Tag Archives: Revelation

Thank You!…You Helped Me Become Who I Am Now

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I recently had a conversation with my sister Karen about an experience one of our maternal aunts had with a friend, who she found was sharing her confidences with someone else. My aunt reportedly called her friend and said two simple words, “thank you.” My sister recounted that she didn’t explain to the friend why she was thanking her, she simply shared those two words and hung up.

I asked my sister why our aunt didn’t go into detail or deride her friend about betraying her trust. She said that our aunt didn’t think the details of what happened mattered as much as the knowledge she gained because of the experience. I was stunned by that perspective because I never considered it before!

This started me thinking about the times in my life when people I considered friends betrayed me — using lies and/or actions as weapons of my destruction or shovels to dig a hole into which they planned me to fall  — and how I responded.

The bible teaches that we should, “bless those who curse you, and pray for those who despitefully use you” (Luke 6:28), but it says nothing about thanking them.

So, like my aunt, for those (former) “friends” who willingly betrayed my trust with destruction in mind, THANK YOU…because you have helped me become who I am now!

Pay No Attention To That (Wo)Man Behind The Curtain: Are You Ready to Leave Oz?

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“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” is a line from the movie The Wizard of Oz.  Who but God knew that years later it would be a framework for finding my purpose! Here’s how…

As a girl, it was important to me to have friends.  Unfortunately, I believed that I had to change myself in order to have a lot of them.

As I matured, I realized that it wasn’t necessary to “win” friends by changing who I was. The best thing that I could do for myself and them was to be Jackie – warts and all. This was scary because, as I recounted in previous blogs, I had a lot going on in my life at different times that I didn’t want people to know about.

I had also over the course of several years diligently crafted a personal identity as a confident, intelligent, ambitious and successful Black woman. What has been eye-opening to me is my recent spiritual revelation that this identify was primarily created in response to the fears of failure and poverty that I developed early in life as a result of the significant life changes I experienced.

It is amazing what fear can do — it can either compel you to achieve or cause you to sabotage yourself.  Any type of fear usually benchmarks where you’ve been — what or who you will lose, what others think of you, what you don’t want to experience again — not where you are going.

For years, I thought that life was about climbing ever higher up the professional ladder. Until suddenly, the climb didn’t seem to mean as much. That day, I came to grips with the reality that fear can’t be my reason to succeed.  God has created me to be more than the title at my job, the people that I know and who know me, and other labels that I or anyone else have placed on me. I now know that I was born to encourage and motivate people to pursue their dreams! What a privilege!

Even though fear was my fuel, I can no longer use it to propel me, especially if I want the future that God has designed for me. This next chapter of my life has to be intentional — it must be based on moving forward toward an exciting, yet unknown future rather than running from an already lived past.

It has only been in the last few years that I have come to grips with leaving Oz and the woman behind the curtain.  I am finally ready, able, and more importantly, willing to step from behind the curtain to live the life that I am destined to live.

Are you now ready to leave Oz? I sincerely hope you are because your life can be so much more significant when you give yourself permission to come from behind your curtain!