"YOU Again"

While enjoying a nice afternoon in the nail salon, my daughter and I watched a movie called You Again. It starred Sigourney Weaver, Jamie Lee Curtis as two former high school rivals who daughters also became high school rivals. They meet back up when Jamie Lee Curtis’ son decides to marry Sigourney’s daughter, who again is the rival of his sister.

Wild antics occur when past feelings, hurts, fights and emotions seep to the surface between all four of the old rivals. So much so, that the wedding rehearsal is destroyed and the wedding is called off. Although not quite as planned, cooler heads prevail and *spoiler alert* the wedding goes on. It was near the end of the movie that caught my attention. At the very end..one of the grandmothers, played by Betty White runs into another older woman at the reception and they look at each other with disdain and shout “You Again”. In an “a-ha flashback moment” It is insinuated that this feud started long before the daughters and mothers. It started with the grandmothers and the cycle has been revisited in every generation since.

The movie just served as a reminder to me that negative cycles will reappear in your relationships, your children and their relationships, your job etc.. if you don’t change and modify behavior toward the positive. It is on my worklist to never have face another negative cycle and mumble in submission ugh.. not “You Again”. It is imperative that stupidity I dealt with, faced and fell under...ends with me.

99 1/2 won't do!

For the last year or so I have been praying that each of my children would get a decent paying job-at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t slothful and still did what they had to do to manage. One son sold a lot of his possessions to keep money in his pocket, another son worked as a volunteer at a ranch part time cleaning, another begin to hone in on his writing skills creating drafts of screenplays, and my daughter did hair on the side to make ends meet.

I could have gotten complacent and stopped praying and believing. I could have blamed the economy or just knuckled under to the pressure that jobs were hard to come by. But I refused. I have learned that anything worth having is worth fighting for. My kids well being is worth fighting for. So I had 3 working, and one left. It just made me dig my heels in harder, fast more, pray more and exercise more faith in this area. I kept him encouraged and prayed in agreement with him.

But today as I dropped this son off to his new job at a very prestigious country club, I smiled in gratefulness as I realized that God honored our diligence in seeking Him. It wasn’t about the job. It was about strengthening our faith and our developing our perseverance. It was also about my son’s attitude. He was sincerely happy for his brothers and sisters as they seem to leap ahead of him. He celebrated the wedding of one, the birth of his niece with another brother and rejoiced over a promotion his sister earned. He had the right spirit.

So I encourage you today to ask God to create in you a clean heart and renew a right spirit within you. One of my mentors says, “What you want is on the other side of what you won’t do”. Be relentless in your pursuit of what God has for you. I did, and now have, 4 out of 4. Go after your 100% . No settling. 99 ½ won’t do.

Perfected Phoniess

Your smile is plastered, but your heart is breaking. All you need to do is talk about it, or at least hear that somebody else has gone through it and made it. All you need is to not feel isolated and alone. You just hate feeling like you are the only one that has ever had a baby out of wedlock, had a sexually transmitted disease or been cheated on by a no good knucklehead. But where can you find someone that has “gone through”? Everyone around you looks so perfect. Everyone appears like all is well. Everyone is jumping, shouting, running, and dancing all over the sanctuary.

People at work seem to be oblivious to anything other than their own ambitions. Your spouse is one way at home, another way at church and still a different way when you are alone.

The masks we wear hide our grief, our shame, and our “realness”. We cover up using humor, material things, performances, or by becoming mean, tactless and standoffish. In other words, we become phony. We play the role…the starring role actually, in our own lives. People clap after each performance, but when the curtain goes down and the lights are out, the mask is removed. We look at the stranger in the mirror, wipe the tears, apply more makeup and get ready for Act II. Our routine becomes flawless. Our phoniness becomes perfected.

How do you end the performance and get on with reality? It is only in reality that destiny can be achieved. God can only bless and prosper who we really are…not who we pretend to be. Therefore, it is imperative that we re-learn how to be authentic. How do you begin.. by striving to speak the truth in love, even its it the truth about ourselves.
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An excerpt from an upcoming Book by CDJamerson

Its the little things..

About a month ago...I looked across the sanctuary at church and observed my sons worshipping.. All of a sudden..I was frozen in place for about a minute.. tears welled up in my eyes as I realized that at that moment..I was SO happy. I have had tons of happy moments...and have prayed for a gazillion things..but right then I saw more than boys (ok...young men) praising God. I saw a full circle of God's Word coming to pass.

I have another son that is a youth pastor and lives away. I felt the same way when he sent me a picture of him in a national magazine and the photographer had "caught" him worshipping. So yup...I jump up and down with glee when I see where God has brought them. I also know that it hasnt always been this way. I remember pleading with God to save my children when they were babies..before they could even talk. I was on my face in front of their bedroom doors praying for their choices, their friends and their future spouses. Things looked grim everytime I had to go to school because one of them acted up in class, or when I had to call their father because they were fighting or breaking curfew. BUT...

God is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. I disciplined the STANK out of all my kids...I never let up...I prayed, fasted, and sacrificed. I taught them the word, made them memorize the word even when they didn't want to. I played word music around them that they still remember to this day..and now that they are "old"...they have not departed from it. They have made mistakes..no doubt about it. But I see the light of Christ in them, like never before and I know that my prayers have been answered. It took PATIENCE and TIME.

The same is true for things you may be believing for in your family, business, workplace or neighborhood.. It may look grim...but one day you will look up and see a glimmer...a small thing..that let's you know..that God sees and hears and soon you will see the manifestation of everything that God has promised.