Tragedy: Sudden Death

It has been a sad couple of days.  After finding out that Kobe and his daughter were killed along with others, my heart broke.  I kept thinking about seeing them at the Laker's game a couple of weeks ago.  He looked so happy and she was so beautiful.  I decided to write this so that my emotions can be on paper and they are not bottled up in my heart.  I decided to shared my thoughts in hopes that I may help those who are feeling like I am.  Grief.  Sadness.  Heartache.  All of these emotions are normal when we hear of death.  I can begin to ask God why did this have to happen to someone who was so young.  His daughter was only 13 years old and had so much life ahead of her.  His wife is left to raise her daughters.  I imagined last night how she must have felt going to bed that night after saying goodbye to him that morning.  I can imagine how many others who have lost loved ones are not only grieving this, but are reliving their own grief.  I want to encourage you to acknowledge the hurt, the sadness. Allow yourself to go through the pain and not pretend that it is not there.  Don't avoid it because it will come out in some form or another one.  One thing I was reminded of yesterday is that we will all die.  That is a guarantee.  I will say this again.  If you are reading my post and breathing, one day that breath is going to be taken away and you will be no more.  Psalm 104:29-30 says, "When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.  When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth."

This passage says, when the Lord decides to take away our breath we die and return back to dust.  From dust we came and to dust we will return.  This is a reality that I have been pondering for years and also avoiding.  All of us want to think that we will live for ever, but when we have someone close to us die or someone that we admire dies, it shakes us and causes us to think about our own immortality.  Kobe lived an amazing life.  He lived the dream he always dreamed. His daughter lived an amazing life too, but it was cut short.  We don't have the chance to know what she could have become.  But in all of this, I believe God has a plan.  God wants us to realize how short our individual time is on earth and to make the most of every opportunity.  How are you living your life?  Are you watching it waste away or are you following the path laid out before you?  Are you living in fear, afraid to step out on you dreams or are you living in faith?  When someone dies, it leads me to ponder what am I doing with this life, the only life I have to live.  I don't know when God is going to decide my time is up and put me to sleep.  I don't know.  No one knows their individual times, but with this time you have, what are you going to do with it?  How can you use your life to impact others to do positive things with their lives?  These are the questions I ask myself and I plan to live a life of great impact that draws others to Christ.  This is my dream.  I don't want to waste it.  Please don't waste your life.  Please understand how priceless you are and how cherished you are and live the best life possible, all for the glory of God.  I will end with this:  Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heave: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Now is a time to weep and to mourn.  My heart and my prayers are with all of you who are hurting and with all of the families who were killed in this crash.  May God comfort you all and may you be surrounded by His love.

Looking back

I noticed that I haven't written a post in several years!  A lot has been going on.  Over the past 20 years, I lived in New York City.  I moved there to pursue a music career.  While there, I studied the bible and decided to be baptized and become a disciple of Jesus.  My dream of becoming a singer remained in my heart.  I performed in different showcases and had different managers over the years, but nothing ever came from it.  I taught school for several years.  I enjoyed it, but my heart was torn because I wanted to perform and have a career as an entertainer.  I started looking at other artist like Alicia Keys and India Arie who came out in 2002 and I felt that God was against me.  I had been trying to have this career for so long and I was living my life for Him so why was my life so difficult.  If this was a gift that was given to me to impact the world, why was it so hard for me to break into the industry?  I became embittered and angry.  I was angry with God and resentful of my gift of singing.  I asked him to take the desire to sing away from me.  I asked him to take the dream of being a performer away from me. He didn't.  Singing is in my DNA, it is a part of who I am.  I need to breath in order to survive and I need to sing in order for my soul to be encouraged.  So, I decided to use my gift at church and to encourage my ministry.  I decided to not think about becoming a famous artist because it was not where I needed to be.  I had so much to fight through emotionally.  I was feeling so insecure.  I compared my life to others and felt like I was nothing.  I had to grow in accepting myself, my gift and understanding how to wait and be patient.  This was the beginning of me learning what it means to wait on God and to be still before Him.  This was also the beginning of me understanding that the Lord is my portion and therefore I will wait on him (Lamentation 3).  I was frustrated though because things were not happening on my time frame.

I also dated someone for a year and a half.  I had been waiting for my husband and wanted to get married.  By this time my baby sister was married and had already had her son.  Again, I can grumble in my heart and feel like I'm trying to do this life thing according to God's standards but He is not blessing me with what I want when I want it.   You see, I am waiting until I am married to have sex, so yes, I am a virgin.  So, I have been waiting a while for my husband (I am still waiting for him!!).   I began to feel impatient.  Then I got a boyfriend.  I thought he was going to be my husband.  I was sooo wrong.  In the beginning it was good and we had fun, but it all changed.  I could tell that he was feeling insecure about his life.  He was not financially stable and compared himself to me.  He started to be argumentative and we fought a lot.  Nevertheless, I continued to try to work things out with him.   I was willing to remain in a relationship with someone who was not good for me just because I didn't want to hurt him.  I had prayed for God to break us up because I couldn't do it.  I wanted him to break us up because I felt I could handle it better emotionally.  He eventually did break up with me and I was hurt.  It felt like I was craving for something that I knew was bad for me, but because he was familiar, I didn't care.  It was a pain I never want to experience again.  It wasn't time for me to get married, but it was time for me to grow up emotionally and to work on my codependent nature.  It was time for me to work on myself and heal from my past so that, when God says it is time for me to have a career in music or to get married, I could handle it emotionally.

This was the beginning of my emotional growth.  I will continue to share more about this in my next post.