demuth
http://relevantblog.blogspot.com

Blog by Neysa Taylor
http://myriadthatisme.blogspot.com

Blog by Writer, Humorist Jon Acuff
http://www.stuffchristianslike.net

Blog by Writer/Editor, Mitzi Miller
http://mitzimoments.blogspot.com

Blog by Writer/Journalist, Aliya S. King
http://www.aliyasking.com/

Six Figure Sisters
http://www.sixfiguresisters.blogspot.com/

Blog by Writer, Cherlyn Michaels
http://cherlynmichaels.blogspot.com

Blog by Writer, Shon Bacon
http://upontablets.blogspot.com

Blog by Christian PR/Media Professional, Dee Stewart
http://christianfiction.blogspot.com

The Novel Journey
http://www.noveljourney.blogspot.com/

Blog of CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing, Michael Hyatt
http://michaelhyatt.com/

Be Excellent (Entrepreneurship)
http://sixdisciplines.blogspot.com

Blog by author/ministry professional, Kem Meyer
http://www.kemmeyer.com

A few thoughts on love...

2009-11-03T16:47:00.006-05:00

No one is excluded from the love of God. No one should be excluded from the love we share with one another. We are either all deserving of it or all terribly undeserving of it. Either way, love is capable of inhabiting anything if it is allowed to fully be.

Be what, you ask? Just be. Nothing extra. Nothing less than what it is and certainly nothing more.

See that's where most of us get in trouble. We try to turn love into something that we can manipulate. We think that we can fashion it so that it meets not only with our approval but the approval of those that we so desperately seek to please. But real love hides from that sort of thing and what most people end of finding out at the last minute is that the thing that they were try to manipulate wasn't love at all. It was a mirage of what it was supposed to be. Emulating all of the emotion of love but none of its commitment or sustenance.

"God is. Love is."

Just a thought.

TMLG

Has your life been disturbed by God?

2009-10-27T14:17:00.003-04:00

We watch and we wait, Lord
we anticipate…
the moment, you choose to appear.

We worship, we praise
until there’s no debate
and we recognize you're already here.

- Lyrics from Already Here by Brian Courtney Wilson

The song above, to me, is more than an awesome worship song. It gives clarity to something that has bothered me for a while now. I used to cringe when I heard folks say… after an exceptionally emotional worship service…things like “God really showed up, didn’t He?” or “The Holy Spirit just fell.” It always sounded to me like God was running around the earth keeping appointments with various churches and ministries; sometimes making it and sometimes not. It made me feel like we were treating the Holy Spirit like some invisible magician that only responded to our varying levels of emotion; living only in our shouts and screams and tears and falling out (what about our quiet moments, our laughter, our love?). Didn’t Christ say, “I will be with you always even unto the end of the earth.” (Matt. 28:20). Geesh! No wonder there is so much inconsistency in our worship experience.

Now don’t get me wrong. I get it. I know what we mean. What we are trying to say is that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, has physically manifested; the unseen has become the seen. Extraordinary, miraculous things (at least to our finite minds) have occurred as a result of the spiritual realm and natural realm intersecting. But since our words are powerful and often reflect our understanding of a thing, maybe we should choose different words. Words that reflect the truth.

God doesn’t just “show up.” The Holy Spirit doesn’t “visit.” Like the song says, God is already here. He’s walking with you. Carrying you, if He must. The Spirit of God is here. Right now. Even as you read this.

And I get it. As humans, we need to see something sometimes. I’m like that. I’ll admit to needing something tangible at times. Maybe even too much. Sometimes we just need a physical manifestation of what we believe. But guess what? WE ARE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THAT HAPPENING! It’s up to us to stir that up. Because our amazing God gave us Free Will (and not because He is incapable of doing so Himself), most of the time it’s up to US to create the atmosphere for the disturbance of God in our lives.

I know you think I’m crazy but think of it like this. We don’t find ourselves saying, “Woo Hoo! That air really showed up today!” No. We know the air exists because there is a disturbance as a result of its presence. Leaves blowing on a Fall day, the hem of your skirt rising as you walk down the street, the slight pull of your car as you are driving down the highway…all of this is the physical manifestation of the disturbance of the air around it. The air is always there. But it is the disturbance that causes it to “show up.”

Same goes with God. He’s here with us always. That is a promise Christ made to us before he returned to the right hand of the Father. But because He is a Spirit, there needs to be something that WE do to cause the disturbance that will ultimately result in us seeing Him in the natural; for there to be a physical manifestation.

And what does that look like? How do we activate or stir up the Holy Spirit so that He can disturb the status quo in our lives and we can see more of the miracles that we desire?

The first thing that usually comes to mind is Praise and Worship. And that’s true. That’s often what we see in our houses of worship. But there are other things as well. Our FAITH activates the Holy Spirit. Our OBEDIANCE activates Him. Our PRAYER life and WITNESS to others stirs God. These are also the things that I think will cause Him to “show up” more in our lives.

It’s not just some arbitrary visitation between 9am and 2pm on Sunday morning. It’s everyday. It’s in your office right now. It’s in your home at midnight. It’s anywhere because He’s always there with you.

Have you seen God lately? Really seen the Holy Spirit manifested in your natural life? Have you been praying for a miracle and waiting and waiting and waiting? He’s there with you, you know. Stir Him up with your praise and worship but there’s more. Stir Him up with your faith and your obedience.

And like those leaves, that skirt, and that car…watch Him move!

In Him,
TMLG

Dying with a Sense of Hope

2009-10-09T22:38:00.004-04:00

I absolutely love Fall days like the ones we had in Philly earlier this week. The leaves that fall from the branches of trees remind me of the gold and red hands of a drum major keeping time. The pale blue sky is the perfect backdrop to the dramatic dance of cotton white clouds. One of the most powerful things about the Fall season is the fact that things die with a sense of hope and expectation of renewal. In my mind, trees shed their leaves---not with finality or sadness---but with nature's understanding that this dying to itself is part of the process that will ultimately allow it to grow stronger and be even more spectacular come Spring.

And I guess the same should go with us. There will be some nouns in our life (people, places, and things) that will be quite vibrant and in the forefront of one season we're in...only to turn and die in another. This is particularly true in relationships and some professional undertakings. It's even more true when it is our own attitudes, behaviors, and ways of thinking that must die. These "deaths" are difficult to embrace and yet if we don't...we can find ourselves in a perpetual winter, mourning something that was only designed to live for that particular season in our lives. Instead the better approach is what (again maybe only in my tree-hugging mind) nature does and that is to trust God, the Creator of all things, and His purposes.

I'm the type that loves to hold onto stuff. To people. To memories...good and bad. I'm realizing that it is time to allow each season in my life to run its course and allow those things that must die to do so. Of course, like my trees...I can never lose hope. I must always have a mindset of renewal, an expectation of my own personal Spring; an understanding that this is part of the process of me growing and becoming more wise and spectacular with each passing year.

What about you?

TMLG

All Poured Out

2009-09-09T08:09:00.005-04:00

Just thinking today...

When my time comes, I want to die empty. Not empty as in having a huge void. More like knowing that I'd pursued and maybe even accomplished every dream I'd ever dreamt. That I'd fulfilled every purpose assigned by God. That I'd poured out every bit of my self...to the very last drop; having nothing left. That I'd given away every gift I had to be used and replicated for future generations. Leaving a full legacy to be poured out by others again and again.

Yes, I want to leave here empty. Not soon. But definitely empty. Exhausted. Depleted of all of my natural resources. Ready to rock some heavenly threads.

That sounds good to me. What about you?

TMLG

Forced Out of Hiding

2009-09-06T21:53:00.004-04:00

cover [kuhv er] - to place something over, as for protection, concealment, or warmth; to envelope; to offset (an outlay or liability)

I will admit to you that I spent most of my single dating years just like that picture up top. Hidden. Only allowing the men that I dated to see parts of me. The parts I thought were my best. The parts that I thought they would be most attracted to. The parts that were most acceptable. I liked my eyes but I hated my wide mouth. So I blinked alot and smiled very little. Crazy, right? Right. But this wasn't just about my physical attributes. It extended to my emotional and spiritual self as well. I was comfortable with showing only parts of me because I thought if they...anyone really..got to know Tracey in her entirety...they wouldn't want her. I would be rejected. They would find me weird or too this or that (as if knowing a blinking, no smiling, half a person is not weird enough - LOL). And most of the time, I was. Rejected, I mean. But often I wonder if those rejections had more to do with the parts of me that they didn't get a chance to see versus the parts that they did.

Yet, I'm clear about one thing. It was mostly a spirit of fear that kept me from revealing myself. A fear of rejection, of course. But also a fear of denial and a deep mistrust of God, myself, and most people. These were things that I was taught by fear early on in my life and it was something that the enemy used to perpetuate this brokenness in me well into my adulthood.

However, after one year of marriage, I can honestly say that I'm finally getting free of this. It's a process but it's happening (I feel like screaming "it's a miracle!"). You see, marriage...at least one that both parties are fully invested in... doesn't afford you the chance to hide. Your mask, no matter how well adhered...eventually wears off as the highs and lows of life together begin to reveal your real self. You are now exposed and naked before your mate daily. Not just physically. But again, emotionally and spiritually. All of the beautiful, broken, crazy, ugly, wonderful, wretched, parts of your being are brought to their attention, and maybe most importantly, yours.

