Posted on Sunday, August 3, 2014

Cooking & Cleaning Oh My! – Going From ‘Single Lady’ to ‘Smug Married’…

Hello World,

How ironic that the morning I commence to write a post on the fine art of cooking and cleaning in a marriage, the pilot light of our stove goes off! And I was starting to make turkey stroganoff too…Guess we will be eating at my mama’s house or out for Sunday dinner…LOL…(I’m laughing on this post, but on the inside, I’m a bit worried as I’m a frugalista and like to keep money in my pocket…Oh well…things break…such is life…)

If you are reading this post, I’m reasonably sure you didn’t come here to read about me whining and moaning and groaning about a pilot light…but pardon me, if every few sentences or so, I whine a bit…LOL…So with that being said, on to today’s post…

As a single woman, cooking and cleaning weren’t a big deal…I either did or didn’t…Either way, no biggie. No one had to see my house but me, and if I didn’t feel like cooking, eating out was just as easy an option…Not so when a man is around who likes to eat meals that your mama would make…meals with large quantities of meat and side dishes and such…

So what’s a tried and true single girl who finds herself married supposed to do?…Well, nothing very quickly…And some of this may provoke the ire of my more feminist sisters, but even though I have some feminist beliefs, I don’t call myself one…But I decided to consult my recipe books and find recipes for meals that a man would eat…not the vegetarian or lite entrees that I whipped up for myself from time to time…I did try to make some of those dishes for him, but he either didn’t like them or complained that he was still hungry after eating them…LOL…

So slowly but surely, I’m getting more familiar with meat…I still don’t know how to cook a whole chicken, but since I’ve been married, I’ve made curry chicken, barbecue chicken, stroganoff, etc. with side dishes and more…I try to cook Sunday dinner every Sunday which is a big deal considering that although I bought my first home in my ’20s, I was at my mama’s house every Sunday for dinner until a year ago…In fact, for most of the three years that Robert and I dated, I brought a plate of food from my mama’s house to either my home if we were hanging together after church or over to his home.

And cooking during the week has been a challenge for me too…I work pretty hard every day. I have a job, and I have some freelance gigs plus I teach at a gym…plus I’m working on my second novel…So usually during the week when I got home during my single days, I would chill for a while and then get back up and work some more. Since I’ve been married, now I have to consider someone else too. And since men like to eat during the week too( 🙂 ), I had to figure out easy meals that I could put together and still have some chill time when I get home….

I’m still working that out but I have discovered these awesome grilled chicken breasts from Trader Joe’s. They are individually wrapped in plastic. You can just throw those suckers in boiling water and within minutes, they are cooked and juicy too! And Wal-Mart has these convenient bags of assorted frozen vegetables that cook very quickly and go very nicely with the chicken breasts. Within 15 minutes or so, I can feed the big lug 🙂 That is my go-to meal on weeknights…I’m still working on others…And I usually make a pot of soup or something very simple for me at the beginning of the week, and I can eat that for days…

Now on to cleaning…Now that I’m living with someone, I see without a doubt how truly messy I am…I can leave a piece of paper on the floor in the same spot for months…Robert teases me that although my office looks like papers have carpeted it, I know where are all of my papers are located…That’s funny but kind of sad…I’ve been praying to be neat or at least neater for years…I was raised by a very neat Jamaican mother that considers it her personal failure that I have not followed in her footsteps…when I left her home, I think I rebelled…I stopped folding clothes as soon as they came from the dryer, and I didn’t dust every Saturday and all of the things that I had to do when I lived with my mother and father…but now that I’m living with someone again, I see the benefit of having a tidy home…An associate once said to me, “Having a clean home makes you feel rich.” That is true…I love being in a neat person’s home…I cannot explain why…Lately, I have found myself holing up in my hubby’s closet to read because it is so neat in there…(Shhh, don’t tell him.) Hopefully, one day, God will work a miracle in my life, and I will automatically hang up clothes when I take them off and walk around with a sponge like my mom does…

Finally, some of this is what I was scared of years ago when I saw a lot of my friends, sorority sisters, classmates and more get married years ago…God knew what He was doing when He took his time in bringing the right man for me into my life…I wasn’t and didn’t want to be ready for all of this…I was selfish and wanted to keep it that way….But as has been said, God doesn’t called the equipped, He equips the called…He is equipping me to be a wife and all that it entails….

