Because I am trying to stay in the habit

I am posting simply because I have not in a while and I want to stay in the habit. Life is good. Met some cool people in church... but wait I think I told ya'll that already. Anyways I had dinner at their house and we had such good conversation. We talked about church and life and race and poverty and everything... we laughed and joked and just enjoyed each other. Yeah good conversations. I suppose I told you they were from the Bay Area right? Yeah they are. I told you they were black professionals in their 40's? Maybe I told you that.... so you see why it was so good for me to meet them. :) Did I tell you that they had two cute little boys? (you know how much I want to have a cute little black boy right?)

God and I are just chilling and He continuing in the process of weeding out the good, the bad, and the ugly from me. On this week’s agenda is owning up for when you do something professionally stupid. Check, lesson learned yesterday. Also on the agenda is learning to be ok with telling someone no even when they mean well. Check. The sub part of that lesson is acknowledging that maybe when you feel a sense of freedom and an excitement that now you can pray and dream and follow God and not try to please them maybe just maybe (read with a certainty) your trying to spare their feelings might have been disobedience to Him. Hum... Ok it was disobedience.

It is amazing what we will do to keep from feeling uncomfortable. I love this person but maybe even stronger than my love for them is this desire to be at peace with them. But not true peace.... peace that is simply the absence of conflict. It is the type of false peace that will have you dancing around another person trying to make them happy instead of having a real, slightly messy relationship with them—a relationship that forces the two of you to look more like Christ.

Iron sharpens iron… iron hitting iron creates sparks and creates heat but it sharpens you. I have a friend who for argument’s sake we will call Brian (read his name is Brian). You can’t be too thin skinned around him. And he will rag you in a way that gets to the heart of the matter. I will be honest sometimes I got huffy, ok I did get huffy when he ragged me about certain actions that I was taking. But I needed him to be honest with me. I needed someone to be in my face and go “Nnena these are the actions you are taking and are you aware of what the consequences of xyz will be? Oh and by the way you need to own up. ” Oh Brian. I have another friend Michelle who is the same way. We had not talked in years but one day she was straight up with me. And I appreciated it. I cringed a little but if I cringed it probably had some uncomfortable truth to it. I am hungry for people that will be honest with me. I am not going to lie to you that I won’t sometimes pitch a fit or sulk but at some point I will hopefully turn around. Please don’t give up on me if I sulk.

Ok I have to get back to the article that I am writing right now.

Love you. Kick me in the teeth ever so often

Oh did I tell you that I have such a spirit of levity and joy consistently now? Yeah… Though life is not perfect I am where God wants me to be and I am enjoying that place.