I slept like a baby

Sometimes, I meet people in real danger.  I am talking about the kind that someone can end up in a coffin over.  I used to think that they were scared to come out.  Now, I think that there is something that they gain for being in the situation, even if the situation is bad.  I saw the danger a person was in and I knew that doing something about it, would destroy the thing she loved about it.  In order to help her, I would have to hurt her.  As I accessed, the look in her eyes pleaded for me to just be quiet.  She wanted me to allow her to continue in the awkward situation  and let it be.  Well, there was tears.  I filled out a ton of paperwork.  I talked to people and they talked to their people.  One by one, her world fell apart.  There was anger and veiled threats.  There was shaking fist and profane words.  There was a decision and nothing about it was pretty.  I didn't mean to make it pretty.  I meant to make it safe.  Even though her world was left in ruins, I went home and slept like a baby.

A friend that smells like rain

How dirty things can get

How grimy, how smelly, how wet

But she comes as a hero unsung

To whisper hope no matter how far flung

She sweetens my garbage dump

With a righteous sugar lump

My trial has run and she

Has done a job well done

Oh, how I sometimes pray in vain

For a friend who can make the sewer

Smell like rain.

Barbie Doll

I have spent over half my life as a motherless daughter.  I am super sensitive to the relationships between mothers and daughters.  My own mother was overweight and had big feet.  Though she prayed and prayed, I was born and I became overweight.  My feet aren't little.  I can remember thinking about her comments on my looks.  What did she think she was getting?  I was born with the same flaws as her.  I cringe when I hear women call their daughters names.  "She's too black", "Her hair is nappy", "She should have been a lawyer", "When will she get married".  Sometimes, the rule we use to judge our daughters, just is not fair.  They should not have to be perfect.  Sometimes, it is good to allow them to make mistakes, celebrate triumphs and learn from the life they live.  The Barbie doll, with the pink Cadillac, aquamarine pool and gorgeous boyfriend named, Ken, has never existed.  Love your daughter if she dropped out of school, cut off all her hair and wore a suit two sizes to small. 

As the ruins fall

As the Ruin Falls
by C. S. Lewis

"All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains."

Saturn

My life in the kingdom of God is like being in another world.  Though, there were struggles in God, they don't compare to struggles out of God.  I was young when I became a Christian, but I still remember what it was like to be in a room full of adults and unable to trust a single one of them.  I still can remember realizing that I would have to take care of myself.  I can remember getting dressed in the dark with no running water.  I don't recall hearing the word love from anyone in my family.  I can recall the culture of aggression where you had to walk around looking like you are mad and about to snap just to feel safe.  I remember seeing prostitutes on the corner with mesh blouses that you could see straight through.  I remember the park that I could not play in because the alcoholics needed a place to spend their endless days.  I remember the police cars going to yet another domestic abuse situation.  I remember the fears of being left alone, afraid of the dark, for days at a time.  I remember the bullies who were abused children used to the cycle and I remember the friends who got pregnant far to soon.  When I think of the culture of sin and deprivation, I am so glad I had another world to escape into and exhale.

Saturn/Stevie Wonder
http://youtu.be/p3KpUO6t9qQ

Silence

Today, I am thinking about the places I have been.  In some places, I was comfortable.  In some places, their obsession was a source of discomfort.  Some places, I have been, are places they perseverate on being thin.  I was not thin.  I was uncomfortable.  In some places, they perseverate on money.  I am not rich yet.  In some places, they perseverate on marriage.  I am not married.  Being pretty confident, I am living alright with my flaws and idiosyncrasies.  I make myself comfortable by keeping my mind on other things, but when the system you are in is obsessed with the thing you are trying to forget,  it can get under your skin.  In order to remain single without acting like a complete fool, I only discuss my love life with a dear friend in another country.  Everyone else is warned politely to mind their own business.  I find that constantly talking about an issue can create a psychosis that could lead to bad decisions on my part.  I think I am too old to make a bad decision in some areas.  What I like about God, is that I don't have to beat a dead horse with Him.  He knows what I need before I ask.  I don't have to remind Him, he is not senile.  I don't have to scream, He has perfect hearing.  What I really like, is that I don't have to talk.  Sometimes, my moans and groans are all that he needs.  I love sitting in his presence in complete silence.  I am not clapping and speaking in tongues and rolling on the floor or putting on a horse and pony show for him to respond to me.  In sweet compline, I just sit and allow the tears to roll and I know that how I feel and what I want to say has been communicated.  We don't have to talk about it.   We don't have to talk about my sickness.  We don't have to talk about my finances.  We don't have to talk about my career.  We don't have to talk about love.



