Thankful

I preached in March and taught in May this lesson. “You are not your mistakes, you are not your accomplishments, and you are not what you do.”

Well by the end of May I had to walk that lesson out. The good thing is that I believed it, and God helped me to see it become true in stereo. My company’s lack of ability to win new contracts coupled with my high salary caused me to be laid off the last day of May.  I contracted with my former company for June and part of July but it was extremely slow.

The most important message from my circumstance is that God is able. He keeps you, not your job, your family or even yourself.

We have a thought in our minds of how much we can bear, and what we can withstand but God knows.
I thank God for Ma dukes, my sister, my mother in law, sister in law and Grand ma Ora for stepping in and helping our family out in tremendous ways. God says that when you give it will be given back to you, pressed down and shaken together and running over….shall men give into your blossom. God uses ordinary people remember?

I want to thank the few friends that I felt the ability to confide in.
SN: If a person will tell you their close friend’s business, be sure to know that they will tell others yours.

I really kept things close because everyone has an opinion on what you should do. Everyone knows a person that’s hiring, and you look like a jerk when you turn them down because it’s not the job that you want. Few things give you more joy than a fulfilling job, and few things are more painful than working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week in a job that you have no passion for.

I also want to think my wife for holding the family down, praying for us. Thanks to her and family we never missed a beat. School shopping, sweet 16’s and 8^th birthday’s went on without a hitch. And the kids still don’t know that I was out of work.

I want to be an encouragement to someone else, maybe you are looking for a blessing that you hope is right around the corner. Remember that God is your provider. He will make a way out of no way. And it may seem cliché, but He may not come when you want Him but He WILL be there right on time.
Post Script: I’m on my second week of my new position as a lead with the State Department. #wonthedoit

What I learned this weekend @ Church.

There is a cost for you not fulfilling your destiny and purpose.

You may think, “It’ll be fine, if I don’t do it someone else will.” The ‘It’ being what God has gifted, called and prepared you to do.  When you don’t do what God has planned for you to do His kingdom cannot advance in full strength, there are delays and to my point today, somebody else is picking up your slack.

When you say in your heart, the church should be doing this, or the kingdom should have this kind of ___ going on, that’s not accidental. God has given you that keen insight because you are a part of the plan to bring that aspect of the kingdom into fruition. Not just to make a suggestion that ‘they’ do this or that that they should be doing that.  What are you doing?

What is it that you can do with ease but you’re not doing for God? 

Nobody is in your way.

You are not waiting on a phone call.

Get busy. 

Put your Gucci watch on synchronize the time and let’s rock! 

To love unconditionally means…

To love unconditionally means…

…that my intention is so strong

…that there is nothing that you can do that will un-do it.,

In fact it is so strong that I intend for its effect, its dependability to

overpower you and win you.

However people know when you mean to love them,

and whether it goes far or short.

(don’t confuse people for God and don't over estimate your ability to love).

God will allow us to see glimpses of His [unconditional] love.

(January 11th, 2010.)

I wrote this in the middle of the night in Mexico 13 months ago.

Exactly a month later I would be snowed in during the second big snow storm of
that winter. I would lament difficulties at the job and in marriage. I
grew weary of the kids and their frustration of being stuck in the house.
And some 15 minutes up the road, my father would breathe his last breaths.
It’s been a year.

A lot of my life has been put into perspective by this
watershed event. My family of origin is pretty close knit, and we didn’t
grow up with many connections to my parent’s families of origin. That means
that my father’s passing was the first death of someone really close to us.

He was of course our progenitor. All roads for us lead back to him. I only
met his mom a few times before she died early in my life. My mother’s mom
the same, even though she’s still living. So much of what we are is because
of who he was. It could be rather cliché to say that we had so little influence on
our personalities besides that of our mom and dad.

I believe that in some way God inspired me to write those words. They would serve
as words from my father. Words that I would need exactly one month later,
before I knew I how much I would need them.

I pray that the words I felt God inspired me to write brings comfort to my family.

Some benefits of getting older.

“Jeff hit me up with a twit said what you waiting on? When you gon drop that next [blog] __ you takin long!”

I’ve heard it said that as you get older you start to worry less about what people do. I’m starting to realize how true that is. I spend far less time concerning myself with the little plays people are running around me. I don't want to be at the line of scrimmage adjusting my plans like Peyton Manning. I am tending to focus more on what I’m going to do, rather than what people have done and are doing.