That's why I love when the word "cover" is used to describe how spouses should treat each other. Because that's what my husband does for me. Yes, he sees me (intimacy)...all of that good/bad stuff has most definitely been exposed...but then he "covers" me. He protects me. He "offsets" my liabilities. He demands that the world see both my beauty and brokenness through his love. Through his eyes. Now this is where I should be saying..."and vice versa" but truthfully, he is the one doing most of the covering. And as a result of that kind of patient love and security, I have become increasingly more comfortable with myself; his physical, emotional, and spiritual protection brings out so much of a fullness within that even me, with all my words, can't explain it. All I know is that I relish the freedom of this transparency and the awesome feeling of showing my whole self to him and to the world.

It's a beautiful thing.

And I guess that's why the bible says, "Husbands love your wives like Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25)" Because isn't that how Christ loves us? By covering us. Through his sacrfice, His blood, he forces the world to see us through his love in spite of the one-sidedness of it all. On that cross he "offset" our common liability: sin. And only within His love are we made whole. Because of it...we can walk fully and confidently; experiencing an unexplainable comfort in our identity.

I'll say it again. It's a beautiful thing.

TMLG

Blog Redux: A Writer's Mission Statement

2009-08-28T08:09:00.007-04:00

I want to thank my fellow sista-writer, Shon Bacon, for getting me thinking about why I write and my mission as a writer.

***

I am a writer. Even more than that, I am a scribe. Much of what I write is the transcription of something so much greater than I could ever imagine. Yes, even the bad stuff. Most certainly the stuff that I or they call good. It is my own journey and my observations of the world around me that provide the context for my words. These stories are the layers between which a message is revealed. These revelations are born from great pain and brokenness which, after much misguided manipulation on my part, still inevitably leak onto the page. Beyond my own intentions, the words I write seem to transform themselves into a kind of divine intervention. Sometimes for the reader. All the time for me.

For me, Writing is Ministry.

Another truth? I write because it is one way for me to demonstrate the fruits of the spirit even when I, in the course of my daily humanity, fall short so frequently. When I write, I have the ability to show and give love in the most splendid ways. I experience the most magnificent joys. I am patient and kind and fearless and disciplined and... so not like the flesh and blood, breath in britches woman that I can be at times. In a way, I can fully become what I am slowly becoming when I write.

The things I've written and the things I will write (fiction, nonfiction, or poetry) are about restoration and redemption. I allow my characters to do what writer Melanie Clark Pullen says, "cut through the crap and learn to be authentic." Most of the the time, this is even when I find it difficult to do so. With my words, it is my desire to reveal the heartache and hardships of this world in the most candid and straightforward manner I can. I will compel and confront, if necessary. Yet, I will never do so without offering remedies that work and resolutions that are true. The unfailing love of God. The sacrificial covering of Christ. God’s use of faulty human vessels to accomplish great and extraordinary things.

For me, Writing is a tool for Healing.

A scribe is a servant in the Kingdom whose sole purpose is to translate the words of the King. As I grow as a writer, I realize that this call I have requires me to #1) keep my eyes open to everything and everyone around me, empathizing with great passion the many stories, both foreign and familiar, that I come across and #2) keep my ears close to the heart and desires of my Lord and King.This is so that what I see and the passion in which I process it can ultimately be transformed by the Holy Spirit; coming together as a blessing on the page. If I do that...which frankly I’m still learning everyday to do...then I know I can trust that God will be pleased.

For me, Writing is Worship.

In fact, my mission as a writer can be summed up by a re-working of a quote by the character, Eric Liddell, in the film, Chariots of Fire.

"I believe God made me for a purpose. He also made me a writer.

When I write I feel His pleasure."

BUY ONE ----> SEND ONE...to Africa!

2009-08-10T08:19:00.006-04:00

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" - Isaiah 6:8 NIV

According to UNESCO, in the world today there are about 1 billion non-literate adults.

This 1 billion is approximately 26 percent of the world's adult population.
Women make up two-thirds of all non-literates.
98 percent of all non-literates live in developing countries.
In the least developed countries, the overall illiteracy rate is 49 percent.
Africa as a continent has a literacy rate of less than 60 percent.
In Sub-Saharan Africa since 1980, primary school enrollment has declined, going from 58 percent to 50 percent.

There is also a direct correlation between income and illiteracy.

Per capita income in countries with a literacy rate less than 55 percent averages about $600
Per capita income in countries with a literacy rate between 55 and 84 percent is $2,400
Per capita income in countries with a literacy rate between 85 and 95 percent is $3,700
Per capita income in countries with a literacy rate above 96 percent is $12,600

-info from "The Giving Store" website

Unfortunately, most of these stats don't even take into consideration some of the disparities between published literacy rates and real life indicators.

I firmly believe that some of the world's literacy problems has to do simply with access to affordable or free material. And that's where I have been led to help. Providing access to well-written, faith-based literature accomplishes not just a missionary or evangelistic purpose but can serve as a catalyst to helping organizations "on the ground" build programs and provide affordable or free literature.

After some prayer, I began to think about the significance of the ministry component of my writing; in other words, how do I use my writing to be a blessing to those who may not be able to afford to buy them?

And so, this is what I've been given.

Beginning today, August 10, 2009 for every copy of my books that are purchased through my website/blog, one copy will be shipped to a developing English speaking country in Africa and the Caribbean. I'm calling this my "BUY ONE, SEND ONE" program and it is done in partnership with CLC Ministries, Int'l, an organization that has been on the forefront of Christian missions and bring literature into various developing countries for a very long time.

So...Let's Recap!

YOU BUY YOUR COPY OF "CJ" ---> AND I WILL SEND ONE COPY OF "CJ" to countries like Sierra Leone and Jamaica

So...why not do your part to help? We are blessed to be a blessing!

TMLG

P.S. - Any independent Christian authors out there interested in being involved in somethinglike this...please reach out to me at

newseasonbooks@gmail.com

Born to Wash Cars

2009-07-30T08:53:00.008-04:00

Everyone knows that I'm an advocate for the small business owner. Shoot, I AM ONE! And in my other life, I work in small business and economic development. So imagine how I felt when I turned the corner in my Germantown neighborhood and saw the sign up top.

Wow! A young brother had rented a small garage, put up his sign, and every morning was passing out flyers to cars that drove by, marketing his car wash and detailing service.

But...wait on it...did you check the last line of his sign?

"Born to Wash Cars"

That moved me beyond measure. In fact, I tear up everyday that I drive past it now. Not only was the young man an entrepreneur but he was clear about what he was "born" to do. Now to all of us with our degrees and pedigree, washing cars may not seem like much of a purpose to have in life. But who are we to really judge that? How many people will this young man touch, how many days might be lifted by him simply providing them a quality service with a smile?

I've found that many of those same people who would look down on this young man as they head to their high powered jobs are the ones who five, ten, fifteen, years from now will look back and wish they'd discovered what they were really born to do. Instead of what they were told to do, what they thought they should to do, what they believe they had to do, or worse, what paid the most money at the time.

Even myself...master's degree and all...knows that the thing that I was CALLED to do, the one thing I'd do whether I was paid or not (don't get it twisted, you still have to buy my books! LOL)...is write. God gave that to me and I'm so grateful. I was born to do it and my blog, my books, etc. is my own sign proclaiming it to the world.

What about you? God said he knew you, formed your inner being, even as He knit you in your mother's womb (Psalms 139:13).

What has He called you to do? What were you born to do?

So where's your sign?

Grace & Peace,

TMLG

----->Headed around the corner for a wash and wax :)

Nothing Like Freshly Pressed Pants

2009-07-27T12:57:00.006-04:00

My deepest revelations usually come while doing the most mundane tasks. Washing the dishes. Cooking. Driving. I suspect that God uses moments when my brain is least active to enlighten me because my mind is usually too crowded for me to listen any other time. Nevertheless, this Friday was no exception. I was in my hometown, Louisville, Kentucky, in the guest bedroom/gym/storage space of my parents house (you know you’re really grown when you sleep on an air mattress at your own parents’ house), and preparing for what would ultimately be one of my most successful book signings to date.

After showering, I began ironing the all black outfit I was going to wear (because you can’t go wrong with all black, right?). Unfortunately, my packing skills suck big time and so the fly, wide-legged pants I was going to wear had what looked like a million and a half wrinkles in it. It was in that moment that I sighed to myself and vowed to pack a little bit better for the next trip (sure I will.)

As I waited for the iron to get hot, I grew anxious. Why? Because… #1 – I hate to iron, #2 – I’m not very good at ironing, #3 – the pants looked like they needed a steam roller, not my mom’s simple, albeit quality, Black and Decker. But, I didn’t give up on the pants. Even though they looked absolutely hopeless. I forged forward.

(yes, I’m going somewhere with this.)

I started by putting water in the iron because the pants were a very thin layered material and I knew that steam was going to work better than starch. Plus, I didn’t want to risk having those white flakes that spraying too much starch can leave. Then, I turned up the heat on the iron as high as I knew I could possibly go without burning the fabric. Finally, I began to iron. Slowly and lightly at first. Faster and with more pressure later. Time was of the essence and I had to get these pants on soon so I could get ready for the big event.