We don't have to talk about love/Peabo Bryson
http://youtu.be/hLvY2nIMsek

Life after You

Though I have been a christian for many years, my relationship with God has not always been the best.  Having no authority in my early years that you could trust left me even doubtful of God.  He knew this and often times, he would choose to conversate about things he knew was wrong with me.  The result of those times, was me packing my bags and saying that I was done.  I was done so much that I had gotten used to the cycle.  In the back of my mind, I was waiting for God to fail me.  I didn't stop coming to church, I just stopped responding.  I went deadly silent.  I prayed for everyone except me.  I repented of my sin and I gave that precious tithe.  When God got personal, I went to sleep.  Those were undoubtedly the worse moments of my life.  Yes, the times when I wandered through religion walking the white chalk line, but refusing to kiss his presence.  God was relentless.  He never stopped trying to reach me.  He kept pulling for me.  The saints told me that God was through with me.  I accepted it because that was what I thought anyway.  I was well into my christian years before I really believed he loved me.  What drew me back every time, was the life I lived after God.  I was a robot just going to make the donuts.  I had no purpose.  My timing was off.  My schedules were off.  My life came to a screeching halt, and even as a christian, I contemplated ending it all. 

I came back.


Life after You
http://youtu.be/3RsirVKkkcA

I have problems of my own

I’m gone need your stuff off my plate

I have problems of my own

I don’t mean to exaggerate but

I have problems of my own.

My need to eliminate

Every problem but my own

It will cause me to dislocate

Every problem but my own

You see, I am the chief of state

Of every problem that I own

And I can’t reciprocate

The problems that I own

So I will need you to cooperate

With the problems that you own

And do not suffocate

With problems not my own.

I must go, It is late

and I have problems of my own

Simply sweet and the Master's touch

Every now and then, the nights become increasingly darker and I can't bear the light.  I see the grey pouring over my existence and I settle into the blues.  In a life of repeated loss, it just comes and sits on my bed like it lives here.  It does.  Silly women think a man will chase it away.  Little do they know that I have been in a room full of people, and they don't discern that his head is in my lap.  While they talk of trivial matters, I talk to the blues.  I'm humming his tune and he is relaxing me.  As many times as the faceless monster called death has knocked at my door, I have learned to relax with him around.  I might as well, he comes and goes often.  This comfort with losing has led me to a place where losing doesn't sting anymore.  In order to heal me, I had to feel loss again.  There are two young ladies in my life, who are more special to me than my closest relative.  I call them ladybugs.  One is simply sweet and the other has the master's touch. One you can't out preach, the other you can't outwork.  They are the closest that I have allowed someone to get in a while.  One day, I thought it appropriate to allow them to live without the nearness of me.  To my surprise, they cried.  I was rebuked and for the first time in a long time, I felt their loss.  I cry when they are mistreated.  I want to defend them.  I take up their causes and pledge to keep them as close to me as possible.  They have taught me how to feel.  Sometimes, it did not feel good, but I felt.  Losing everything, at one point, was just a way of life.  Now losing everything is like the sun going down on me.


Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
http://youtu.be/FI5xme5k5AQ

I survived

Growing up in God was a chore.  I became a christian when I was twelve.  Being so young in God meant that a lot of life would happen while "in God".  My most disappointing day came as a christian.  My fears and failures developed when I was a christian.  I know now, what most of the older saints did not know.  Many of them became Christians after a life of sin and consequences.  They told me that being saved meant that I would not have those consequences, but they did not really know the cost of being saved young.  Most just lied because they did not have the testimony.  As time went on, I realized that salvation is not your guarantee that life will be sweet.  It is not your guarantee that troubling days won't come and stay for a while.  It simply means that you are going to cross the swelling of the Jordan with God.  He is not going to remove the Jordan.  Then there were the times when there was a denial.  God told David that he would not build a temple.  That must have hurt David.  I know now that some of my greatest dreams are not going to come to pass.  I know that you can be in the midst of a christian life and fill totally unfulfilled and unhappy.  I know that you can cry your worst tears in God.  It is a sobering knowing and one that makes me smile.  In time, you temper your desires, and keep moving on.  The day after I realized that life was just going to be rough for a while, I took a deep breath and lived it.  My absolute worst fears came upon me and something wonderful happened........................I survived them.  I looked around me and I was still here.  I decided that I can't allow myself to waste time worrying about what will never be.  I suck it up and live the life I have one day at a time.  In time, I even learned to create new desires to replace the dead ones.  You learn to recreate your desires to fit where you are now.  I refuse to not live the life I have.

