New Beginnings

    Today I started on my journey toward better health.  I am excited about it and anxious to get started.  As I worked out, I wondered how I got to this place. Was it depression or stress? I would say a little of both.  I began to get depressed about my job in the late 1990's. There was nothing I could do. Things were stressful and when I got married I just got lazy and gained about 30 pounds. I could blame this on Matt, because he likes sweets, but I don't have to eat what he brings home.  The station did a promotion on Calorad, I did lose inches and eventually weight with this and then I started walking. I got in better shape. As my mom got worse, I would get off from work and go to the hospital and stay til Sharon got off from work, I was too tired to exercise.  Later after she was gone my diabetes got worse and so for the past few years, I've been riding the rollercoaster of diabetes.     My doctor feels that if the weight wa...

    God put a rainbow in the clouds God put a rainbow in the clouds when looked like the sun wouldn't shine anymore Thats when God put a rainbow in the clouds That is one of my favorite songs from the Angelic Gospel Singers. I saw a rainbow on the way home from school today. It was bright and beautiful. Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought of the symbol of the rainbow. For me, it means everything is going to be alright. In the Bible it is a covenant between God and man, the He would never destroy the earth again by water. I have seen rainbows before, the first time the sign came that everything would be alright was in December 1996.  I had just gotten home from Kansas with my friend Betty. It was a long trip and because I couldn't drive, she did all of the driving in one day. The next day was Sunday and my mom and I went to Sharon's for some reason. Maybe it was she wanted to see me. I had been away a week.  When we got there that Sunday morning, ...

     It's hard to be in between anything. If you are in between clothing sizes, you have to sometimes move up a size or try to wear the smaller size that is a little snug and doesn't fit you anymore.  If you are in between jobs it is an equally unconfortable place to be. You can't go back to the old job, and there is no place to go. Sometimes you go back to school and retrain and hope that your skills will be useful in God's kingdom.  Its hard when some people see you as a has-been, some days you look back and wonder where God is taking you.   There are days when I struggle with this. I know that God has a plan and He gives you bits and peices on a need to know basis.      By struggle, you begin to wonder where you fit in, in the scheme of things. Am I a student, a displaced worker, or what? In my case I wonder what my destiny is. What does God have for me to do. I think that God has something for me to do in a specific area ...

     I guess you would say I am blessed and other times I wonder. I have a sister, she is three years younger than I am. We are not twins by any stretch of the imagination. Sharon is a little taller than I am, her hair is darker than mine. Her personality is different. She is more squarely shaped than I am, need I go on.  Sharon was born September 16, 1961.  I remember me staying with Miss Mairah because mama was at the hospital. The story was that my mom was on her way in to work when she went in to labor. She said she had been feeling bad for a few days and right before Sharon was born, she began to feel better, lighter. She got ready for work and she went upstairs. Since she was an employee, her benefits took care of the baby, ect.  They say Sharon was red headed at birth. Her hair still has a reddish blomde tint to it.      Sharon was always a handful as a baby. My job was to help mama with Sharon. Back in those days you didn'...

     I finally got to see "The Help", I was whisked back to '63, in Jackson, Mississippi. It was not a good place to be. Medgar Evers was shot and killed in his driveway for trying to get black people registered to vote.  That was the summer the three civil rights workers were missing. They later found them in a shallow grave in the backwoods of Mississippi.  Black people were called colored then as well.  A lot of women worked as maids or cleaned to put food on the table.  My mother never had to do that, when she worked she worked at the hospital in the kitchen as a dietary assistant.  She later would get jobs running the register in a grocery store, and other things when it became economically necessary.  My dad on the other hand was a janitor, maintenance person, orderly, and a few other things before going in the coal mines.  My grandmother and some of her sisters, my aunts, worked as "The Help", as well as some of our neighbors...

Growing up in Beckley and Mabscott in the 1960's as a little girl, not everbody had indoor plumbing. There was the building that sat somewhere in the back yard that was called an outhouse. It had on the door a cut-out shaped like a crescent moon.  When I was in the first grade at Mabscott, it was a two room school. There were outhouses there, one for the boys and one for the girls.  We used to joke about the more well-to-do people had a two-holer and the regular people had a one-holer. If anyone has been around an outhouse, it has a distinctive smell.  You know what it is, no one has to explain what it is for. Sometimes it would have to be reset on another hole and the waste buried. At Halloween, pranksters used to tip it over. Now if the person knew that a prankster was coming, they would move it off of the foundation and if you would sneak in the dark you got a pleasant surprise, you would fall in the hole. The thing about an outhouse, it is still an outhouse n...

     Today I went back to WJLS to do the broadcast "Sword of Victory" the program Bishop Simms started over 20 years ago. I am not really sure why I had to do it. Maybe it was God wanting me to face my fears. I'm not sure. I do know when I was asked to do it, my reaction was anger more than anything else. I really DID NOT want to go up to WJLS.  Some people said I shouldn't be angry, but I was because I thought it showed a lack of respect for me expecting me to go back to a place I used to work.  Then Matt said, well you know that Bishop doesn't ask just anybody to do that broadcast, so I said OK, If they can't find anyone esle to do it I will. I really don't like to say no to our pastor. He has a lot on him pastoring our church and being third in the chain of command in the organization we are in, plus him and his wife have aging mothers and they also have five daughters. So I said OK I will do this. I just didn't want any trouble from the WJLS people...

     It is hard to beleive that ten years have passed since that awful day, September 11, 2001.  I woke up at 3:45AM, and prepared to go to work as I had done. I was a little tired. At the time I was working part time at Grace Bookstore and working full time.  Everytime I get tired a song plays in my head called "Saturday Morning Confusion." Oh, its one of many goofy songs from the 1970's that portrays life in suburbia, with a goofy line that says Harry the dog had puppies last week, we didn't know if it was a he or she now we know. That goofy song talks about cartoons and how the kids are up and all of this.  Getting back to that day I stumbling to the bathroom and get washed up. Matt and I go to work. At that time we were on air together and we do "Joy in the Morning" and he goes to do other things around the station.  I prepare to go to the department head meeting at 9AM.  About five minutes til, everyone was standing watching the TV. Two ...

Have you ever ended the day with the question "why?" Why do I have to go through all of the things I go through. Why do I have to fight to have the simplest things done?  It's not that I question God, I question other people and their motives.  You wonder if things are motivated by jealousy, or people hate to see someone do well, or if they are just plain insensitive... then you wonder if God is testing you or the devil is trying to lay a trap.  So after you ask the question, bind and rebuke the devil, you figure "OK God, what are You trying to show me?" I mentioned on my Facebook page about having to a radio broadcast at my former place of employment.  At first I didn't want to do it, and then my husband the military man looks at everything as a strategic move. Maybe God is sending you there for a reason, and you know Bishop doesn't ask everyone to do the broadcast. OK, well then you start think about the song, "I went to the enemy's camp and...

"Who Moved My Cheese?" is a little book, that you can read in an hour or less, if you rush through it. But don't rush through it or you will miss the nuggets of cheese that it delivers.  My first encounter with this book was at work. Years ago we were going to put in a new automation system, we had just changed ownership and our bosses wanted to make sure we were on board with the change. Some of us were and some weren't. It was only two people out of the group of eight ready for change. I was one of them. Change is uncomfortable and scary.  Most of us don't like change. We can see it coming, we don't embrace the change until we have to. I  wasn't always like that. I was a change agent. As you get older your life settles into a comfortable groove and you get lazy about change.  Every day is the same and you like it. In the book "Who Moved My Cheese", you are introduced to four characters: Sniff and Scurry, Hem and Haw.  Sniff and Scurry seek ...