Not too long ago, as my office has been influx. I asked one of the guys that had been around here for the longest what the key to his success is? With people leaving left and right, people worrying about their jobs and contracts etc. After we had finished talking about fishing and about how much I understand my dad and his friends desire to go fishing so often differently now that I’m a father. He told me”….well you know Reg, I just keep a level head. I don’t get too excited about whatever happens. And I give em what they want. When they change their mind and want something different, I just give it em to the way they want it.” Thanks John.

When you are younger you seem to be less aware of the limitations of your locus of control. By that I mean you can only control so much of what goes on around you and what happens to you. What’s yours to control is your response to those happenings.

But this isn’t about what you do, as much as it about what you shouldn’t do; worry. Not to say that you shouldn’t be proactive and create realities but the things that we tend to worry about are usually beyond our control.

And those things we can’t control often come at the intersections of our faith.

But that’s what faith is all about:
• Believing that the things we cannot control are under God’s control.
• Knowing that they will ultimately work out for our betterment.

A little story about me.

A little story about me.
Back in 1999 one of my close friends put me on to one of the latest hip hop albums: 2001. This album came out a full two years before its moniker and my friend had an early copy as it had yet to hit the college circuit. Well a few months later while working on one the hardest courses of my colligate career (digital systems II) One of my buddies in the grad lab had his speakers and win amp blasting and one of the songs came on.

Being that the album was new I found myself in the unique position of being the only one in the lab that had heard the album.

Well it was a hot album and being such I had placed this recording in heavy rotation. When one of the tightest cuts on the album came on in the playlist I could not front and act like I hadn’t heard it. As much as I tried to pretend when the now infamous line sung by Nate Dogg came on I had to chime in right with him…..

“Hold up, heeeey...get ready for the next episode, Heey aay yee yay…..” well you know the rest.

When I sang that line it struck a chord in one of my teammates mind and she made this statement that has stuck with me ever since and it’s the reason I write this blog today. As innocent as it was at the time, I looked at it one way and I see it differently as I have grown. Heather looked up at me soon after I quoted Kurupt and Nate and said:

“For a preacher you sure know a lot of rap songs!”
My two other cohorts Toya and Osei nodded and agreed.

Now at this time I was only two or so years into having accepted my calling. This statement spoke to the notion that we all had of a preacher that didn’t quite Jive with me listening to and singing Dr. Dre’s latest album. And it is a notion that I struggled with for years after.

But now I am a little bit older and a tad bit wiser. I have come to realize that for me to have pretended to not know or have heard “the next episode" before and even more to pretend that I didn’t enjoy the song, would’ve been to deny my own personhood. Also it would have confirmed a certain dualism that far too many suffer from.

Any dualism of self is unhealthy in my estimation.

You see your understanding of self frames your world. Dualism is rampant among my people. We all have an understanding of the degree self that is one way here and another there. A self that can laughs at something in one setting but shuns the very same notion in another setting. A work self and a home self. A self that is this way with this group of friends and another with the other group of friend. This kind of schizophrenia is unhealthy

I admit I did struggle with that kind of dualism in my personality and public persona….somewhere around my first year of seminary and the birth of my daughter I made the decision to stop any forms of denial of my true self altogether. Not that I have arrived and or did so by myself. Now for the last several years one of the most anticipated albums since then has been the detox album. I guess it helps that I have a president that is a Jay-z fan, along with the CIO of my organization.

The bottom line is it is easier to be comfortable with who you are than trying to be what you think people expect you to be.

7 things that the college age kid needs to know about going to College.

Inspired by the fb statuses of one of my little cousins going off to college this week, I wrote this blog. I almost wrote something a few weeks ago when I learned that another cousin had been accepted, enrolled and changed her mind. That along with two other family members in this age ranges that have made some interesting recent choices regarding college would’ve been negative re-enforcement. So I’m glad Byanca’s excitement gave me renewed interest in writing ‘7 things that the college age kid needs to know about going to College.’

1. Go.

You would think this is a no-brainer, but it’s not. So many get discouraged and have a little fear. Believe it or not it’s normal. Anyone that tells you’re they’re not a little afraid of leaving the comfort, security and familiarity of their home aren’t living in reality. Now I know you’re excited and couldn’t wait to get away from Mom and Dad, but you are out in the real world, well at least the junior league. You need to simmer down some of that excitement. Then there are a few that are apprehensive and overly anxious. The key to both extremes is to just be careful and you’ll be alright, but …..GO!

