Author: Roshonda B

I have been in many situations where a person’s outlook on me was different than the outlook I had for myself. Trying to prove to someone that you are a good person can be very tiring, you lose sleep, and you wonder constantly trying to come to grips as to why they feel that way about you, especially if they really don’t know you. You try to find ways to make amends with ONE person whom may have a misunderstanding about you – BUT what about the other 7 Billion people in the world whom are doomed to have the same misunderstanding about you – What are you going to do, Chase them all down……I think not.

In my life I have been misunderstood, judged wrongly, not liked too much, called stuck up (in which I have no idea as to how they could come up with that analogy), I have even been judged by others concerning the relationships I’ve chose to nurture, everybody has an opinion and while they smile in your face on one hand, you find out that they are saying other things about you on the hand. The thing is people will be people, everyone has a thought or an opinion as to how you should run your life, raise your kids, whom you should and shouldn’t date, where you should go to church, where you should work, what kind of car you should drive and even about your choice of residence……with so many opinions it’s easy for us to get sidetracked and on the race of “WHY I DID, WHY I SAID, WHY I MADE THAT CHOICE & WHY I’M JUST BEING ME” If we’re not careful and I have been here many times before, we lose sleep, we lose weight, we lose our sanity and even lose focus trying to please people and be whom their thought of us should be……

About three years ago I had an instance of this sort concerning my son, at the church I once attended we were getting ready for Christmas Cantata and the kids were going to do a song/skit for the program. While my son was standing with the kids in the choir another young man started kicking him, well he told the young boy to stop and to his surprise – he didn’t. My son told me about it and being the mother I am, I just told him to look over it and move over a little, maybe they were standing too close – Well when they went back up to continue to practice, the young man continued to kick my son, Once practice was over we went in the back for refreshments and my son ended up sitting by the young man and his sister, the young man became rude and began to act unseemingly, (inside story, my son told the young man that his sister was cute and that’s what made him act out even more) I finally told my son to stay away from the young man and to leave him alone, We already had the issue of him kicking him and I really didn’t want him to get involved with anything else concerning him, I honestly thought that by telling him that, it would resolve things, I didn’t want to discuss the matter with anyone because children are children and they do tend to act out when a parent is not around, but in the midst of me telling my son to leave the young man alone, a church member came into the dining room – catching the ending of that sentence, went and told another church member that I told my son to stay away from the gentlemen. Of course I was called to the carpet and was told through someone else that my behavior was out of order and that I should not be speaking that way to children, they stated that they were trying to draw people to the church and didn’t want to run people away. So according to them the language I used was uncalled for, I immediately was accused of not being “church-like” I was wrong and that is not how church people were supposed to carry on, WHAT??

They took the half-truth of someone else and ran with it, they didn’t know of the events that happened prior but at that time it became of no concern, I was being judged on what I said and the verdict already had me looking very GUILTY! My integrity was challenged, they weren’t thinking of all the other good things I had done, said or given; NO, right now I was rachid, thoughtless, careless and downright wrong. REALLY?? What I didn’t understand was, why was all this information being related to me by someone else, I immediately became sad and disappointed because all my life I had been judged in some type of form, way, shape or fashion, it’s amazing no one remembers the good somehow as the negative always has a domino effect of coming in first place in every circumstance.

I lost sleep over that incident, I immediately began to think of the many situations I could do to make it right, I didn’t mean what I said – IF only they had gotten the full story and maybe it was my fault as I should have told someone what was going on with the young man and my son prior to this fault, then maybe none of this wouldn’t have taken place – But I was just trying to be the PEACEMAKER in the situation by trying to figure out the right way of dealing with my son and this negative situation. Now I’m being viewed as a NON-CHRISTIAN! 

I said that to say many times our character is tested, our integrity is questioned and our motives will be judged but you can’t help, neither do you have control over what people may say, think or perceive about you, There’s no need in chasing down an untruth and forget the notion of trying to get people to see you in a different light – While people are people and they will talk, criticize, judge and perceive what they want about you. Just remember one thing:

THEY DID ALL THAT AND THEN SOME TO JESUS FIRST!!

There’s a song by Vickie Winans that states, No Cross; No Crown, the song goes on to say if you can’t stand to be talked about sometimes, if you can’t stand a little disappointment sometimes, if you can’t stand being talked about sometimes and if you think you should always be up and never down – No Cross, No Crown – Must Jesus bear the cross alone?

We all will be misjudged sometimes and our identity will be compromised but if Jesus could endure it then so can you, by acting out and chasing a misconception down to prove you are not like what’s being said or misconstrued about you is saying you are better than Christ or Well that was in Jesus’ Day – He has no clue about LIFE today…

Trust me my friend, the same messed up people that was back then, is still the same people today – the clothes and time century may have changed but God is still the same. The bible says that there’s nothing new under the sun – so everything that happened back then, is just a repeat of things happening now.

Keep being you, you can’t chase a lie – PLEASE DON’T TRY! That LIE will always run into the TRUTH. So keep your cool, keep your sanity and just know if they talked about Jesus, they will do the same to you – HE ENDURED and has now given you the POWER to ENDURE! Even more than he did.