One year down (a week from today) and forever to go…

Any thoughts?

Note: This is the second in series of three posts I’m writing about being married for a year as of next Sunday 🙂 To read my first post, go to Couples’ Night – Going From ‘Single Lady’ to ‘Smug Married’…

Posted on Sunday, July 27, 2014

Couples’ Night – Going From ‘Single Lady’ to ‘Smug Married’…

“In my heart, I will always be a single girl.”

Check the uncomfortable heels, the short skirt and the sassy pose – a single lady pic fo sho…I was on a cruise with other single ladies too..

This on point observation was offered by a married friend in my book club after she read one of my many, many, many single girl/lady blog posts a few years ago. I didn’t know quite what she meant at the time because I was not married, but now that I’m married, I do get it and I so agree…

Two weeks from today, I will have been married for a total of one year!!! Wow, my head is still spinning because I’m such a single lady in temperament, training and time lived on this earth. So in honor of my wedding anniversary, I have decided to devote three Sunday blog posts to going from a single lady to being a smug married. First of all, if you are unaware of the pop culture references I’m making when I say “single lady” and “smug married,” let me illuminate that for you. In many ways, Beyonce’s 2008 supa dupa hit song “Single Ladies: (Put a Ring on It)” captures one of the goals of many single women: getting a man to put a ring on it. “Smug Married” is a term from the wonderful 2001 movie “Bridget Jones’s Diary” in which Bridget, a true single lady, talks about her dislike of married people who see singlehood as a subservient state.

Now that I have defined those terms for you, let me get to the subject of today’s post: Couples’ Night. To date, I’ve been to three Couples’ Night/Excursions and each one makes me feel like I’m in elementary school. And I guess I am in elementary school of sorts. If being single was college, I would be Dr. Jackie and on a speaking tour. And if being married was college, I would be a kindergartener learning my colors and maybe my letters.

1. On my first Couples’ Night last September, three couples went to a club/restaurant type of establishment. I had been at a convention all day so I didn’t really feel like going out and if had been single, it would have been one of those nights that I would have stayed in. But since I’m now part of a team, I took one for the team literally and figuratively. I must confess, my look for the night was lackluster. I threw on some jeans, a cute but not slay-worthy top, some flats and headed out with the hubby. We ended up in Atlantic Station on the same weekend as the BET Hip Hop Awards. You already know. I felt like Mrs. Frump or President Obama in his mom jeans. And as I looked at the collective of us, we all looked pretty comfortable if you know what I mean or least suburban.

The club/restaurant was filled with young hotties whose skirts were short and heels were high. Lustrous hair flowing all the way to the floor it seemed was atop everyone’s head. And their makeup was shoot ready. In fact, I felt like I was an extra extra extra in a rap music video shoot except I didn’t make the cut. The next day on the way to church, I told my husband how I felt. He made some comment about how a 40-year-old woman shouldn’t look like they could star in a rap video and who wants that kind of woman anyway. I smiled with gratitude, but this is what I was thinking:

At this age, no, I don’t want to star in a rap music video, but I at least want to look like I could be asked…

Maybe it’s a stereotype, but coupled people tend to look comfortable. When a dude used to hit the gym a few times a week and be on the go, that same dude, once he gets married, starts finding excuses to not workout or stay at home because it’s less expensive. When a lady used to get hair done done on the regular and wear the latest, hottest outfits, that same lady, once she gets married, tries to hold out a little longer between hairdos to save some money and wears flat because heels hurt. My mom told me that my grandmother told her a few years after she got married that she needed to keep herself up so my father’s eyes wouldn’t stray. (TMI yes! But my mom heeded her advice.) The truth is: we all tend to get more comfortable, the older we get (single or married), but for some reason, being married seems to accelerate the process…