Truthfully, it was only after watching each wrinkle smooth out, one by one, that I heard the Voice whisper softly in my spirit.

“You are like those pants.”

Okay, y’all know I’m crazy because my first thought was, “Okay. They’re black. So am I?” LOL

But after I got past the obvious and continued to watch my pants smooth out, the light bulb came on and I totally got it.

Because of many reasons…including my own lack of care…I am wrinkled. Flawed. Even sinful at times. In some areas of my life, the number of wrinkles make me seem hopeless to the average person. But I’m grateful that God is SO not average. God has a purpose for me. I have a function on this earth. But first, those wrinkles have to be removed.

So what do you think God does?

In spite of what I look like, He hasn’t given up on me (or you.) He will start with a little water. That’s his word. He knows how sensitive I am so he provides a barrier between me and what he’s planning to do next. And (just like with the starch), while there are other things that he could use to straighten me out, He’s concerned about the residue that could be left behind. And of course, time is of the essence.

But here we go…then He has to add a little heat. Not too much, though. Not more than the fabric of my life can bear. But just enough to remove the wrinkles and restore me to my original design. Oh, Lord. Here comes the pressure. Because hey, I’m a little stubborn sometimes. Yeah, in some cases the steam heat is enough to straighten me out. But then there are those times when the heat is not enough for the deepest of wrinkles. The ones I got because I was careless or rebellious. Just like haphazardly packing the very outfit I would need to present myself well at my book signing, I’m often careless in the physical, emotional, and spiritual areas of my life even though the health of these things is what I need to present myself. So…here comes the pressure. I realize that the conviction and claustrophobia created by the worst of my wrinkles have to be pressed out.

But when it is all said and done, when God is done…Wow!

The water, the heat, the pressure seems to be harsh on the fabric (and my life)…but they are actually exactly what I (we) need to straighten out our wrinkles and to present ourselves well before God, as well as humankind.

Yeah, we can accomplish our purpose in life with a few wrinkles in tow (and I believe that the grace of God often allows for that). And I COULD have gone to the signing in wrinkled pants. But neither my signing nor our destinies are really about us. They are about the people we impact. Wrinkles (whether on my pants or in our lives) are a distraction. My shriveled pants for some would have overwhelmed the content of my book, maybe even reflected upon it. Maybe even have said something about me. Same thing happens in our lives. We CAN accomplish things with our wrinkled ways but our wrinkles often can overwhelm what we are trying to accomplish…and sometimes even reflect upon the God we claim to represent and our own character.

Why would we ever want to risk that?

So think about this the next time you are standing at the ironing board and watching all of these elements work wonders on your laundry. Yeah, I know. With our clothes, it’s just science. But in our lives…I think it’s a miracle.

TMLG
Ref. Ephesians 5:25-28

Me and My Freshly Pressed Pants

Book Trailer - INTERRUPTION: The Gospel According to Crystal Justine

2009-07-16T12:59:00.002-04:00

A Word from the Lord (Yes, that’s EXACTLY what I said)

2009-07-13T14:59:00.002-04:00

Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? - Matt. 6:26 NLT

Take a moment and look out your window. Yes, you. Wherever you are, look at the birds outside your window. Watch them fly. What do you see beyond their feathers?

Notice how they trust Me. You’ve heard that before from Me, right?

And guess what? They are truly free. I don’t necessarily tell them how high they should fly either. I bet you are surprised by that, huh? Don’t be. The birds fly as high as their wingspan (the very thing I gave them at birth) will allow them to. And for the rest, they trust Me. They trust that they will find food. They trust the process of migration from one place in their lives to the next. They are relational, sometimes fiercely protective to the point of sacrifice. And…they are beautiful. Awesomely beautiful.

They don’t necessarily scream (or squawk-lol), “Look at me, I am beautiful!” Their beauty comes out when they are doing what they were meant to do. What they were designed and purposed to do. When they are walking out their calling and taking care of their own, you find them incredibly stunning, right? You marvel at them. Well, Me too. I marvel at them. They are My creation and yet I still marvel at them. They are so small in comparison to the vastness of earth and yet so incredibly important to its landscape.

So, if them…than why not you?

You are My creation. Release the stuff that hinders you (your mind, your past, your flesh) and just FLY. Fly as far as you can. Fly as high as the stuff that I put inside you at your conception will allow you to fly. Take care of your own…fiercely and sacrificially.

In others words, Trust Me.

You are beautiful and I marvel at you. Others marvel at you, too. Don’t fly against the wind that I send to direct your course. The birds don’t. In fact, they listen for it. The wind, I mean. They sniff it out. They WANT to know its direction so they seek it out. The same way you should seek Me.

Maybe it’s something else that stops you from flying.

I know. Maybe it’s because your mother stayed grounded. She allowed her wings to be clipped by life. Maybe it’s your grandmother. She did fly for a season but unfortunately, she allowed her habits and rebellion to ground her later on in her journey. But their plight does not have to be yours, you know. You are a chosen generation. Be the interruption in your bloodline.

So what about you? How will you fly? Will you soar as high as your gifts will allow and be guided by My Spirit the rest of the way? Or will you allow fear, control, rejection, depression…the enemy of your body, soul, and spirit keep you from seeing high you can go in Me?

Fear - Part 2: The Man with the Black Hat

2009-07-09T21:17:00.004-04:00

The first time I remember being truly scared was actually a period of time in my life between the ages of 10 and 17 years old. Every night before I’d go to sleep, I’d see someone or something standing in my doorway. This thing was as real to me as anything else in my life. It wasn’t my mother, my father, nor my little brother, but it was…the man with the black hat. Imagine a member of the Ku Klux Klan, pointy hat and all, dressed in all black instead of all white and floating a little bit above the ground. That was who or what visited my room; standing in my doorway, several days a week, and it frightened me. What made it worse was that, when I’d cry and complain about it, no one ever took me seriously. No one ever came into my room with oil to anoint it and me. No one provided protection from whatever it was that terrorized me. Even today it is a running joke in our family during holiday gatherings. Someone will say, “Hey, Tracey. Remember the man with the black hat.” And then laughter will ensue. But at 10, 12, 15, or 17, it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all. It frightened me because somewhere in my heart, I knew that this was not a Godly presence. This was no guardian angel. There was no sense of peace or comfort. My typical response was to simply squeeze my eyes, bury my face into my pillow, or another favorite, pile a bunch of covers over my head. I hid from the thing that I was afraid of and I think even now that pattern of hiding can rise up in me. Only then, I never rebuked it because no one showed me how. I definitely never confronted it. I accepted it as a part of my life and unknowingly, invited Fear in for a long visit.

The man with the black hat left me when I went away to college yet, interestingly, would always be waiting for me when I returned on Christmas Break or to visit. Eventually, it went away totally when my parents moved from that house so yes, I do believe that it was a demonic presence inextricably linked to things in my past; the sins that were committed against me as a child. In fact, I think that this devil knew that I belonged to God and my destiny and purpose would be so great in the Kingdom that, though it never touched me physically, it figured out an even more sinister way to reach me. By injecting fear into my already extremely creative mind and imagination, it could ensure my relationship with fear for years to come.

To be continued...

TMLG

The Cancer called Fear

2009-07-08T11:50:00.005-04:00

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love, and a sound mind.” - 2 Timothy 1:7

Knowing the word, intellectually, was never a problem for me. I spent the last eight years (from 11 to 19) of my childhood sitting in Sunday School, leading Bible Drill Team’s, and attending Youth Church---all places where the memorization of scripture is as obligatory as stopping at a red light. However, in every area of my life, my struggle has always been in figuring out how to take the revelations that I might receive from the word of God and effectively activate them in my life for a complete deliverance. How do I wrap my heart around what I thoroughly understood in my brain? That struggle and my own, very real and lifelong battle with fear, is what leads me to write in the way that I do. For me, it is about engaging with the many people (and even characters) who seem to have their own daily confrontations with fear.

The physical manifestation of fear is a result of a “spiritual mêlée” of such proportions that we, as humans, cannot begin to fathom its scale nor consequence. It is incredible how many people there are in this world that dismiss the demonic nature of a Spirit of Fear and cannot distinguish between it and that natural, sense of conscience; the andrenaline-driven emotion that we mistakenly call by the same name. Then there are those who confuse reverence and awe with the damage that the spirit of Fear can cause. The fact is, there is a significant distinction between Fear (upper-case) and fear (lower-case) and maybe in the next blog, I will explain the difference. Nonetheless, the two can be so interconnected that spending too much time in the lower case variety will almost always send you into a full-blown case of the upper-case kind.

Folks have said to me, “Tracey, don’t make such a big deal about it. There are plenty of people who are scared of flying. Scared of heights. Scared of spiders. You know, little things. Lower-case fear stuff.” True. Yet, what they fail to realize is that Fear, the spirit called Fear, is much like cancer. Once it has taken over one part of your spiritual body, it will began to attack every other part of your life until it has infested you. In fact, it’s nastier than cancer because cancer’s only reach is in the physical realm. The cancer called Fear can kill your spirit and inevitably manifest itself in the physical realm in the form of sickness, depression, and guilt. It does double duty. For me, what started off as a fear of flying ended up being a fear of dying, a fear of failure, a fear of success, a fear of not being loved , a fear of speaking up, a fear of talking too much, and fear of other people’s perceptions and views of me. At a season in my life, et suffocated me and it will suffocate you. It will stifle you and fear will keep you from fulfilling your God given purpose and reaching your destiny.