Continue to let God work in your life and let people think what they want to think and perceive what they want to perceive because their thought of you (which is what it is) will outweigh the TRUTH you have about yourself any day. Don’t compromise your character instead STAND STILL and watch God turn that THOUGHT into the TRUTH.

You know tomorrow is or today, whenever you read this is Thursday; However, I hear a lot of people talking about Throwback Thursdays, in which is supposed to be a day where you revisit the past to bring something to the present day, this could be a variety of things depending on the individual. In thinking about that I decided to revisit a passion of mine that I honestly didn’t really put too much thought into and that was/is “writing” – You know before you were born God knew if you were going to be a boy or a girl, he knew what color you would be, what your name would be and even knew (far ahead) who you were meant to become, what accomplishments and failures you would experience in life and how you would handle or use the gifts that he has placed on the inside of you.

The bible says “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5)

So if God knew you before your parents knew that you were to be born, do you not think that he already has equipped you with the tools to handle the gift that he has placed on the inside of you. He placed a wonderful gift in you, a magnificent gift that someone else might do or duplicate but because it’s a GIFT that HE has given to you, you will have the emotion, the spirituality and the drive in you to take your gift to levels that an ordinary person whom don’t have that gift will not be able to do. You see God has equipped “YOU” with the gift, so you already have the necessary tools to take that gifting from a 2 to a 20.  With that being said, I revisited a writing that I did when I was in the 11th grade, which was just last year – Just kidding, it seemed like last year, but it’s been many moons ago.

When I looked back at the writing, I couldn’t believe that it had been so long ago as my words were so big, you would have thought you were looking at cloud writing, guess I was still trying to figure out my writing technique. As I looked at the writing before me I thought about the gift that God had placed in me, I realized that I always had the ability to write; I wrote poems, I wrote short stories, I wrote plays, I even composed and wrote for newsletters – WOW! all these years and I had not even noticed how God allowed me to use my gifting and I sat on it, used it sometimes but generally sat on it, I didn’t take it no further than I wanted it to go, It was just a passion that I loved doing but I wasn’t using it the way God wanted me to use it. You know there’s a saying that says “Your talent is God’s gift, What you do with it is your gift back to God”

I challenge you today to revisit your passion, which is your God given gift. Are you using it like you should?, Have you used it some and now it’s on the backburner because life has gotten too busy? What is your passion…..what have you been doing all this time, maybe just for fun only to realize that it’s your natural born gift.

You see, you were not just BORN, you were BORN with a gift already equipped and ready to go on the inside of you. You wouldn’t expect to buy a car without the engine or buy a lawn mower without the motor, just as those objects come equipped already to help you do the job that you need to do, so is the God given gift that’s placed on the inside of you.

USE EVERY GIFT, EXPEND EVERY TALENT – So when you go before God, you won’t have to give him anything back.

In Lieu of Throwback Thursday, I thought I would share one of my first writings with you – It may be a little cheesy but it was for a class project, the teacher challenged us to use our imagination and write about anything in the room for a grade – This is where my imagination took me..

THE DAY IN THE LIFE OF A CHALKBOARD

If you have not seen it already, the movie “RAY” was a Biography about the life of legendary singer Ray Charles, the movie depicted his life from childhood when he went blind to an adult. In the movie it also showed his triumphs as well as his demons…….I thought the movie was great and that Jamie Foxx did an Excellent job in portraying him, he went on to win an Oscar for his performance.

I loved the movie and out of all of the scenes that stood out, the scene below stood out the most to me – In this scene Ray had totally gone blind, his mom had been trying to teach him to do things on his own because the world that they lived in would not be so kind to a blind boy/man. In this scene he ran into the house, tripped and fell and immediately screamed out to his mother for HELP! In the midst of watching him, her body immediately jerked to go and pick him up, but she stood back; watching and waiting to see what he would do next.

You know just like that mother I believe God does us the exact same way, He loves us but he’s not the God that is going to constantly hold our hands through every trial, every test or every disappointment. There will come a time when he will stand back and see what it is that we will do, will we stay down in defeat or will we get up, dust ourselves off and listen quietly as the young man in the movie did, to the sounds around us, sometimes we can’t hear God in chaos or when we’re upset, but we hear him easily when we are quiet,  in this quietness that’s where he will guide us to our next step.

Just as a mother, who’s child is learning to walk for the very first time – her arms wants to constantly pick the child up every time he or she falls but in her heart she knows that, that will not help them but disable them and their chances of having a productive life would be slim. That’s how God does us, we start out as children, we make our mistakes, we fall, we get up and we fall again but in the fall a lesson is supposed to be learned which will make us stronger and more in tune to his spirit.

God does not expect us to stay children because in the spiritual realm we have phases – we start out on milk but as we grow in the word we graduate from milk to puree foods to get us ready for the tougher food ahead. God loves you and yes you may have fallen but when you cry out to him and he doesn’t answer right away, don’t think of it as God not listening to you or seeing you when you fall, he sees you and he’s listening – He just wants you to Grow Up strong so that you may put on a heavier armor to battle, so when you do face your oncoming trials – you can face them head on; because you will be strong enough to handle it.

And at the end, just like the mother did to her son; when you have mastered the test set before you, God will then come and wrap his arms around you and say – Good job Son, Good job Daughter you have passed the test.