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

A ten-year-old boy was failing math. His parents tried everything from tutors to hypnosis; but to no avail. Finally, at the insistence of a family friend, they decided to enroll their son in a private Christian school.

After the first day, the boy's parents were surprised when he walked in after school with a stern, focused and very determined expression on his face. He went straight past them, right to his room and quietly closed the door.

For nearly two hours he toiled away in his room - with math books strewn about his desk and the surrounding floor. He emerged long enough to eat, and after quickly cleaning his plate, went straight back to his room, closed the door and worked feverishly at his studies until bedtime.

This pattern of behavior continued until it was time for the first quarter's report card. The boy walked in with it unopened - laid it on the dinner table and went straight to his room. Cautiously, his mother opened it and, to her amazement, she saw a large red 'A' under the subject of Math.

Overjoyed, she and her husband rushed into their son's room, thrilled at his remarkable progress. "Was it the teachers that did it?" the father asked.

The boy shook his head and said "No."

"Was it the one-to-one tutoring? The peer-mentoring?"

"No."

"The textbooks? The teachers? The curriculum?"

"No", said the son. "On that first day, when I walked in the front door and saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I KNEW they meant business!"

---

Choaked by the Cloak

He lay in the cradle, cooing to sound and totally void of sight.

Responding to the voice of a lullaby, but unable to respond to light

His father Timaeus cried all night until his robe was soaked

He prayed that the future would be secure, consistent, legally, permanently cloaked.

The cloak would keep him from hunger and the cloak would keep him from cold

It was a perfect plan for a young blind man, but an embarrassment to an old.

He begged in the heat.  He begged in the rain.  He begged when he was sick.  He begged when he was afraid.

His voice was rasped, his body ached and the ends of the cloak wore frayed.

Now, at night it wraps around his neck and he awakes gasping for air.

Sometimes it brushes his cheek and he reaches to find that no one is there.

He hopes someone can untangle him from the cloak he needed each day.

He is tripping on it, stepping on it, just one thought from giving it away.

Bartamaeus unhooked the cloak and waited for Jesus to pass by.

When he heard that he passed his way,  he flung it to the sky.

Yes, when he heard Jesus passing his way, he flung it into the sky.

Change in the time of Change.

I have a friend of a friend who did the unthinkable.  He went back to college at the age of fifty and got his teaching certifiicate.  In class he was the wonder boy.  He was celebrated for the act of being persistent and changing the path of his life.  He was favored.  He graduated at the wonderful age of fifty-five.  In his mind, he thought that he was going to recieve what the college kids recieved who attended college in their twenties.  He even thought himself superior to those people.  Upon graduation, life settled in and one by one, all the youngsters began to get their first job.  He went on interviews and waited.  He never got called.  You see, fifty-five is too old to enter the teaching profession as a budding teacher.  You are so close to retirement that you will end up being a liability to the district.  I guess he did not thing that that mattered.  His timing did matter.  He did lose something by his lack of common sense.  Often times, we feel that if we just change with the times we will lose nothing.  This person changed and found that he lost everything.  There is a time and a season where you can sin and their is not enough time to make things right.  He should have been striving to change his career path while he could still give the district a twenty year reign.  As it stands, he may only be able to give ten before they would have to put more money into him than he would earn.  They don't tell the oldtimers that in college.  The old timers come to class with their shorts on and a bucket of coffee trying to relive what they did not do in their youth and it is sad.  They enter a market that leaves them out in the cold.  By the age of fifty, he should have been a superintendent or a dean, not a begining teacher, but no one told him that.  No one said that you will not have the same experience as those who attended college in the time of attending college.  You have to change in the time of changing.

