Holy Sheep

Think about the Holy Sheep when you get up for Church on Sunday! 🙂

PS To all my readers – The quality of the writing on this site has slipped (and disappeared) as of late due to an illness,  I will begin writing again soon. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Have you ever prayed this way?

I have to admit, at one time, I was absolutely guilty of this. Thanks to God, and His awesome power, I realized that love is waaaay more powerful than hate.

When I truly listened to God, He showed me there is a better way to pray. Here’s how:

Here’s to having fun this weekend and letting love rule.

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for

I just returned from Tybee, Island. My husband, his daughter (now my friend), her friend, and I all went down to Tybee for the weekend.

As many of you know,  I have a challenge called Lupus that limits my sun exposure. For a ‘child of the sun’, this is the one limitation that I find particularly hard to live with. I’ve always been the first one up in my household, the first one out into the sun, and usually the last one to go back in. Not anymore. I can’t be outside during the height of sunlight without paying some serious consequences. More than that, I still have issues with asking others to adjust their schedules to accommodate my condition. It makes me feel selfish, but  I don’t have much of a choice in the matter.

On the first morning in Tybee, we all got up extra early, so I could avoid the mid-day sun. I felt a little guilty for getting everyone out of bed so early, but no one complained.

We went down to the beach near the pier. We sat out our blankets, our cooler, and my umbrella. We were some of the first people on the entire beach. As I sat there, I watched people skitter out to the beach like sand crabs, stop at one spot and then another, finally settling on one spot,  put their things down, slather on sunscreen, and do what comes naturally – play tag with the waves.

Young and old, black and white, coiffed and unkempt, tattooed and tattoo-free: All the people did exactly the same thing.

As the morning wore on, I struck up conversations with several people on the beach. Some were from Russia, the Ukraine, the Midwest, Canada, and Jamaica. All of them were smiling as we exchanged stories in different accents and shared our experiences. Not one person on the beach refused to talk to me or became angry because I ‘disturbed’ them. In that one special place,  we were all the same. We all had limitations, strengths, weaknesses, triumphs, and stories to tell.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky, I put on my Janis Joplin T-Shirt (it’s as hideous as it sounds and, yes, it’s tie-died), my flip-flops, my sunglasses, and I walked to the pier. It’s actually a large pavilion as well as a pier. I got a cool drink from the drink stand, sat at a table, and listened to Jimmy Hendrix  blare out of the speakers attached to the roof of the pavilion.  The radio station was paying tribute to 1967 – the year I was born. As I sat there, I recalled that I had been born the very year that Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin ‘hit the big-time’. It was also the year that John Coltrane died. The summer of 1967 was  the Summer of Love and the year that Woodstock ‘happened‘.

I got up and puttered around the deck. I was drawn to a plaque on the wall.  Apparently, Tybee Island Pavilion Pier was a hot spot in its hey-day. People came from all over  to hear big bands swing and dance under the stars. In 1967, the pavilion burned to the ground.  Then it struck me, how so much tragedy and so much love  happened in the year that I was born, and how so many events had to conspire so that I could be standing in that exact spot, in front of that specific plaque, on this particular pier, at this one individual moment.

Then, I heard another song on the speakers. It was  ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ by the Spencer Davis Group. My hips automatically began to sway. I threw my hands up in the air, shifted my weight, bobbed my head, and danced with reckless abandon. As I danced, I looked around me. The little girl in the Barbie bathing suit, the old man with the ice-cream cone, the young black man with the tattoo on his arm, the white kid with plaid swim trunks, and the chick with braids were dancing too.

We all danced as people looked on. Some joined us, some watched us, but no-body tried to stop us. It was a beautiful moment. Titles, bank accounts, status, wealth, and things like Lupus did not exist.

When the song was over, we skittered across the pavilion to our own private places of thought –  I to my table, the old man to his bench, the young black man to the ice-cream stand, the chick with braids to the water fountain, the white kid  to the men’s room, and the little girl in the Barbie bathing suit to her mama’s arms. Then I realized every moment is a huge conspiracy. God has set so many things in motion to culminate into one single moment for us to enjoy.  It’s not how we got there that counts, but what we do with that moment that counts.

Here’s to making special moments happen in your life today. Just be open to it, and love yourself enough to just let go. And, if you get the chance,  dance like a maniac.