2. Stay.

One of the most famous lines from college orientations since the dawn of time… “Look to your left, now look to your right…one of the three of you won’t make it to the end of freshman year.” And it’s true, but it doesn’t have to be you. Or your two friends/dorm mates that you made sure to sit next to in orientation. It could be the three losers sitting in the back row. But no really, there will come many possible reasons for you to consider going home and never coming back. Money, bad grades, horrible roommates, bad weather, theft, lack of transportation, bad accommodations etc. All of this might hit you in the first day the first semester or on a weekly basis. But you have to stick with it. The truth is it’ll all be worth it, and you’ll learn to adjust. Which leads me to my next point?

3. It’s all about survival skills.

My friend Lex made the point to me a long time ago, and it stuck with me, besides the specialized careers skills you gain, college is about learning survival skills. What she was saying is that you may never remember the quadratic equation, how to evaluate limits, how to go from state machine to binary numbers to algorithm to code, to bread board or how not to split infinitives (won’t stop you from blogging) but if you can figure out how to survive from the 10th of the month till the 30th on less than 30 dollars and still make the grade you will have learned one of the most important lessons.

4. Forge Lifelong relationships.

I can tell you the truth; I thought my homies from high school couldn’t get any tighter. I worried about the fact that we were going to different campuses and some not to school at all. But what happened? My friends from college have become the deepest personal relationships that I have. I only spent 4 months at FAMU, but it seems just like yesterday. People that have heard me talk about it know I tend to wax poetic. And when I came to Howard I met some of the coolest, smartest, people ever. Far too many to mention. Nothing forges friendships like hours in a computer lab sweating through lines of code. (Shhhhh! I’m trying to write Bridgit!) I cannot stress how important this time and these people were and still are in my life.

5. Don’t be fresh meat.

It’s been my experience that the more you advise people(read girls) against this point, the more they run to it. So just try not to be it. Ask a sophomore or Junior what this is if you don’t already know.

6. Prioritize.

I know you can stay up till 3 and get up at 7:50 for a class that starts at 8:10, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I know there is a party going on 8 days out of the week (don’t ask me how, but it’s possible) but that doesn’t mean you should go to 5 out of 8 em. Just because there are employment opportunities available doesn’t mean you should work 20-40 hours a week. (Wish I would’ve listen to that one while I was in school.) Spending every waking hour with your girlfriend(s)/boyfriend(s) is possible but boy will that cut into those 4 hours of study for every 1 hour of class time. My Niece and Nephew watched me squander away my first 3 years at Howard picking them and my girlfriend up almost every weekend. Lord I hope they learned from watching their uncle’s mistakes rather than having to walk in my footsteps. The point is you are in school to learn, everything else has to follow in prioritization. Don’t learn #2 the hard way.

7. This will be the best part of your life (to date.)

Although life can and does get better (Hey, I hear 40’s the new 20) this will have been the best time of your life to date. You know no real responsibility; you have no debt, hopefully no children and no cynicism. Enjoy it….by enrolling in college.

But you know some of these lessons we must learn the hard way. Don’t let #7 be one of the hard learned lessons. It’s a lot harder to get into college at 28, 38 and 48 than it is at 18.

You don’t have anything to prove

That’s right.

Now don’t get me wrong, a show of skill, smarts, style, accomplishment and power isn’t the same as having something to prove they all may be a side effect of doing work or of a feeling that you have something to prove. The difference is the place of motivation. When you have something to prove to some family member or some ‘so called’ friend, or just people from your past it equals an anchor holding you back in your past. Whatever caused this feeling whether it is somebody or some situation it isn’t going to let you go.

People can’t let you go from having something to prove because they don’t really have the hold on you. The event or situation that makes you feel like you have something to prove can't let you go because situations and events only have the power to hold you back as they reside in your mind. The biggest thing that makes you feel like you have something to prove is in your mind. That feeling, that you have something to prove won’t be let go until you make up in your mind to do so. Trying to prove yourself to be “Blank” has caused a greater waste of hours, money, debt, frustration, and misdirected goals than we could count.

How many outfits, cars, degrees, homes, phone numbers, girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, children, promotions, have you collected in pursuit of proving yourself to someone? While nothing is wrong with having any of these things, something is wrong with getting all of this stuff to prove that you are something.
Nothing can do more for you than what you can do for yourself by moving on in your heart, mind and spirit.