Ashamed

When I was a budding fourteen,  my grandfather did the most embarrassing thing.  He dug up our backyard and planted mustard greens from the back porch to the alley.  Across the street from the home where he lived, there was one of those community centers where they handed out the free cheese, butter and powdered eggs.  In the cool of the morning, you could see the glistening faces waiting patiently for blocks of cheese aged by neglect and grade B butter dyed yellow.  They also handed out dried goods and I do mean dried goods.  Half of my hometown came out to get that old food and they were happy.  My grandfather was born in 1922.  He was a boy turning teen when the depression took hold of America.  I am told that they survived by hunting in the woods and growing their own food.  My grandfather had no shame in his green patch.  When times got hard, he bought a package of bacon and picked himself a pot of greens.  It was like seeing two worlds.  In one world, poverty was an advantage.  In the other world, poverty was fought like Goliath.  My great aunts and uncles would do just about anything to keep their heads above water and out of the soup line.  When I think of the jobs they held just to keep the family farm afloat, I am ashamed, not of them, but of us.  I have never chopped sugarcane.  I have never picked cotton.  I have never made a pot of soup out of a pig's tail and I have never made hog's head cheese.  These are skills that my grandfather had just to survive.  To think, I was ashamed of that green patch.  Over the years, I can remember a lot of people getting a pot of greens from the greens patch.  My grandfather always told the people to pinch the leaves off so that more would grow.  He did not just feed himself, he fed his community, and I was ashamed.

Deep

Shallow people are like shallow pools of water

No ripples or waves clear to the dirt

I can kick and splash with no regard

For getting the water on the hem of my skirt

If I stay too long the pool will fail

And the water will dry in the sun

It’s as though the end was prevalent

Before the beginning begun

Now, deep is something different

It’s pool has a tide and wave light bent

It ripples with earthquakes underneath

The place volcanoes vent

There my dead things are not disturbed

My demons so in the deep

I can splash on the surface with the dolphins

And my dragons can still sleep

I can come to the surface in full sun

And see the ships go past

Then retreat to a cave full of darkness

Peace and quiet at last

Playing God

I teach behaviorally disordered children.  They all have their differences.  To reward them, I give them a token for being good.  You can get up to 100 tokens a day.  At the end of the week, they spend the tokens on a little store that I set up.  When I have a severely problematic child, I may give them a token for doing things that the other children do automatically.  One child would not sit in his seat.  I gave him a token for sitting in his seat.  The other children received a token for getting their work done, but not for being in their seat.  On another day, I gave this troublesome child a token for staying in the room and not having to be put out.  I gave the other children tokens for getting their work done.  As time progressed, I had to reward my troubled child earlier in the day for him to make it through the day.  I rewarded him for the small gains he was taking but I only rewarded the students who did what they were supposed to do, their regular tokens.  One day, I looked at my chalkboard and behold, the kid who acted like an "nut" had more money than the kids who did not.  Now, I played God.  I took that chalk and I gave bonus after bonus to the children who did what they were supposed to do without reward.  I stood back, and if it did not look the way I wanted it to, I added more.  I usually did this on a Thursday because shopping day was Friday.  I made it so that the ones who were obedient had a lot of money, then I went to set up shop.  I priced things according to how much money they had.  My troubled child could only afford a bag of chips, but the others could get groceries.  If I had a special activity planned, I prepared the staff.  We took off our earrings, took off our shoes and rolled up our pants.  We did this because tokens don't buy special activity, behavior does.  The troublesome kid got the chips but he don't get the kit and caboodle.  Now, I have to just tell him that he did not earn the activity.  He will not get to go outside and play with the water guns when all he did was sit in his seat.  He will not get to make cookies when all he did was stay in the room.  Those rewards are for those children who did their work..  If he got mad, well, then we did what we had to do to stay safe.  God is like that in a way.  Heaven belongs to everyone, but that does not mean that all will get the same reward.  In the end, God will equalize things.  Heaven is the reward for repentance, but your crown is your reward for righteousness.  Some will get the crown and some will get wood, hay and stubble.

