EveryTHING is Meaningless

"Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher.  Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." Ecclesiastes 1:2.  My pastor preached on Sunday about receiving God's abundance and overflow.  Explaining that money is means. Money is an instrument. Money is a tool.  "A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything." Ecclesiastes 10:19 We must position ourselves and change our way of thinking in order to walk into our appointed, predestined blessings.  I prayed for my abundance and overflow as well as praying for others I consider important in my life for their prosperity.  But it was the depth of the content and understanding of getting to a place of being able to receive that abundance and use it according to His will that got my attention.

Well.  As I turned to study chapter 10 of Ecclesiastes tonight I became engrossed in the story line of the entire book.  As if I had never read it before.  The author in the book, searches for a purpose to his life.  After various pursuits, frustrated by not finding satisfactory answers, he discovers that happiness is in the Lord and in obeying His word.  What kind of life would we have without God?  It would be meaningless.  He realized that the ability to really, truly enjoy life is a gift from God.  He saw that God gives wisdom, knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight.  To the sinner, God might give the ability to gather and collect great wealth, but it will eventually end up in the hands of someone who is good before God.  So, in summary, labor without God's blessing is truly vanity and grasping for the wind.

In these times of economic uncertainty and struggle, we must not lose sight of what lessons can be learned from our own individual circumstances.  Struggling?  This might be your time to learn frugality and be a good steward of small things so that when your time comes, God will make you ruler of great things.  Have an abundance or overflow?  This might be your time to thank God by reaching back and giving your fellow believer a helping hand.  Being obedient sometimes will cause you to question your devotion and God's intentions for what you are going through.  When you have lack and God instructs you to give what you have and you know, that you know, that you know, this is all you have. Give anyway.  When you have an abundance, and God instructs you to give an amount that puts a serious dent in the entertainment fund, give anyway.  After all, everything is meaningless. It is best to enjoy the good from your work, but the ability to enjoy is a gift from God.  God will keep one who is so blessed busy with the joy of his heart.

During my own time of financial uncertainty, believing in reciprocity has gotten me through on occasion.  And is the hope that I cling to on this very day. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9



Leaning on His everlasting arms...GN-AJoy

Fitting In

I wanted to share this journey from creamy crack addiction to embracing natural freedom among other important happenings in my life.  So many people don't understand my choice and I hear comments daily about my decision.  I am not sure if it is because I decided to chop all of mine off and begin a new or if it is the fact that I no longer relax my hair, so it is not "super straight", as many of us as black woman prefer.  Being natural was a difficult choice for me because I have always loved everything about hair. Whether I was wearing a weave or braids or my short crop. And growing up, I remember being called "BB" because my hair was never straight.  I have always had a difficult head to relax.  Some parts would straighten and others wouldn't. But recently, I have been reading blogs, watching youtube videos and everything I can possibly find about having natural hair.  The one thing that I kept reading was I am not my hair.  But then I read one sentence that changed my perspective on those thoughts and challenged my notion that I am not my hair.  It simply read, "I am my hair and my hair is me." And that simple revelation gave way to the ability to explain my choice in a way that not only depicts me, but also speaks volumes about the choices we have as women, not just women of color, but as a woman born into freedom.  We live in a country that affords us the choice to be who we want to be and express our own individuality and uniqueness.  Not one of us are identical. So who are we to try and fit in?

I don't think I have ever really "fit in".  I have always been different.  I have always felt different.  I loved wearing unique clothes that I would beg my mother make from a pattern I would find or designed myself.  I loved being the first in high school to wear a weave and braids thanks to a cousin who had traveled the world. I moved to Baltimore when I was 19 and I finally felt like I could finally fit in, because I didn't have to TRY so hard.  Everyone embraced their uniqueness and it was like living in a world with the motto, "It is what it is, do you." When I moved back to North Carolina four years later, I came home with a shaved head.  Because, after all, I was doing me. I did what made me happy.

You can always grow more hair.  You can always buy more hair, but what you can't buy is freedom with peace of mind.  The object of this post?  Stop trying to fit in and find your uniqueness and embrace it.  There is only one image we should ever try to mimic and that is the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You better get in where you can fit in!

GN-AJoy

So, maybe...

Yes maybe, I am embracing me for who I am and Whose I am.  Do you know Whose you are?  Sometimes we confuse who we are, what we are and why we are with Whose we are. We are here not by chance, not by luck, and not by circumstance.  We are here for a purpose, with a purpose.  Now, how many of us really know what that purpose is?  No, not for the amount of money you can make, not for the status, not for the big house on the hill or the Benz or the BMW but for one simple fact.  And in doing that, sometimes you have to let go to be WHO you are to know WHY you are to understand WHOSE you are.  God wants nothing more than for us to let go of our earthly being, mimic His likeness and walk in pure, unadulterated happiness.   Understanding Whose you are can be the life altering experience that can never be duplicated.  Learn to see yourself as God sees you. Accept what God says about you and become the spiritual person you are. God's opinion is the one that counts. And once you realize the why, then you know you are forever His.

I started this blog as a follow up to my bucket list, 40 Before 40.  I have successfully marked 6 things off of that list and now on to the next....

It is now 12:47 am Thursday Sept 9 and I cannot sleep because of all of the words floating through my head. The pretty girl theme started tonight when I was looking at pictures on a Facebook page of natural hairstyles.  As most of you know, I am transitioning to my natural state and it has not been a difficult transition, but feeling pretty all the time with "curls" (not naps!! LOL) has proven to be extremely trying. So my husband, being as unedited as he usually is, says, you don't even have any hair, so what styles could you possibly be trying to get?  Needless to say, my feelings were EXTREMELY hurt.  So I ask, would you rather I have long straight hair?  What is it with men and HAIR?????? I don't get it.  So my first thought is, I will just perm my hair back.  Then, my next thought was no, this is not for him or anyone else, this is for me.  Hence, the I know who I am, why I am and WHOSE I am.  So nothing, nothing nothing nothing, can be said to deter me from embracing that and achieving this goal. Not even my husband, whom I love with every little hair follicle on my head!  So I proceeded to clean the kitchen as I do every night after I cook dinner, I made his lunch, as I do every night, I packed my sons snacks, as I do every night, washed two loads of clothes, showered, read my Essence, (which is my secret indulgence) and now I cannot sleep.  He didn't apologize and probably doesn't even know he hurt my feelings in the first place.  So all this to say, hair is just hair, it does not define me as a woman nor a human being.  It enhances the beauty I have had since the day my wonderful mother birthed me. So who am I to want to change that? Everyone has a choice, and that's the beauty of being our own individual selves. So maybe, just maybe, this journey will peel the layers back and reveal a deeper understanding of Whose I am.

GN-AJOY