Psst: Mama rocking it alone. Today isn’t our day. I know that people tend to tell you happy Father’s Day, but can I tell you why I say no thank you?
We ARE amazing mothers, and we do that on our own with a whole world looking on telling us how we are superhuman for carrying the responsibilities of two people when we’re not. The world elevates us as superheroes because that lie deadens onlookers’ consciences when they don’t step in to serve as a part of our community (it’s called cognitive dissonance).
Mama, if you buy into the lie that you are an amazing father you will rob your children of the best of you, because you will keep trying to do ALL of the things, at the cost of your own health and well-being, and your children, over whom the statisticians declare doom, will suffer too.
So, here’s what I suggest we do:
1. Look what is true in the face
2. Grieve the physical absence of the father
3. Find your healer and begin to heal from the painful loss
4. Make a healing plan for the wounds from the barrage of judgment that will come from bystanders.
5. Plan life with your children as mom alone, and build a village of other moms who understand.
6. Know that God will fill the father gaps that matter most now, and then in eternity all will be well again
7. Expect pain. Know that beauty will come of it in some way.
Your children will have what matters most – a strong, vibrant, innovative you, if you face truth with love.
Happy unFather’s Day single mama. Today is a day for you to love what is.
I choose Love. My Supreme Father is Love. My earthly father chose Love. My earthly mother chose Love. I choose Love. My children choose Love. Every day, I see more of love displacing our family’s pain, because we choose to make it so.
I know exactly who my enemy is, and so while I mourn many ills in life, I ask my Father to help me to remember that my enemy does not have a human face. My enemy, whom I shall not name, is the instigator of evil, the creator of crosses, the designer of destructive distraction, the wanter of worship, devoid of love.
He wishes me to live in fear so that my mind will be too clouded to turn to Love. I refuse. I choose love.
Our collective human pain is bound up in crosses, so many crosses, all meant to divide us. I could write an epistle on our crosses. I could write a list, a list that would never end, of the ills and the isms that separate us from each other, and which make it so much harder to love. But I won’t. Today, I’ll just mention one. Racism. The attached pictures define it. Sterling K. Browne speaks to it: https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=264456458069828&_rdr
This is the legacy of modern human relationships. It is impossible to legislate away the psychological impact of this type of behaviour. Legislation may make racism illegal, but legislation cannot dig deep, unearth the experiences, process them, cognitively integrate them, and choose to change the neurological pathways that pass these conscious and unconscious ways of seeing each other down to our children. We must each personally choose to engage in that process. There is no other way; any other claim to victory is pyrrhic; we stifle others and we do the same to ourselves.
The means of suffocation is not usually as graphic as a knee nonchalantly ground into one’s throat, but every so often these visibly tragic events vividly remind us of how intentionally we have to breathe in order to bear the subconscious evil that haunts us, and which we daily carry as crosses meant to torture instead of seeking to redeem relationships and restore love.
This evil will continue for many more generations if individually and collectively we fail to choose the cultivation of love.
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:1-7,11-13 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=1%20Corinthians%2013:1-7,11-13&version=NLT
Photo 1: The lynching of Reuben Stacy “Reuben Stacy, a 37-year-old black man, hangs from a tree on Old Davie Road in Fort Lauderdale, blood trickling down his body and dripping off his toes. Behind him, a white girl, about 7 years old, looks on, a strange smile on her face as she takes in the sight of the “strange fruit” her elders had just created that hot day in July 1935.”
So this thing keeps happening. My bed keeps slipping off of its frame. It’s been about a month, and I keep doing the uncomfortable laborious lifting to put it back in its place. It’s a pain in the ass.
Yesterday we put it back together. Usually it stays put for a while. Today it felt as if my head and stomach were connected with some torturous contraption whose maker had perfected the perfect balance of pounding tied to nausea. All day.
I decided that I’d stay in productive posture in the recliner instead of laid out on the bed. Both my body and the climbing toddler said no. So, I thought about going to bed. And I realized that my mind, though well on its freedom journey, was still looking for some publicly acceptable justification for rest.
I made lunch for the toddler; fed her while in productive posture in the recliner, and then rocked her to sleep in that position too, instead of following her example, and tunnelling into and wrapping myself in my bedding as she had. But my mind was likely protecting the space that I knew I needed.
