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Our Father...

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Our Father God, I begin this day, both with thanksgiving and trepidation.  On the one hand, I want to grow in every spiritual and material way possible.  This desire to move from where I am to where I need and want to be puts me at odds with hackneyed habits that define and describe my life.  Scripture reassures me that You have not given me a spirit of fear.  Instead, You have bequeathed me with power and love and a sound mind. Why, then, have I awakened today  feeling some kind of way,  as people ask now? In fact, I awake most mornings this way more often than not!  I am compelled to seek You, Father, for it's only through the Holy Trinity that the strongholds I've erected may be diminished or demolished.  "Of myself, I can do nothing but I can do all things through Christ who  strengthens me " become both sentinel an d refuge.  Help me, Father, to fully embrace the truth that You are God who controls everything.  For much too long I've offered these words but
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The "He may not come when you want Him but He's always on time" Miracle

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  miracle - a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency; a highly improbable extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences. "For I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the Lord, thought of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." (Jeremiah 29:11a) Knowledge.  Discernment.  Understanding, Wisdom.  These gifts come in stages or phases, although many of us may disagree on the definition of terms.  I use "stages" and "phases" synonymously to depict progression that leads to a "knowingness," or the acquisition of wisdom.  What do I mean, and how do these terms describe the  miracle of how God works in my life? Two seemingly disparate concepts account for illumination and growth. First and foremost, I am a teacher.  I cannot remember when I didn't know this.  An early memory derived
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"I know it was the blood..."

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  Most of us plead guilty to singing in the shower.  In fact, the only place many of us dare sing is in that safe, compact space where cascading water drowns out the quality of a soprano, tenor, alto, bass, or "whoever I find myself standing closest to," voice. Time, day, or duration doesn't determine when a song might erupt. However, I wonder if occasionally, dear Reader, lyrics bubble up and surprise you ,  because they are totally unexpected?  I ask now because lyrics have begun springing forth from within and are puzzling me. You see, unexpectedly one recent morning, a song from my Mother's era hymnbook began to form silently and internally.  Initially, it sounded little more than a thrum, causing me to pause for only a second, then resume a daily ritual.  Yet, it persisted, and the next thing I knew, I was singing all of  "I know it was the blood.  I know it was the blood.  I know it was the blood for me.  One day when I was lost.  He died upon the cross.  I
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Lord, I thank You, thank You, thank You..."

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I certainly didn't know it while it was happening.  In fact, sometimes I thought of her admonition as a chore at best or just part of her "being Mother."  It took literally decades for me to realize how subtly God, even then, had been growing me in grace, in ways organizations like the Girl and Boy Scouts, or Sunday School classes had set out to do. Yet, it was from Mother's mouth that I learned to thank God, even if it took decades to realize the "You" I referenced was God.  Girl and Boy Scouts taught values and concepts, true, while kiddie Sunday School classes promoted good behaviors.  Rather, I will clarify what the quality of Mother's instructions signified.  Yes, she taught gratitude, thankfulness, politeness, and compassion, among other qualities.  But she did so much more.  Mother modeled  the spirit undergirding whatever she taught. Decades later, I describe her as a woman who walked the walk, talked the talk, and practiced what she preached! 
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"Yes, Jesus Loves Me!"

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Unbidden, almost three decades past the morning his mother and aunt could not awaken him, Philip Anthony Clark lying still in his child-size coffin appeared unbidden in my memory's lens.  I paused in the contrived busyness of most of my days, tried to shake the memory, but couldn't.  Usually at these rare times when thoughts of Philip won't exit my mind, I've learned the art of distraction.  After all, I'm creative and inventive, or at least that's what I've trained myself to believe.   When Philip died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS, American culture paid little, or scant, attention to the matter of dying, death, or its aftermath. America's response to death typically manifested as a mishmash of religious and secular practices.  Whether or not family and close relatives qualified for "paid-time leave," determined the degree that death had entered corporate boardrooms. Not only was I unprepared for Philp's death; no one close to us
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Beware the Perils of Unpacking - 2

 ( Because I  didn't know surrender could or would come as easily or smoothly) , I failed to recognize the unintended (and certainly unplanned) spiritual miracle that had manifested. Granted, I'd finally surrendered to creating an orderly storage space that might deplete the reservoir of energy I'd squandered over procrastinated years.  Had I forgotten that change begins first in the spirit (or unseen) , not in the natural (or seen) ? Had I ever really thought about it? Had it ever been more than an ambitious home project?   "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord.  "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than your ways.  And My thoughts than your thoughts," Isaiah 55:8-9.  My unlikely surrender marked the first of God's intentional miracles! Initially, I didn't receive the spirit of  discernment (because I didn't  recognize it).  Yet,  a  Know-ing-ness quietly descended o
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.Beware the Perils of Unpacking - 1

Unpacking a generation of stored stuff started innocently enough.  I approached the twentieth year of living in a three-bedroom, two-bath, up-and-down, filled with clutter, memorabilia, and a quaint kind of classiness that probably only I appreciated.  This home represented the third of three, the last two I'd purchased as a single mom.  Pride of ownership had been hammered into my six siblings and me by parents who'd survived The Great Depression.  Cloaked in solemnity, Daddy's proud, precious, and pure voice spoke volumes. Taylors were survivors! And homeowners!  Perhaps that's why my parents, bloodied but unbowed, gathered up their Mississippi Delta brood and relocated to Chicago at the tail end of The Great Migration.  They sought "something better." Instead, asphalt sidewalks, crowded with three-story buildings, cramped two apartments on each floor, greeted them.  Concrete. Sidewalks.  Until he died, Daddy blamed Chicago's streets for his calloused, b
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