Today, and everyday of my life, I am attacking this cancerous poison much like a doctor would do for a terminally ill patient. First, I am applying medicine to the infected areas. My chosen antibiotic is the Word of God. The Word can be that salve that, with consistent use, can send the fear cancer packing. However, I’ve found that in some areas the infestation is so deep that, in addition to my word medicine, I need God’s radiation treatment. He has to burn that cancer out of me. As much as I hate it, it is the trials and tribulations that I face daily that is giving me strength. I pray the prayer of the one who was healed by Jesus, “Lord, Help my unbelief.” And he does, providing me peace in the place of Fear. As with any radiation treatment, I’ve lost some things in trying to believe for my healing but that is part of the journey and I don’t know if I’d change that for the world.

What are your thoughts on fear?

TMLG

The Official Book Trailer for INTERRUPTION: The Gospel According to Crystal Justine

2009-06-28T18:46:00.004-04:00

A Wake Up Call

2009-06-26T08:33:00.003-04:00

As a child...I combed my bangs back and pushed them forward so they could feather like Farrah's. I dreamed of one day making it on "Star Search" to hear Ed say "four stars!" I fell in love with a boy from Gary who could dance, sing and, tho' his eyes seemed sad, make me feel like the "lady in his life." Pop culture is real. It affects you. But I pray it makes us all pursue God, health, and destiny with greater fervor.

My prayers go out to the families of:

Michael Jackson

Farrah Fawcett

Ed McMahon

I will blog more about this soon.

TMLG

The Gift, The Giver, and My Aspiration as a Writer

2009-06-22T13:25:00.002-04:00

It’s one thing to be gifted or called to do something. It’s quite another thing to be clear about where that gift or calling comes from; its origination, if you will. We see gifted people all the time, right? People in which it is abundantly clear that they have been called to do a certain thing. Sing. Dance. Teach. Write. But we’ve also seen those same people be seemingly unaware of the connection between the awesome-ness of their gift and The Giver, God. I believe that it is the true understanding and acceptance of the relationship between the gift and Giver that ultimately adds power to that gift. That turns it from talent to anointing. That gives it the ability to not just inspire but motivate. To change hearts and minds.

Here is an example of the difference. You have someone who can sing. I mean, sang. Blow. Belt. Whatever you want to call it. This person moves their audience to tears but after the show, that’s it. Their song is just a memory. Then you have the person who has made the connection between the beautiful tonality of their voice and the God who gave it to them and who with great sensitivity manages to dig beneath the words and melodies to find the intangible strings that are attached to your soul. They are what we believers like to call “anointed” and their voice doesn’t just move you for a moment. It transforms you. It makes you want to change. To be better; whatever better looks like to you. You have more than an emotional response to their song. An unearthing occurs. A shift happens. You can’t always be certain what has occurred, only that something has and you’ll never be the same.

That’s what I aspire to do as a writer. To not just be good with words. To not just move people with stories that only sit on the surface of their minds. I want to write stuff that sticks. Because when something, good or bad, is stuck in your soul, it is bound to change you.

Again, just a thought. :)

TMLG

Thoughts on Writing - Part 3

2009-06-19T15:40:00.000-04:00

Yes, I'm still thinking about writing. :)

I wonder what would happen if I found out for sure that the more words I write the closer I’d get to God. Would I put pen to paper in furious fashion, write with breakneck speed to hear His voice and maybe even see His face? Or, would I falter, searching for the “right” words, pretending not to be fearful of what getting close to Him would mean for my selfish ambitions? It’s easy to think that Sunday-go-to-meeting Tracey would find the discipline she lacks somewhere in her breast pocket and allow her worship to extend onto the page. But what about I-don’t-feel-like-it-and-maybe-I’m-no-good-anyway Tracey who drinks coffee and watches BookTV only because she was told by someone she doesn’t remember that that’s what writers do?

Knowing that my writing would put me front and center in the throne room would also mean that I would have to fully expose the raggedy eccentricities that make me, well, me. Uh, not so sure about that. Of course, these so-called raggedy eccentricities would only be revelation to me (and those of you who care) because God knows, has always known, who I really am. He knows me WELL beyond my ability to use superfluous, fifty cent words to distract people from my inherent simplicity.

Huh. That’s a truth, I haven’t considered yet. A sneaky secret that has been hiding deep below my life’s sediment. I’m really very, very simple. And God knows it.

You see, over the years I think I learned that being complex was way more cooler than being simple. As a result, I wrote “deepness” into my emotional biography…even though it didn’t really fit. So, now, I think, God is asking something LESS of me. That sounds funny to say, doesn’t it? Even a little bit uncomfortable. Let me try it again. GOD IS REQUIRING LESS FROM ME.

I like it.

The fact of the matter is…I’ve spent most of life being more. Extra. Busy. And He knew better.

So in order for me to be the writer I need to be, an authentic scribe whose words bring her and those who read them, closer to the lap of the Father, I have to shed some skin. Do less. Just be, for a change. Any major transitions or deep excavations of my soul will most likely come from my stillness and I suspect will result in absolute truth in my words.

I like that. Just be, for a change. Better yet. For a change? Just be.

There I go trying to be deep again. Whew! I have my work cut out for me. :)

TMLG

Thoughts on Writing - Part 2

2009-06-18T13:48:00.001-04:00

Okay, I must admit that I am a bit hesitant to post these particular thoughts. I wrote them a couple of weeks prior to the release of the new book. I wanted, needed to get all of my emotions down on paper; everything that I was feeling about this new season in my life. It was tough. And it’s tough to reveal. But I pray that it blesses someone. That someone…and not just writers…will identify with it. Okay…here it goes.

***
There is a part of me that’s scared. A big part. Scared that this time is just like other times. Scared that I will have book signings and no one will show up. Forget no one showing up to book signings, what if I can’t get them scheduled at all? What if there are no pre-orders? What if no one tells their friends about the book?

Then there are the reviewers. Maybe the reviews will come back lukewarm. Even worse maybe they’ll absolutely hate it. Wait a minute! Back it up! Will I have enough money to cover my printing costs? Heck, even the big publishing houses are having problems with that one. Why would I be any different?

I’m scared. There. I said it. Scared that there is some awful mistake on page 63 or 100 or 150 that will make people turn up their noses or talk about how terrible a writer I am. I’m even more scared that the book is technically perfect but no one is moved by the story. No one will care enough about the characters. I’d take a missed comma or period over that, any day. Maybe the book is emotion-less. Maybe I’ve become emotion-less. Maybe C.J. doesn’t have the passion of her mother, Sasha, even if her story is written better.

The bottom line is…what if no one loves it? And consequently, what if no one loves me?

I realize that I’m allowing my worth to be tied to these books. It shouldn’t be. But, just for today, it is. That’s my truth. The fear that I could be fooling myself is a noose waiting patiently for me to “hang” it up. It whispers, Can you ever be sure that you’re called to this? Okay, maybe that doesn’t work so much. Because I know that I’m called to it. Then it tries another tactic. Do you really deserve this? That one gets me every time. Yeah, I squeaked by this time. I got the book done. I sent to the editor. I worked with the editor. I sent it to the printer. It’s there now. But what about that next idea? Will it remain hidden in the crevices in my mind because of my lack of discipline, my unwillingness to put to action what I teach people everyday? Am I really that much of a hypocrite?

I admit it. I’m calling into question my purpose. Even as it is being slowly revealed. My Pastor always says that the will of God for our lives, our purpose and our destiny, is found at the intersection of our giftings and our demons. He’s right and that helps. I’m mostly clear about my gifts. And demons I surely know. They are the ones that try to stop me from pouring my heart onto the page. They try to intervene on my desires which, for my fiction, is to become my characters for a spell, put them in situations familiar and not, let their personalities play out in a well constructed plot. The demons hate it when I do that.

This is how I feel. Today. Maybe tomorrow will be different. Yet, I know feelings are deceptive. Important to identify, even acknowledge, but not necessarily reality.

Lord, show me the way.

Go back to the beginning.

Lord, perfect me and my craft for your greatest service.

Go back to the beginning.

In the midst of my fear, I hear Him. My rant leads me to one thing I know for sure:

Jesus loves me, this I know. For the bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. For the bible tells me so.

TMLG

Thoughts on Writing - Part 1

2009-06-17T11:38:00.002-04:00

Dancing was never something that I was really good at, even if I found myself doing it all the time. I think my constant dancing was my way of trying to prove that I was good at something. It was my way of telling the world, or at least the girls I ran with, that I had rhythm. Somewhere buried beneath my desire to be Janet Jackson or Paula Abdul (hey, I’m child of the 80’s and 90’s) was really a desire to be just Tracey. It wasn’t that I was terrible. Most of the time I was on point when it came to dances like the wop, the smurf, and the cabbage patch. I knew how to hang with my sorority sisters when we’d step around the parties, throwing up our signs and making our calls. I could remember the 1,2,3 of the steps well enough to pretend that I was good. Enough to, as Granny used to say, fool some of the people, some of the time. But the truth was, I didn’t have the flow, the elegance, or the natural inclinations that real dancers have. Bottom line? It wasn’t my thing. But, I was pretty darn good at pretending it was. Just thinking about that reminded me of the many other areas of my life where I learned how to “pretend” well. Where I learned to prove myself through pretending.