Anyway, I had the toddler put in her bed, and then set out to walk to the nearby school to pick up that little queen. Because of course I could do it, and wasn’t good cardio the cure for everything? Thankfully, my Father kept intervening. He does that you know, as the One Who loves and sees.
So, five minutes into my walk, a call comes through; Leah on the line. “Hey girl. Are you sure that you wanted me to meet you at the school, or did you want me to pick you up at the house?”
Well, first of all, I overestimated my horsepower, and secondly I was in soooo much pain. And there she was.
By the end of our route I felt so much worse than I had at any point of the day. I barely made it up the stairs, and finally crawled into bed. Within a couple of hours, between a concerned tucker-in of a daughter and a boisterous toddler, plunk, there goes the bed.
I tried to shift it without calling anyone, because the talking, the concern, the well-intentioned movements to show love were just too much, and I’d have to either call out loudly or walk. Back on the wonky bed I went.
And as I lay there my ailing self said, “just get rid of it”. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that before?! “Well,” the more integrated part of me reminded, “you’d be too low. You don’t like that.” Oh yeah. But it’s not worth all this trouble, and it’s now so uncomfortable. Just get rid of it.
My annoyed self got up to do just that, when that more integrated me interrupted; “how about if we fix it? I bet you that it needs some nuts and bolts, and I bet you that you have something appropriate in that tool box which you fortuitously moved into this room last night.”
And so it was. Two nuts and bolts kept from a happily demolished piece of furniture. (Tip – don’t throw out the hardware.) Moving the mattress and box spring out of the way, I fixed the frame, and then put them back in place, on a solid foundation that will hold.
It occurred to me as I was finding the connectors that this was a significant lesson needed for life. When I initially finally crawled into bed to rest I was able to listen to a two-part podcast that perfectly fed my soul. Then, as I went to find the hardware, I wondered how many relationships have been thrown out because we keep trying to make things comfortable without real connection. Even though the two pieces of the frame fit perfectly together, until I was willing to actively insert strong connection the frame could not serve its purpose. A pair of connectors needed on each end: one bolt of love, and its corresponding nut of truth.
At least two people, each actively integrated with love and truth is the stuff of which beautiful relationships that support rest and a strong place on which to spread are made.
And now I’ll put the bedding back together, so that I can tunnel, snuggle, and be tucked in with no shame.
Even though disconnection and separation have been gifts of protection, it is in the moment that I looked life in the face, and said “It’s okay if you break my heart, I now know that I can rest, heal and keep going” that I truly belonged to myself, belonged everywhere, and nowhere, to everyone, and no one. Because the gifts of protection preserved me until I could belong and be in connection.
And this is the playlist because celebration and connection in music is how my Father and I roll.
Yesterday morning I took an alternate route to bypass construction traffic, and had the pleasure on the way of watching an eagle and a crow interact. I love being reminded whom I am, and why with the wingspan and strength of an eagle, I can soar without using energy to attack aggressors and risk harming myself.
When God spoke these words to me over a decade ago, He knew that as we journeyed together, I would understand the layers of meaning in these words. I was reasoning, more like angrily asking Him the why of many things. And this was His response – audibly.
“But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31 NLT https://bible.com/bible/116/isa.40.31.NLT
I’ve begun to run, figuratively, and not grow weary. Actually when I did run at my pace every morning in reality, I also did not grow weary. I let other people’s weighted shade create the ball and chain which wearied me. That dude who walked by and said “You call that running?” I don’t even remember his face, but I certainly remember how he made me feel. Aunty Maya is right again.
But back to God and the 🦅 eagle. I am living and learning to fly higher and higher with figurative crows on my back, or flying around me, trying to obstruct my path to the nourishment of freedom, love, and healthy connection. This is literally what crows do to eagles to prevent them from feeding on publicly available carrion. Eagles keep rising, and they never use their energy to fight the crows. They just keep flying higher and higher. Their energy is focused on living and finding the way upward.
I am not calling any person a crow – just to make that abundantly clear. Crows are the traditions, fallacies, and traumas that try to ride on our backs, try to obstruct our paths, try to prevent us from reaching the nourishment of publicly available truth that will help us soar to freedom, love, and healthy connection.