Plaid Illusions

I grew up in a town that was part blue collar and part white collar.  In high school, there was this grand illusion.  Some of my classmates had parents who worked shifts at the plant.  Others had jobs in the professional sector.  At school, you could not tell the difference.  The doctor's kids came to school with plaid shorts and polo shirts.  The shift workers kids came to school with plaid shorts and polo shirts.  They partied together, they played sports together, they attended rally's together and they graduated together.  I wasn't in the crowd, but I did have the sense to know that the doctor's kids and I were not on the same plane.  We weren't in the same field.  I way out of their league.  I knew that I was not going to be successful without a college education and staying out of trouble.  What good would a college education do me if I was in jail or pregnant.  The shift workers were not like that, they really thought that they were equal to the kids with professional parents.  When I returned to my high school for my ten year reunion, life had dealt some heavy blows.  Two of my classmates were doctors.  That did not surprise anyone.  One of my classmates went to West Point.  That did not surprise us.  I showed up as a teacher with Reverend on the front of my name.  NO ONE was surprised.  The group that we were surprised by, were the kids of the shift workers.  The nineties was cruel as we saw one factory after another head for the border.  Those whose parents took shifts instead of going to college, were left jobless.  Their children woke up from the dream and landed in a nightmare.  Though they wore plaid shorts, they did not have secure futures and they were too busy with their IZOD jackets to notice it.  By the time our twenty year rolled around, most of the shift workers were in low paying jobs, self-employed or in prison.  You would be amazed at how many were in prison.  Some were just wandering around town trying to be twenty-one all over again.  I can hear them now, "If I knew then what I know now............."

The Gates

Another form of history tracking is what you allow in the gates.  You have five of them, the eye gate, the ear gate, the mouth gate, the mind gate and the heart gate.  You can develop patterns in the eye gate which are the things you historically allow yourself to see.  You have a pattern in the ear gate of what you historically allow yourself to hear.  You have patterns in the mouth gate that governs what you say.  You have a gate in the mind of what you allow yourself to think and of the heart on the things you allow yourself to love.  I used to have very open gates.  I listened to anything, I said anything and so on and so on.  I was born into a family that had very open gates.  We did everything but repent.  When I became serious about being a christian, the gates became regulated.   For a season, I refused to see rated R movies.  I began to dress conservatively, meaning, everything was covered up.  I began listening to gospel music.  I refused to date boys who were not saved.  I am learning to be more positive than negative.  My mind gate is the gate I have the hardest time keeping guarded, but I won't stop trying.  Everything around you has to be selective and even exclusive.  I have learned to go to art museums just for the glimpse of beauty on the wall.  I stroll through gardens.  I listen to positive music.  You can't go wrong with gospel, but now, I have added some secular artist who are not vulgar.  I have learned to tame my tongue.  I don't say everything that I want to say.  I refuse to allow myself the luxury of profanity.  Speaking ugly makes you look ugly.  If a movie doesn't have some sort of deep point, I am not interested and  always skip the love scenes.  Most of all, I guard my emotions.  I can't fall in love with the enemy and hope it will work out anyway.  Guarding my gate is a full time job, but here are the things I will gladly let in.  I learned them at tonight's Bible study which has greatly affected my life.

Whatsoever things are pure
Whatsoever things are lovely
Whatsoever things are honest
Whatsoever things are true
If there is any virtue( Meaning Deep)
If there is any praise
I will let you in.

I love this song because this scripture is in it.
Treat Myself/Stevie Wonder
http://youtu.be/RLO19VjHjEs

Negative Success

Negative success is the term I use for being in the condition of losing and gaining.  As a child, I saw my parents buy cars and then lose them.  We had a house and then we lost it.  We had power and then we lost it.  Every time we took one step forward, we took two steps back.  It became our history and our pattern.  I knew if we got something, not to hold on to it because it would be a matter of time before we would lose it again.  Well, that pattern was hooked up to their behavior.  They had a history of signing up for items on a payment plan and then not paying on the payment plan.  Therefore, the furniture was taken back, the china cabinet was taken back and every car they owned was repossessed.  The Bible states that the wicked borrow and do not pay it back.  I remember when they did not pay the power bill and we had no electricity for a year.  I learned something from that.  Going from flop to failure and from failure to flop is not the pattern I want to establish in my life.  One associate of mine has lost more jobs than I have fingers to count them.  We both are at a point in our lives where we should have something but she is starting all over again.  Once again, the blood covers her sin, but she has to change her behavior.  Negative success looks bad over time.  When I was 21, none of us had anything.  We were in college and money was hard to come by.  When I got thirty, we were at least established in our fields with roots or we were in graduate school.  In my thirties, we worked in our careers, started families, bought homes and managed the debt of the previous decade.  Now that I am forty, I am not looking for someone still in college eating Ramen noodles.  Someone who shows up at that age with nothing tells me that there had to be some kind of negative success.  Somehow, that person blew it and is blossoming a bit late.  It looks bad to be forty and living in your parents basement.  It looks bad when you are forty and your kids are taking care of you.  It looks bad when you are trying to date someone established and they have to pick you up, pay for the dinner, get the tip, buy the coffee, pay the parking meter and then drop you off before the lights go out at the mission.  Righteousness will give you a victory to victory history.  It leaves you impressive.  it makes you glow like new money.  It makes you able to pick me up in your second car, drive me to a great restaurant, pay for dinner, get the tip, buy the dinner coffee and sit by the lake until the fireflies turn off.  That is the kind of success I like.