And as I allowed my recollections to marinate, for a brief moment, my blood ran cold. I was scared. Why? Because, if I’m honest, in my darkest moments as a writer, I wondered if I was doing the same thing. Pretending to be a writer. Pretending to do this well in order to prove to myself, those who read my work, and those who choose not to…that I’m somehow worthy of time and attention.

But then I remember all those times before. Before writing poetry. Before writing books. Before writing business plans. Before I ever really began to do this professionally. Times where I hurt so deeply, when pain was so richly a part of my life that all I could do was write. All I could do is let my heart bleed onto the page. Let my emotions splatter in ugly ways across the lines. Over the lines. Between the lines. When the only thing I could do was write until I felt better. Until I’d put down enough words that I could be healed in that very moment. I recalled times when I wrote until I found my balance again and could go on and endure whatever trial was to come.

I now remember that I didn’t choose this, in the sense, that there were so many things that I could have done to overcome. I could have become an athlete. I could have sang. Yes, I could have even danced. Beyond the skills I lacked to do these things and my instinct and fascination with words and books, none of those things would have done what writing did and does for me. It ministers to me and through me, I hope, it ministers to others.

This wasn’t and isn’t like dancing for me. I’ve come to realize that writing is the only place where I can be myself. Where the authentic Tracey can run, skip, and jump around and just be her moody, quirky, special self without anything or anyone telling her otherwise. The page is the one place where I have no need to prove who I am because I can be whatever I want to be. Whenever and however I want to be it. And then be something else tomorrow. I can be my complete, unedited self and dwell in a place where commas and periods and capital letters may provide me direction but never keep me bound.

And, more telling, writing is where God can speak to me and I will listen. His voice pierces the noise in my soul and becomes plain somehow when I write. And even in my occasional disobedience, I hear Him. Not as some big Editor in the sky. Noooo. More like the consummate director in the film that is my life. He’s the only one that can really scream "Cut!" and give me a shot at doing a scene over.

As I ponder writing, I realize the truth of what this is to me. No sales, big or small; No fame, good or bad; can change the healing properties that lie behind my words. The power of them. And though there are times where I have manipulated them, mistreated them, used them as a mask instead of a tool for transparency; as much as I have even tried to use them to perpetuate my tendency to pretend, God has always made his strength perfect in my weakness. And understanding that, I realize that writing has comes down to one thing for me:

One word, connected to many others, created by a merciful God, born in a little brown girl from Kentucky who had been buried alive by life and yet still found a way to breathe. A girl whose rhythm did not live in her feet but in her words. The special ones. The ordinary ones. The ones that matter and those ones that don’t.

And who, through this awesome gift, still remains steadfast, even in spite of herself.

A Successful Launch

2009-06-15T16:45:00.008-04:00

On June 13, 2009, I celebrated the release of my fifth book and second novel, INTERRUPTION: The Gospel According to Crystal Justine. Here are just a few pics from the awesome event:

A little blurry...but yep, that's me. Signing books.

This is some of the spread...courtesy of the hubbie. I told him he needs to make this a side hustle LOL!

James, my brother in law (in the spirit), bought all three books!

I'm so blessed to have some great supporters in Philadelphia including New Bethany Baptist Church.

Official Trailer - Interruption: The Gospel According to Crystal Justine

2009-05-29T21:13:00.004-04:00

The Difference between PASSION & COMPASSION

2009-05-22T12:23:00.003-04:00

I woke up this morning pondering the difference between PASSION and COMPASSION. Not that I'm claiming to have done some deep etymological research on the word, but when I think of COM-PASSION, I think of "community passion" or "passion for community." Passion all by itself can often be self-centered. When I say I'm passionate about something, the driver of that passion tends to be my own needs, desires, and purpose. It is an intense emotional response to those things. Compassion, I think, is just as intense, but the driver of it is the needs, desires, and purpose of others. Those around us. Our community of fellow human beings who God wants to heal, counsel, deliver, and save...possibly through our own actions or service. There is an empathy and an intentionality in compassion that I'm not sure exists in passion alone.

I've had the market cornered on PASSION for a while now but, if I'm honest, I've only dabbled in COMPASSION. I pray that God forgives me for that. I desire to be both passionate and compassionate but mostly the latter because I do believe that what I do for others is nothing but seeds that, if planted properly, will not only harvest greatness in those in which I've sown them, but God-willing, will return back to me in the form of the seeds others plant in me. Yes, I like that. The contagiousness of compassion. Maybe that's the whole point. Maybe our compassion should drive our passion. Become it. Maybe the compassion that we give to others opens our own hearts enough so that God can do the same thing in us. What do you think?

Tea Time with Tracey: Lessons from Loss

2009-05-05T19:46:00.004-04:00

Excerpt from the New Book w/Spoiler Alert

2009-05-01T15:16:00.003-04:00

After five years of being beat up and fussed out by readers of my first novel, The Gospel According to Sasha Renee, I'm so excited to say that the sequel to the book, Interruption: The Gospel According to Crystal Justine, will be released in JUNE along with a NEW REVISED EDITION of Sasha (with an additional chapter). I have to admit that God has stretched me with this one, y'all. Will you be mad at me (as some of you were at the end of Sasha)? Probably. But there is a great blessing in store for you as well. So...here is an excerpt of the book.

Oh. One more thing.

SPOILER ALERT!!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!!
Because this is a sequel, this excerpt reveals a CRITICAL part of The Gospel According to Sasha Renee. If you have not read the first book OR you are one of those who hate to have a good ending ruined, I encourage you to NOT READ any further.

Okay. I warned you. :)

-excerpt-

I assure you, I’m nothing like my mother.

Some people may think that’s a harsh thing to say, especially if I’m implying that there is something wrong with being like my mother. I’m sure they are probably right. The problem is that they don’t have my life. They don’t understand what it’s like to live in the shadow of a mother that you’ve never known. It’s hard to appreciate something or someone who’s never been an active part of your life. A mother that, from what I’m told, was beautiful and captivating and charming and any of the other terms of endearment people use to describe Ms. Sasha Renee. All of the things I am not. No, people say I’m cute, if I could lose about 10lbs. I’ll even get intelligent, if I was just smart enough to get a real job and keep a man. Well, frankly, if being just cute and intelligent keeps me from being dead, then I’ll take it. Because, despite all of those wonderful attributes, isn’t that how my mother ended up? Dead? I’m not going to sugarcoat how I feel about that for the sake of decorum.

I’ll admit there’s a part of me that desperately wishes I felt another way. I do find myself wishing that “mommy” was synonymous with love and nurturing instead of ambivalence and abandonment. Unfortunately, that warm and fuzziness is trumped by my lack of a point of reference. I realize this might sound like an excuse for not trying, and maybe it is, but excuse or not, it’s my reality. A reality that I’m determined to turn into one very long “lemons to lemonade” moment.

If only I could get over some things.

You see, I am, at the very least, uncomfortable with myself. In my greatest state of self-uncertainty, I’m an imposter floating between a fear of failure and a fear of my success. I want things in my life that seem so unattainable that I am, in essence, swimming against a fierce current that prevents me from reaching my destination. The only thing left for me is faith. The little bit of it that I’ve been able to muster. Faith that where I end, Christ begins. I can thank my father for that. Langston Germaine. An awesome man whose faith has shown me that where the footsteps of my tumultuous life may end, God’s provision can begin, carrying me to the finish line located in the center of His will.

Nonetheless, I still have several issues to overcome or deal with immediately. Fear. Insecurity. Control. All stemming from the idea that I’m not good enough. You shouldn’t be surprised I know this about myself. Most people need a self-help or a pseudo-psychologist/talk show host to tell them what they already know. I just decided to skip the middle man. These challenges, as I like to call them, have been constants in all aspects of my life. Even in my relationships, where it would seem I would be the most comfortable, I tend to linger on the idea that I have to do “extra” things to garner the love and attention of people, even the men I may occasionally date. In fact, I come across beautiful men all the time and the reality is, I always end up believing they wouldn’t be attracted to me because of my big smile, unruly hair, the tendency of my weight to fluctuate, or any other superficial reason my mind can conjure.

Sheltered. That’s the only word I can think of when describing the life I’ve lived thus far. It’s like when my mother died, my father placed all of his energy into his work, eventually becoming Dean of the Business School at DePaul University and, of course, in raising me. Protecting me. At least as much as he could. He never remarried and I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I loved it being just me and my dad against the world. But as I grew up, I began to wonder about the sadness I saw in his eyes. I’m observant that way. There was this silent longing that would shadow his eyes as though he wished he had someone to share his life with him. When I’d ask him about it, he’d brush me off by saying my mother was the one he’d loved, that no one compared to her, and it wouldn’t be fair to make any woman try. You see what I mean? My mother’s legacy has even been a hindrance to my dad. Neither of us can get away from Sasha if we tried. But I plan to. Just you wait and see.

Anyway, when it comes to any conversation I have with my dad about my mother, I always seem to say the wrong thing. I don’t think it’s intentional because I would never want to hurt my father in that way. On the other hand, I’ve had to live with his fragility my entire life and at times, I find myself testing him. The other day at lunch was no exception.