I am so incredibly grateful to God for the gifts that He packed in the earliest days of my seclusion, as David describes in Psalm 139. And I am incredibly grateful that I have accepted His invitation to unpack those gifts with Him. Our unpacking parties have given me the ability to find the road less travelled; and when l drive down that road there are always treasured moments like these.
It’s so worth unpacking with Him. Your eagle strength is waiting to be unboxed.
God is horrified by the destructive behaviour that humanity has called His ways from Adam to now. The Bible is a compilation of stories that show how patient and loving He is with people who continually misuse His name as a means of control.
It shows us how humans kept getting most things wrong until Jesus came to show them and us the difference between the God whom they had been taught about, and Whom God really is.
Even then Jesus told the people that their religious leaders were not truly a good picture of God’s love even though they had some things right. Jesus told them that they had mixed truth with their own selfish controlling destructive laws, and He was here to free them from the false narratives of power and control.
““What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel! “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence!” Matthew 23:23-25 NLT https://bible.com/bible/116/mat.23.23-25.NLT
And they killed Him for promoting freedom in His Father’s love. By dying and taking up His life again, Jesus and His Father agreed that this would be the ultimate example of what true love and power actually look like.
““For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17 NLT https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.3.16-17.NLT
It helps to read the compilation as stories written with culture and tradition in the language and style of their era, over thousands of years of God continually trying to show what love really is as they mess things up.
Then Jesus came to show what love really was.
And the letters after Jesus is the recording of humanity still trying to do their best with a more complete revelation of love.
Notice that they move from genocide, death penalty, and empty rituals, to a gentler and still imperfect way of being.
The coming of Jesus to show what love is, is the difference between the brutal powermongering of the Old Testament and the attempts to live in a better way in the New Testament.
And Jesus told us to seek the input of the Spirit of God who is with us instead of trying to figure it out on our own, and we still stupidly try to do it alone. And now we are in almost as bad a place as they who were in the Old Testament.
It doesn’t have to be this way, look at Jesus. Study His life. That is where love is to be seen.
God is all about being in a loving relationship with us with freedom as the central pillar of our relationship.
The Woman at the Well ran to tell her neighbours, “Come see a man who has told me everything I have ever done”. Period. She didn’t say come see a man who has told me how wrong I am. Just come see a man who has treated me with pure love and respect even though He knows all the things that I have done.
This is the point of the Bible. Come, see God Who is patient and loving with humanity even though He knows all the things that we have done.
““For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17 NLT https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.3.16-17.NLT
My friend for life interacted with this thing that poured from my heart on to her Facebook page two years ago. Memories matter, because they remind us that we have been living for quite some time already. And so we can continue. I’ll share it here so that I can be reminded when I forget.
April 20, 2020 – on concerns about manipulated perspectives and lost freedom:
If you watch the game closely enough, through the Master’s eyes you will see. You won’t see everything, but you will see enough to know what matters most.
If 40 people wrote a book about their interaction with your daddy, inspired by his deep investment of love in their lives, none of those 40 would have a complete understanding of who your daddy really is. But someone who read through the entire book, would see his character, and understand his values. He believed in love, freedom, and unity, and because he travelled widely, he understood that because of culture and tradition, love, freedom, and unity would be understood differently in different places. So in each place, he spoke love, freedom, and unity in language that the people understood.
But some people tend to be greedy, and want control of truth to amass wealth and power. So they picked one single story, and tried to convince everyone that your daddy, who was the epitome of love, is this one thing. And then they figure out that to build wealth and power they must create a system that has just enough of your daddy’s ways of being, combined with their own cleverly designed psychological, spiritual, and physical traps to keep generations of the yearning masses focused on their single story.
So your daddy and your brother decide that your brother, who is the spitting image of your daddy, in character, will come in person to live with the people so that they can see and hear the fullness of all the stories for themselves.
All your daddy really wants is to have the people see the great value of love, freedom, and unity.
The power seekers cannot abide the thought of losing their power and wealth. They see that if pure truth is told their single stories will crumble. They do not see that they will gain love, freedom, and unity. They only see their lost power. And so they conspire to kill your brother, to maintain control of their wealth and power. They do not care that the masses will lose out on the great treasures of love, freedom, and unity.