Potted Meat

When I was a child, my mother often took me to the store for a treat.  She bought potted meat, saltine crackers and Nehi soda.  Boy, we sat in front of the television and we ate like we were kings and queens.  When I got older, I loved to eat potted meat sandwiches using white bread.  One day, I found out what was in potted meat and I decided that it was not good for me.  I still have the taste for potted meat, but I refuse to eat potted meat again.  There are some things in my life that I have a taste for.  I could live off of that substance for the rest of my life, if I had to.  I know how to live if your water gets shut off.  I know how to live without electricity.  I know how to eat off of ten dollars for a week.  I can live with a drug addict and an alcoholic without it affecting me.  That  was the life I lead as a child and I mastered getting out of it by mastering it, but just like the potted meat, I refuse to live like that anymore.  Even though I know how to live with a drug addict, I refuse to live with a drug addict.  Even though I know how to make it off of ten dollars, I refuse to eat cheap.  At this point in my life, what I mastered to get here is irrelevant.  I am on a different plane and on a different level.  I am not trying to live a "potted meat" life for the rest of my life.  I deserve more than that and you do to.  You may have some questionable friends whom you actually get along with, but they are not the best people to be around.  I have relatives I dearly love, who I will gladly send to jail.  I just refuse to live beneath my privilege even if I mastered living beneath my privilege.

Your History is all you have

Today, my thoughts about perpetualness.  I am thinking about perpetualness a lot lately.  It is the only history that we will leave in the earth.  The only way that we will be able to be discerned from the other masses of flesh is by the deeds we do in our name.  Those things alone will define us.  I have learned to forget what I hear you saying because words are simply not needed.  Give me a list of your greatest accomplishments and I will know who you are.  I have always stated that I never wanted just a man.  I have always wanted a great man in his greatness.  For this, I don't need to hear your rap.  Let me know which college you graduated from.  Introduce me to your children or the lack thereof.  Tell me how many times you have been married.  If you dare, reveal if you own your home.  Your accomplishments will tell me your history and that speaks louder than words.  In Christendom, we feel that the blood of Jesus will somehow magicly erase your history because it erases your sins.  I have heard it preached that God wipes the slate clean.  Does he?  If your history is still there, then there is something on the slate.

Cinderella Part 5

When Cinderella arrived at the ball, she recognized the prince, but understood that it would be worthless if he did not recognize her.  He did recognize her and they danced the entire night.  Not only did the prince recognize her, but so did the stepmother.  She ordered Cinderella home.  While on her way out of the door, her stepmother attacked her.  She ripped her dress into shreds while the palace guards tried to restrain her.  She grabbed for locks of Cinderella’s hair and then she pushed her into a rose bush of thorns.  The attack was so vicious that God rescued Cinderella by translating her back to her home in the safety of her kitchen.  The only thing left in the attack was a few patches of her dress, strands of hair ripped from her head and one glass slipper cracked at the heel.  The Prince was livid and followed the wicked stepmother back to her home to chastise her.  When he arrived, the wicked stepmother barred the door with her body.  The prince did not want to hit a woman so he sat in his carriage, hoping to wear the old woman out.  The prince tried again to gain entry under the auspices of returning the slipper.  It would not be gentlemanly to do so.  The wicked stepmother took the slipper and threw it into the rose bushes, but it reflected from the stone in the cottage.  The shards of glass exploded with one small sliver slicing her skin and piercing her heart.  Her wicked heart failed for it had been evil a very long time.  When she lay still and cold, the prince entered the cottage and rescued the young maiden.  They were married and the scene was exactly like the one they had dreamed of.  Ironically, her life resembled the life she led before her father passed away.  She had someone to watch over her and take care of her.  All she had to do all day long, was run barefoot through the tulips.