We’d decided to meet at Dahlia’s, this hot, new, eclectic restaurant on State Street. Periodically, dad and I will meet for lunch to update each other on what’s going on in our lives, just the way we used to when I was a little girl. Only now, we exchange pleasantries over sushi and white wine instead of peanut butter and jelly and milk. When dad walked into the room, I couldn’t help but notice how the women in the restaurant responded to him. At nearly sixty, Langston Germaine was an attractive man, as far as dads go. His salt-and-pepper hair was neatly cut into a short fade, and for a man his age, he was in great shape. In spite of living with a heartache that never went away, there was something just beneath the surface of him that seemed to speak to young girls and grandmas alike. It had always been like that. Little did they know that, like dad’s heart, his dating life had been shut down for a very long time, with no sign of a grand re-opening.
Since I could see him before he could see me, I raised my hand so he could find me in the sea of lunchtime lingerers attempting to be as sophisticated and chic as the place they were dining, but managing to only blend in to its predictably retro decor. Oblivious to the estrogen-driven stares, he made his way across the room in his trademark, long strides as our eyes met.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said.

“Hey, Daddy!”

“Been waiting long?”

“Yes, hours.”

Dad smiled at my exaggeration.

“Oh, zip it, silly!”

I laughed.

“So, you have me at one of these shmancy, fancy places for lunch, huh?”

“Well, I’ve gotta get you to spend some money on your only daughter some way!”

“I think I heard something similar to that the last time I was here.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that, but I soon found out.

“What! I didn’t know that you’d eaten here before. You should have told me!”

“Well, not exactly before.”

He paused and stared at me as though he was playing the staring game with a ghost. I suspect he was.

“I brought your mother here 30 years ago, only then it was the Weber Grill.”

Snapping out of his trance, he continued. “You look so much like her.”

Oh, oh. I tried so hard to keep my emotional composure, but I felt it coming. It was like the all-too familiar look of worn nostalgia mixed with a withering hopelessness that sent the words flying out of my mouth.

“Not only do I doubt that I do, I really wish that she’d stop interrupting our lunches.”

A contortionist could not have twisted his or her face in more directions than my father did right then. He winced as if he had been stabbed and, once again, my mouth had been the assailant. I tried to clean it up.

“I’m sorry, daddy. That was…”

“…uncalled for?” He finished.

“Insensitive? Stupid? Wrong?” He continued.

“Yes, dad, I’m all of those things.”

A heavy sigh escaped dad’s lips as he considered the implications of my sudden emotional martyrdom.

“No, you’re not. The words were, yes, but you’re not those things, Sasha…”

He tried to hit rewind just as quickly as I had a moment earlier.

“…I mean, CJ.”

It wasn’t the first time that had happened.

“Daddy, please don’t take this the wrong way. But it’s been 25 years since Sasha…” I noticed his posture became rigid at my addressing her by her first name, so I quickly corrected myself.
“…my mother died. I know how much you loved her, but don’t you think she’d want you to move on?”

He smiled.

“Knowing her, she probably would.”

“So?”

“So, it’s just not that easy, CJ.”

“Nothing worth doing is easy. Isn’t that what you taught me?”

He smiled again.

“Using my words against your old man, huh?”

I knew he was trying to change the subject and I let him. There was already too much said for one day.

“Better your words than mine, right?”

We both broke out into a loud, nervous, overcompensating laughter. Case closed for now.

-end-

(c) 2009 Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts

In Memory of My Granny

2009-04-30T22:32:00.003-04:00

Viola B. Brown

November 14, 1937 - April 18, 2009

Petey misses you, Granny!

No more "eye" problems

2009-04-02T09:13:00.002-04:00

Did you know that so many of us have “eye” problems? Even if you don’t wear glasses, you might suffer from a problem with your sight. When it comes to our destiny, many of us are far-sighted. When it comes to our circumstances, a bunch of us are near-sighted. In each case, however, God needs to be where we find our clarity…He is our glasses, if you will allow me a little room to stretch the metaphor.

I know, I know. I can hear you saying it now. What in the world are you talking about Tracey?

Well, this is the thing. In a recent episode of Tea Time with Tracey, I discussed purpose and how sometimes the early perversion of our natural gifts leaves us wandering around in search of something that has always been inside of us. I began to think about that more and it dawned on me, as a long time four-eyes, that the way God functions in our lives is very much like what happens to a person whose sight is compromised in some kind of way.

A Far-sighted person has the ability to see with clarity things that are far away but cannot see with clarity things that are up close. This, I think, is a perfect example of what happens in our pursuit of purpose and destiny. The reality is that God wants us to be able to dream. To have a vision and desire for what we would like to do that’s in alignment with His Word and His will. I sooooo love that about my Father. That he shapes us even in our dreaming. That he allows us see ourselves years from now doing that very thing that he placed in us as a child. For me, my dream is that my books and writing would transform the minds and hearts of millions of people and that my business will grow into both a successful and significant global enterprise. However, if I’m honest with you, my dreams are much clearer in the distance than in my current situation. In short, I know what I wanted and what God has promised me, but sometimes what I need to be doing and saying and being in the moment can be blurry.

But as I said before, when we allow God to be the lens through which we see things than the things that are in my immediate sight, those things that I need to be doing and thinking are much clearer, much more in focus.

However, our circumstances work in reverse; we are naturally near-sighted (seeing clearly things that are closer but not being able to see things far away) when it comes to our everyday situations. When trials and tribulations come OR even when we are in a season of blessings and overflow, the "right now" is often very clear for us. If things are bad, and I know they are for many people now, then it is easy to be focused on what's happening in the moment. The bills aren't paid, the man left you, you lost your job, etc. It's easy to get caught up and consumed by the present and find yourself accepting the future as blurry and out of focus.

But the same thing happens in a good season, a season of triumph. We can also become consumed by our present blessings and success and forget that there are things we must do to maintain that over the long term. We stop planning and we stop praying. We also forget that trials come as a test of our faith, to elevate us. If we only focus on the nice house, nice car, and good job that we have now, and never see our future clearly, then if or when God decided to strip that from you for a season...in order to grow you or elevate you...we will fall apart.

God must also be our lens in our near-sightedness as well. When the long term is blurry and, because of our circumstances, our future is out of focus, God can step in and give us the clarity needed to endure...or surrender... our present situations.

The bottom line is that being far-sighted when it comes to our purpose and destiny and near-sighted when it comes to our situations and circumstance is a very natural thing. It is a protective measure of flesh. But we know that operating out of our flesh is not a good thing. When it comes to your destiny, satan wants to keep you so consumed by the dream but not doing the steps necessary to achieve it. When it comes to your present circumstances, he wants to keep you consumed by temporary situations to keep you from being able to overcome or surrender. However, those of us who confess Christ as our Lord and Savior, know that we should walk in the Spirit. You’ll find that by walking in the Spirit, your sight will begin to change. You’ll see in the spirit, also. Which is another way of saying that we will consistently view our life and the lives of others through new Godly lenses.

Those of us who wear glasses now, have often been told by our eye doctor’s that the eyes are very close to the brain and what we see through our eyes is processed very quickly by our brain. Well, think of what I’m saying this way. With God's corrective lenses, we become that much closer to having, as the bible says, the mind of Christ, and seeing ourselves and others as God sees us.

Tea Time with Tracey (Eve. Edition) - The Spirit is Willing but...

2009-04-01T22:23:00.002-04:00

Tea Time with Tracey: Perverted Gifts feed our Lack of Purpose

2009-03-26T10:42:00.005-04:00

Tea Time with Tracey: Protecting Your Purse (or Wallet)

2009-03-12T08:32:00.003-04:00

I GIVE UP

2009-03-05T08:26:00.004-05:00

No, I have not traded in my pen for my webcam. While I love doing the Tea Time with Tracey blogs, I am still a writer and it’s days like these…when my heart is heavy and I feel as though I have been forced backwards in time to the vulnerability of my youth…that only words on a page will do. And I guess I’ll start there. This is my truth for today. In these past 8 days since Ash Wednesday, I’ve been feeling a little broken. As though my soul has been laid bare and the desires of my heart have been increasingly more exposed. The funny part is…I asked for it. Not directly, of course. But in the way that a person who asks to be clean no matter what may suddenly find themselves in a hot shower. Or, like when a child asks to be grown and then before he knows it, finds himself having to work and pay bills. There’s a cost for most desires, I suppose. During this season of praying and fasting, I asked God to simply free me from myself. Or at least the self that I’d chosen to be for much of my adult life. The self that I acquired when being the real me seemed weird and different and unacceptable to the status quo that I found myself surrounded by.

I traded in my authentically creative, passionately loving, fearlessly curious, successfully resourceful self for, in one word, control; the need to try to manage the outcomes of my (and anyone else’s for that matter) circumstances. I wanted to control the things I couldn’t even as, ironically, I continually procrastinated on the things that I could. Can you believe that I thought I was trading up?

Fast forward to now. Does it mean that in all of this time I haven’t been creative or loving or curious or resourceful? Of course not. But check the adverbs in that sentence I highlighted up top. What it does mean is that my desire to control everything and everyone around me has hindered my creativity from being authentic, the love I give and receive from being passionate as possible, my curiosity from being fearless, and my ability to be resourceful from being truly successful. Ouch.