But because your daddy is the epitome of love, there will always be those people who are drawn to the whole book, the full story. They see how his love continues in the same pattern. He speaks to people in the way that they understand. He speaks through their cultures and traditions, and as has always been the case, his love, freedom, and unity eventually help the people to shed traditions that do not build love, freedom, and unity.
Those who grasped for wealth and power conspire to do everything possible to keep focus off of the whole story. Some people see some things, because your daddy’s love is such that no person is ever blind, unless they choose not to see. They see that there is conspiracy. But instead of focusing on the whole story, they become consumed with conspiracy, and they begin to teach that conspiracy is everything. They too seek power, the power of being the truth-tellers, of their incomplete stories. They wish to highlight the importance of freedom, but they forget, or choose to ignore, love and unity.
Through all of this, your daddy is still hoping that more people will be drawn to the whole book, so that more will be willing to share his deepest desire for all to reap the benefits of living in love, freedom, and unity.
His heart hurt so much, but He stayed in love, and through the cracks from which the drops of blood fell the light shone through
Love. Friday.
Having spent Thursday night in agony at the thought of so many things many more than I can fathom – betrayal separation the grief of those who loved Him the shame of those who supported His death the cover-up the persecution of those who shared His ways the coming siege of Jerusalem the thousands of years to come where the light of love would be dimmed (but never extinguished) chattel slavery human trafficking sexual abuse spiritual abuse physical abuse emotional abuse financial abuse paedophilia residential schools colonial torture cultural hegemony generational trauma and so on and so on and so on
And thinking of the depth of pain that He would physically endure, Jesus still chose to follow through with His appointment to fight death so that humanity would see love. For how else could we experience pure love but to see pure hate in action. The light shone into the darkness, and it did not once curse the darkness.
Love shone through agony. That resolute agony is the core of love. The choice to stay in love no matter what. It was a Good Friday. It was the Best Friday Ever.
“Be a light unto the darkness, and curse it not” Neale Donald Walsch
Can I challenge our wretch with love this morning please?
On that crucifixion Friday so many years ago Jesus chose to die because we are so very worthy of love. He made that choice even before the first one of us ever lived, because we are worthy of His love.
Jesus did not die to save wretches. Jesus died to save His beloved children who had lost sight of their worthiness. This is why He shared His very last meal before death with the one who betrayed Him misguidedly. Judas was worthy not wretched. He had just lost sight of his worthiness, and he had been searching for it in so many wrong places.
My loves, on that crucifixion Friday so many years ago, Jesus allowed Himself to be killed, so that once and for all we would have proof that we are worth everything to Him. No wretches. All so worthy.
The beauty of grace is not that we do not deserve it, but that our Father and His Son, and all of heaven gave us all Their love while we, having run away from love in shame felt that we did not deserve it.
We deserve love because we exist as a part of the Essence of Love. We are already made of love, and we cannot deserve anything less than that of which we are already made.
Dying was worth showing us this truth. And defeating death by peacefully laying His life down and then taking it up again to prove to death that it had always been powerless was worth it.
Family, can I challenge your wretch? Do we see whom we really are?
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes would live forever and ever and not die. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world, through Him, might be saved. John 3:16-17
Come, see a man who has told me everything I ever did. He loves me.
People for Preschoolers. This is not “People for Dummies”. It is People for Preschoolers because I think that the best thing is saying a thing in a way that even the littlest people can understand.
Once upon a time, I AM made people. He started with two, a man and a woman, because all other people would be made from these two people. Sperm and egg. The first.
I AM has unlimited creative abilities, and so even though these were the first two people, He had infinite varieties of people waiting to be made. And He gave people the ability to be His partners in creating these infinite varieties of people.
Just like potato chips. What’s your favourite brand, Lays or Pringles? As long as there are people, potatoes, and sources of flavour there will be new and exciting varieties of chips being produced. Regular was only the first.
People be people. I AM defeated death and made sure that we would never be extinct. So Happy Easter. Death is defeated. People be people and we will always be.
Psst: Mama rocking it alone. Today isn’t our day. I know that people tend to tell you happy Father’s Day, but can I tell you why I say no thank you?
Of Thunderstorms and Rainbows 