Cinderella Retold part 4

In her dreams at night, Cinderella saw a prince.  In the dreams, he came with all of his servants and lifted her from the place of misery.  It was the only thing that she had to keep her alive.  In another part of the Kingdom, there was a prince who had fallen in love with a princess he saw in his dreams.  In the season given to him for marriage, he decided to have a ball and invite all the available maidens in the kingdom.  He was determined to find the woman of his dreams or better said, the woman in his dreams.  The ball was to be a fabulous affair and the stepsisters were eligible to go.  They spent six months buying fabric and growing their hair and perfuming their skin.  The stepmother herself was preparing to chaperon and she had a gown made of pure silk imported from far away.  The only one who could not go was Cinderella.  Now, Cinderella did not know that the Prince’s dream was by divine intervention.  She did not know that her dream was divine intervention.  It was the will of God for her life to change and the season had come.  When the stepmother and stepsisters went to the ball, Cinderella went to cry in the rose garden.  As she began to pray she was transfigured by the power of God to the Royal castle dressed in fine robes of silk and taffeta.  She had clean hair and nails and she smelled of honeysuckle roses.  On her feet, she saw a exquisite pair of glass slippers.

God will make a way out of no way when your season has come.

Cinderella Retold Part 3

When the father was securely in the ground, the wicked stepmother set out to finish her task.  She attempted to feed the young maiden poisonous mushrooms, but the Lord had made her intolerable to the taste.  She vomited every bite and lived.  Then the wicked stepmother set her to go pick wildflowers for the house in the middle of the woods.  She ordered the woodsman to kill her there, but he was warned of the Lord to disobey her or face the fires of Hades.  She then tried to marry her off to a peasant who lived on their land, but before the stepmother could end the matter, the young man disappeared.  Well, the stepmother decided that she would make the maiden a servant and keep her in the kitchen sweeping cinders from the hearth.  Except for the woman who brought their fresh meat in the morning, no one knew that the young maiden was still alive, for the stepsisters had sent the rumor that she had passed of a fever.  They called her Cinderella, but in her heart, she accepted none of it.

Life tries it’s best to change you from what you were to what they want you to be.  You have to remember what you were before life got a hold of you to try and change your name.  Remember that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, even if you don’t look like it.  My Pastor always says, "You are not defined by what happened to you."

Cinderella Retold part 2

God looked down upon his creation and saw that it was good.  He also saw the winds of change coming and he knew that the maiden would be saddened.  God was not going to allow the winds and the rains to destroy what he had made so beautiful.  The beginning of her troubles came when her father began to grow weary of being lonely and sought to find a wife.  While at the common market place, he glanced upon a woman who was fair and willing.  They married that very day and with this woman, came her daughters.  They moved into the cottage in the woods and life was still good.  It was so good that the father became a rich man.  While he was becoming a rich man, his new wife was plotting his demise.  She was beautiful, but greedy.  Had the father waited for a suitable spouse, he may have survived until old age, but he rushed .  When he became a millionaire, his fair wife made him a meal with poisonous mushrooms.  He died in the night and by the morning, the fair maiden was moved to a small cot in the kitchen and her clothes replaced with rags.

God acts and Satan counteracts.  We have to remember that Satan can not invent anything, he only can try to taint what God has done.  What we have to remember about God is that he is infinite.  His works and his ways can only be altered permanently by him.  Do not worry about the winds of your life changing against you.  Just as you were once in a beautiful place, just wait and keep praying.  You will be there again.

Cinderella Retold

Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, the grace of God smiled down on a young maiden.  She was placed in a lovely home with rose bushes to the north and a bountiful garden to the south.  Her mother went to paradise upon her birth, but the Lord left her entrusted to a loving father.  He supplied her every need so that the maiden spent most of her time running barefoot through the tulips and enjoying her estate.  She often thought of her fortune and how great her life was.  In her quiet time, she prayed and asked God to bless her father and her.  She prayed prayers of thanksgiving for the mercy of God who had been so benevolent to her.

God never creates anything in destruction.  God made a beautiful world with plenty of food and no worries.  He placed us in a beautiful place.  Praise God for such wonderful beginnings for humanity.