I know where it comes from. This need to be in control. I know why I chose it. Because for a very long time not being in control left me open to being hurt by people. People that were supposed to protect me. People that I thought loved me but really only said they did. The feeling of not being in control became defined by hurt or degradation or rejection. Unable to process that pain appropriately and place people in their proper place and God back on the throne of my life, I washed myself in the deception of my emotions (sadness, anger, frustration, fear) and allowed control to be my chosen mechanism for living. Note: Because emotions were my driver, I’m not a controlled person (adjective), but I do need to control (verb). To some of you, that might sound like the beginnings of an emotional manipulator? It was. So much so that there have been many times when I struggled to know whether the emotions that I felt in a particular moment were real or just manufactured by the need to control the people and situation involved. The sad thing is that somewhere buried beneath the emotional manipulation is real pain. Pain that I’m acutely aware of but can never resolve because I’ve chosen the wrong way to deal with it.

Which, again, brings me to today. Over the last couple of years, I’ve made a conscious effort to work on being less controlling. But in doing that, I found myself trying to control that process as well. Did you get that? I was trying to control the when and how and why of not being controlling. Insanity! It doesn’t even read coherent on paper. That’s why it’s time for me to give up. Give it all up. The control, the manipulation, everything. And, if I’m honest, it hurts to do it. As tears fall against my will right now, I’m burdened by the realization that because of my desire to be sovereign in my life, the success and accomplishments that I’ve had have been mediocre at best. Sure, to everyone else, I’ve done some great things and taken some great chances. But based on the greatness that I was/am destined for, I’ve fallen way short. If you don’t get anything else from what I’m saying, remember this. The only real mastery that we can have on our own, apart from God is of own mediocrity. What God has designed us to be and do is so much greater than our finite minds could ever imagine. Yep, the need for control has made me a master of my own mediocrity.

In eight days of prayer and fasting, I’ve been made aware of this and have decided that no matter how much it hurts, I’m giving up control over my life. For the first time in a long time I’m choosing to trust Him with a child-like sense of expectancy. I’m turning over the wheel to the One who made the car. The One who knew me in my mother’s womb and knitted together the fibers and sinews that 33.5 years later would be sitting on this couch and writing this blog; this declaration of sorts. He is sovereign and for so very, very long, I haven’t allowed him to be. I’d made God my right hand man, only really believing that he could do something magnificent in my life, if I couldn’t do it first.

But guess what? I also feel a little bit like my ancestors must have felt towards the end of slavery. I see my freedom just over yonder, just beyond the residue of my sin and sadness. My hope is restored and in the shadow of that freedom, I see the fearless, wildly passionate, creative warrior for Christ that I was always meant to be. I’ve lived the first quarter of my life like a too-big kid riding a bike with training wheels. Being comfortable with the pseudo-security given by those two fragile wheels and not really realizing that the bike wasn’t designed to be ridden like that forever. My life was given to me by my Father in Heaven who loves me fiercely and it was designed to be ridden with WHEELS OFF. So I’m going to ride, y’all and as I do, I’m trusting the One who, in this new season, sends the wind to flow through my locks and gives me the balance I need to remain steady.

Tea Time with Tracey: Confidence and My Michael Jackson Complex

2009-03-03T07:42:00.002-05:00

Tea Time with Tracey (Weekend Edition) - Mismatched Socks

2009-03-01T12:01:00.003-05:00

Tea Time with Tracey: An "Ouch" Moment

2009-02-25T13:28:00.003-05:00

Wow! I appreciate everyone's feedback on the first episode. Here goes today's entry...

Tea Time with Tracey - Episode 1

2009-02-24T11:28:00.004-05:00

In my effort to expand my technological repertoire (translation: actually use my webcam), I've decided to post short vignettes titled, "Tea Time with Tracey." As I say in the clip, this is a little bit more than a video blog and alot less than a talk show. More importantly, it is an opportunity for you and I to sit down over a cup of tea and talk about any number of topics...including those related to my upcoming writing projects. I would love feedback on this...

In Him,

TMLG

A Writer’s Mission Statement

2009-02-19T18:26:00.004-05:00

I want to thank my fellow sista-writer, Shon Bacon, for getting me thinking about why I write and my mission as a writer.

***
I am a writer. Even more than that, I am a scribe. Much of what I write is the transcription of something so much greater than I could ever imagine. Yes, even the bad stuff. Most certainly the stuff that I or they call good. It is my own journey and my observations of the world around me that provide the context for my words. These stories are the layers between which a message is revealed. These revelations are born from great pain and brokenness which, after much misguided manipulation on my part, still inevitably leak onto the page. Beyond my own intentions, the words I write seem to transform themselves into a kind of divine intervention. Sometimes for the reader. All the time for me.

For me, Writing is Ministry.

Another truth? I write because it is one way for me to demonstrate the fruits of the spirit even when I, in the course of my daily humanity, fall short so frequently. When I write, I have the ability to show and give love in the most splendid ways. I experience the most magnificent joys. I am patient and kind and fearless and disciplined and... so not like the flesh and blood, breath in britches woman that I can be at times. In a way, I can fully become what I am slowly becoming when I write.

The things I've written and the things I will write (fiction, nonfiction, or poetry) are about restoration and redemption. I allow my characters to do what writer Melanie Clark Pullen says, "cut through the crap and learn to be authentic." Most of the the time, this is even when I find it difficult to do so. With my words, it is my desire to reveal the heartache and hardships of this world in the most candid and straightforward manner I can. I will compel and confront, if necessary. Yet, I will never do so without offering remedies that work and resolutions that are true. The unfailing love of God. The sacrificial covering of Christ. God’s use of faulty human vessels to accomplish great and extraordinary things.

For me, Writing is a tool for Healing.

A scribe is a servant in the Kingdom whose sole purpose is to translate the words of the King. As I grow as a writer, I realize that this call I have requires me to #1) keep my eyes open to everything and everyone around me, empathizing with great passion the many stories, both foreign and familiar, that I come across and #2) keep my ears close to the heart and desires of my Lord and King.

This is so that what I see and the passion in which I process it can ultimately be transformed by the Holy Spirit; coming together as a blessing on the page. If I do that...which frankly I’m still learning everyday to do...then I know I can trust that God will be pleased.

For me, Writing is Worship.

In fact, my mission as a writer can be summed up by a re-working of a quote by the character, Eric Liddell, in the film, Chariots of Fire.

"I believe God made me for a purpose. He also made me a writer.
When I write I feel His pleasure."

Lessons from the SuperBowl

2009-02-06T16:02:00.004-05:00

It's funny how revelation comes sometimes. As much I love to read and listen to them, it's usually not some deep, heavy philosophical truths hidden in some ancient book or sitting on the tongue of some great preacher or prophet that gets me to thinking about my life. Most of the time it is something rather simple that gets under my skin and works it way into my soul. Simple stuff, ideas, thoughts. It's the things that would ordinarily go unnoticed that cause me to really think about something; to actively engage in an area of my life or in the lives of those around me.

A perfect example of that was the 2009 Superbowl. I know, some people will argue that this is just my way of trying to reconcile the loss of the Arizona Cardinals since I was rooting for them, but that is not case (at least not entirely - smile.) I wasn't really a fan of either team but the reason why I chose the Cardinals as the one that I wanted to win the big game was because I have deep appreciation for the underdog. The one that nobody expects to win.

I think there is a lesson embedded in the Cardinal's journey to the big game that teaches us something about how we should live our lives, particularly as it relates to our giftings. Your gift is that thing that God gave you to use for his glory. It could be writing, speaking, teaching, dancing, etc. And guess what? You just might be the underdog. You might have only sold 2,000 copies of your book while others have quadrupled that. You may speak to a group of five, three year olds but desire to speak to the nations. That's okay. Look at the superbowl. The Cardinals were definitely the underdog. They were up against a team and a legacy. The Steelers had a history of winning and a monster defensive line. The Cardinals? Well they were told that they would never make it to the Superbowl. In fact, they'd failed enough times during the regular season that people initally excluded them from play-off contention. They were told that their quarterback was too old, their team was too young, and their coach wasn't quite ready to lead them. Fans and critics alike said that, at least this season, they would never be able to accomplish what they set out to accomplish back in August. What every team playing hopes for. To make it to the big game.

Yet, in spite of a not-so stellar record, in spite of what people said, they made it all the way to the show! And although they didn't win, they showed up and they played their hearts out. Even in the fourth quarter, when the score was 20 to 7, and it looked like the game was over, they didn't give up and if for just a moment, made the Steelers' hearts beat just a little bit faster. The Cardinals fought for it until the very end.

That says something to me. It inspires me. It says to me that all of the times that I'd been told, sometimes even by the voice in my own head, that I wasn't going to make it, that I'd failed too many times, that although I had talent, I wouldn't get very far, that I wouldn't be able to accomplish what God had called me to do...none of that matters when God decides to use me. Those may be the facts about me but they aren't necessarily my truths.

The reality is...it wasn't true for the Cardinals, it isn't true for me, and it isn't true for anyone reading this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. You're saying, Tracey, they didn't win! You're right. But sometimes it's not about winning. The lesson is not always in the win, the lesson is in showing up to the game and fighting until the very end. God is in control of the outcome but the question is, do we trust Him enough to play like we know we can...in spite of what people may say, in spite of what you think you have or do not have. You and I can make it to the big show! You and I can make it to the game, whatever that looks like for you. Maybe you'll win and maybe you'll be the tool that God uses to humble and challenge the one who will win. Whatever the outcome, keep going, look for the lesson, and trust that it is all for your good.

This is my lesson from the Superbowl. Keep pursuing your God given destiny no matter what it looks like to you or anyone else. If you get to the big game, show up ready to play and fight until the very end.

TMLG
In the words of that great theologian, P. Diddy, "Can't stop. Won't stop." :)

What Freedom Looks Like on Her

2009-02-04T08:58:00.002-05:00

Is there anything more beautiful than a woman set free?
no longer barely grasping at destiny
but cradling it in her arms
rocking it back and forth to the beat of her heart
made full by love and joy and peace and
the release of pains known and lost.

the rhythm simple and complex
---at the same time

understood and mysterious
---at the same time.

There is nothing...
no graven image,
no circumstance,
that surpasses the sovereignty of God
and the woman who has surrendered to it.

(c) 2009 Tracey Michae'l Lewis Giggetts

My View of Change: The Inauguration of Barack Obama

2009-01-20T14:16:00.002-05:00

The excitement is palpable as I sit in the Family Life Center of the church of my adulthood. I state it like that because there is a significant difference between the church of my childhood in Louisville, KY where, even in the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s, prejudice was commonplace and there was such a thing as the black and white side of town. Our church was on the black side. I lived on the white side. And yet, I don’t mean to imply that there are not cities and towns across America right now where there is still a black side of town and a white side of town. There absolutely are. But somehow sitting at the Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia, PA and watching the inauguration of the first African American president of the United States, Barack Obama, there seems like there is now a chance for change. A chance. A catalyst. An opportunity.

But that’s just it.

It is only a CHANCE for change…not necessarily change itself. I’ve always been a proponent of accountability and responsibility even when I haven’t always been the most accountable or responsible in my own life. I’ve always believed that in order for true transformation to occur, each individual, every person and every family would have to be able to do some changing in their own environment and in their own circle of influence. Essentially, we must be moved to change in our individual lives in order for change to occur on a broader scale. That perspective has not changed for me. Yes, I still think that we are sitting on the precipice of opportunity but we must be willing to grab that opportunity and turn it into something real for us individually. Something that will ultimately lead to the change that we so desperately seek in this moment. If we don’t, than we will have squandered the wonderful chance that this moment, the election of this man, offers us.

This moment means that I must pursue destiny at all cost. It means that I must be fearless in that pursuit. It means that I cannot be caught up in all the things that people may say about me as I run the race that is laid out for me. I cannot allow myself to be consumed by what people may think about me. Especially those things that do not carry the ring of truth. The emotions that I feel at this moment means that passion is not lost in me. (For a long time, I thought it was.). It means that the spiritual and emotional passion that is required for me to do what God has called me to do is not lost. The passion needed for me to fulfill my assignment before leaving this earth, has not been seeped away in the trials and hardships that life has brought, but only needed to be filled up, replenished by a sense of community. The sense of togetherness that I feel by sitting in this room. A shared pride that doesn’t necessarily extend beyond Christ and the cross as some have claimed (making a man into a messiah) but does make me and the multi-generational group that I watch this great event with desire something great for ourselves individually and as a community.

I’m excited. I don’t have to perpetrate a fraud as I have in years past with my limited understanding of the presidential election and inauguration process, and my disinterest in previous commander in chief's. I don’t have to pretend or rationalize my excitement as an African American, as a woman, as a Christian, as a writer, as a human being with a new awareness of what it means to be an American. I just have to live it everyday after this one. I only have to continue to stoke the fire that was ignited today.

Change has not necessarily come to America but the chance for it has. I’ll be more than happy to be the first in line to take hold of my chance and turn it into an opportunity to create a legacy for me and my future children.

In God I trust. For Barack I pray.

TMLG

A Different Kind of Resolution

2009-01-06T16:15:00.006-05:00

Today, in the most unexpected way, I learned that the key to success is not having alot of money, or charisma, or even knowing the scriptures backward and forward. In my head, I think I knew that. But knowing what something is not...is not the same as know what something is. Now I know. In God's economy...in His Kingdom...the key to authentic success is gratefulness.

Strange, right? I thought so, too. I kept thinking, "Isn't gratefulness a product of success and not the other way around?"

As I said before, it was rather unexpected the answer that came to me. I woke up this morning and, as I have often done since I was teenager, decided to steam my face. I have to admit that the way I do this is rather rudimentary. No fancy contraption for me. Just a big towel and the sink. Leaning over the sink, under my makeshift shroud, I allowed my pores to open and my head got that familiar, funny feeling like someone had just tipped over the stress dominoes and they were rippling down the back of neck and out of my body. That's when I thought about how priviledged I was to be able to steam my face.

I know. It doesn't seem like much but I assure you, as I finished my pseudo-facial and jumped in a hot, steamy shower, thankfulness pushed its way past all of the possible choices for a New Year's resolution.

I heard in my Spirit..."Just be thankful." And somehow, it just clicked. Thankfulness, manifested as contentment, is a pre-cursor of success and not a byproduct.

The key to my success, personally and professionally, is my ability to be thankful for where I am. Yes, my husband and I need a new mattress but, thank God we are one of the ones who have a place to lay our heads. Yes, I would love that fly, 2009 three-lettered SUV but I'm so incredibly blessed that my 2001 Neon runs just fine. Oh what joy would it be to sell 100,000+ copies of my upcoming book but what an even greater joy it will be to God to bless one person's life or to garner one soul for Him.

When we open ourselves up to contentment, that challenging ability to abase and abound as the apostle Paul mentions, we also open ourselves up for God to use us more. This is because, in that space, He can trust that whatever we have, however big or small in our eyes, will be used for His glory and at His will...not our own. Gratefulness is a form of surrender, I believe. It also implies flexibility (a must-have trait in these weird times). It allows God's sovereign purpose to be fulfilled in our lives regardless of what that looks like to us or other people. Our contentment allows His will be to be done without hinderence, without Him having to coddle or comfort us because our flesh has grown attached to people, places, and things that He only intended for us to experience temporarily.

Don't get me wrong. I know God understands that we are emotional creatures (Yes, men too. Just about different things and manifested in different ways). I believe that God's grace and mercy covers our tendency to allow our soul (mind, will, and emotions) to connect to those people, places, and things; allowing us time to heal when we are seperated from them. But I also wonder (yes, even while steaming my face) if we would move faster from assignment to assignment, from triumph to trials and back again, if we were simply grateful for wherever we were at any given time and content in all things. Isn't that why someone with nothing can die a success in the eyes of those who know them and someone with everything can still die a failure?

So that's my resolution for 2009. To be grateful. To be content. If I can do this, then I do not doubt that success as He sees it will follow.

In Him,
TMLG

Borrowed Blog Entry: Non-Resolutions by Jeanne Damoff

2009-01-03T11:12:00.005-05:00

Writer, Jeanne Damoff posted this on "The Master's Artist" blog and I don't think I could have written it better. Enjoy! - TMLG

Pleasing God is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. We are, after all, parts of a body, and even individual parts may function in more than one capacity. So, I come to this new year not knowing specifically what my moments will hold, but resolved to heed what the Head has revealed regarding His general desire. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it's my starting place. In 2009, I resolve:

To believe what God has said about Himself. He is enthroned in the heavens, working out His will with perfect faithfulness. Nothing is too difficult for Him. He opens doors that no man can shut, and shuts doors that no man can open. He does according to His will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and no one can stay His hand. He holds me in the palm of His hand, and hides me under the shadow of His wing. He knows my thoughts before I think them, my words before I speak (or write) them, and the number of hairs on my head. He will never leave me or forsake me. Ever.

To live aware. I want to practice presence--not to be constantly looking back or forward, but living in the now, truly seeing and hearing the people God places in my life and loving them well, sharing their burdens through action and intercession.

To embrace beauty. I will not ignore pain, suffering, and the darkness all around me, but I will not be defined by it nor let it rob me of the profound and simple beauties that are everywhere. I will let beauty break my heart in the best way and then pour its essence into my art.

To be grateful. Life is not fair. And thank God it isn't. If it were, we would all be burning in hell, separated for eternity from God. As it is, He has redeemed us and lavishes His love upon us. I resolve to receive every gift (the lovely, the difficult, the painful, the exquisite) with gratitude toward the One who shapes them for me. I will hold tightly to His hand, trust His will, lean on His grace, and--by His mercies--present my body daily to Him as a living sacrifice.

I will make Micah 6:8 my standard for success.
"He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you. But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?"

What I do with my moments is what I do with my life. By God's grace, I will worship with my moments, whatever that looks like on any given day. And I will give others grace to do the same, even when I don't understand.

Jeanne Damoff

2009: Happy New Season!

2009-01-01T00:39:00.002-05:00

Israel and New Breed helps me out with this New Year:

It's a new season.
It's a new day.
A fresh anointing is coming my way.
A season of power
and prosperity...
It's a new season and it's coming to me.

Happy New Year!

2009. Destiny awaits us.

TMLG