2. On our second Couples’ Night/Excursion, four couples traveled to Chateau Elan to celebrate Valentine’s Day or as some people say Single Awareness Day since Valentine’s Day is more of an event when you’re single. Even though it was meant to be a relaxing weekend, I must confess I was so nervous. Instead of spending just a few hours with couples, it was an overnight trip. As I said before, I have a doctorate degree in being single. When you’re single and traveling with your girls, there are various behaviors and or conversation topics that are acceptable. For example, if you want to go off by yourself and explore, that is perfectly acceptable on a single girl trip after all you are single. Or if you want to stay in one night and watch television, while not optimal, that’s cool too. And while we can talk about anything, inevitably, the conversation will shift to men and we compare notes, get updated, laugh about them, cry, swear them off, etc. But on a married couple trip, it seems like you must be grouped in two at all times. And no one really gets into the nitty gritty of their relationship because for the most part, what happens in a marriage stays in a marriage…It’s real pc and settled like….But I’ve only been on one couples trip so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about yet…

3. My third Couples’ Night was last Saturday. It was a game night. Every couple had to bring a game. I, in true single lady form, brought my “Sex and the City” trivia game. Hey, what can I say? It was a nice night. There was a personal chef who cooked Asian food that rivals if not beats the best Asian food I’ve ever had. It was in a home so there was pressure to BET rap music video worthy. It wasn’t an overnight trip so there was no pressure to figure out what to do or talk about for hours and hours. But then we played a marriage game in which couple had to guess the favorite video, food, etc. of their mate to get points. (We did something like this in premarital counseling.) It was the last game of the night, and I thought everything was going pretty smoothly until then. When you’re single, you’re expected to be an expert on nobody but yourself. But as a married person, not only do you have to know yourself, you have to be an expert on someone else. I don’t know about you but I’m still figuring out myself. It was only 10 years ago that figured out that I’m a commitment-phobe in most areas of my life and that was only because of counseling. So hubby and I got three out of six questions right. That would be 50 on a test. An “F” in other words…Hey, we’ve only been married for months…

Since I pray I will be married for many more years and or until death ( 🙂 ), I hope to experience many more Couples’ Nights and learn all the rules of this new fraternity of sorts that I have joined…

But as today, I still feel more like a “single lady” than a “smug married.”

Any thoughts?

Posted on Sunday, June 29, 2014

Why I Almost Left My Church…

Hello World,

With a church on nearly corner, it can be tempting to think that choosing a church is akin to choosing a grocery store…I can get some of this there and some of that over there and if I keep on sampling, I can find everything I need…

I’ve been going to my church since I was six years old…Yes, For 36 years, I have been either been taken to or driven to Central Christian Church in Southwest Atlanta every Sunday…I began going to the church because my father Dr. Denzil D. Holness was named the new pastor, and he has continued to be the pastor of Central ever since…When I was a little girl, our church was my second home and felt like it…There was lots of love and laughter and lessons about Jesus…I made some of my best friends there, traveled all over the country with various church groups and sought out the consoling of my church when the outside world was too painful to withstand alone (It’s hard to be a pre-teen and teen 🙂 )

However, as I got older, things began to change at my small church…Friends that had grown up with me at the church either moved away after college or explored other churches and never came back…In the beginning, it hurt me, but I eventually learned that adulthood warrants making new choices and sometimes those choices include people moving in and our of your lives…When I returned from the University of Georgia in Athens back to Atlanta and began attending my church again, my church was not the same…New people had come in and others had gone…

In addition to noticing the changes within my church, I noticed that I had also changed…I began living as a Christian in a way that I wasn’t willing to before college…And being the adventurous and curious person I’ve always been, I wondered what Christianity looked like through the lens of other churches…I was able to explore the mores of different Christian communities initially through a journalism internship with the Georgia Baptist Convention…I had done some of that in college as I wasn’t able to attend my home church since I was hours way, but this time, I was more intentional about my discoveries and open to what God was saying to me…I went to various conventions at different churches in a variety of denominations and I met Christians from diverse backgrounds and locations…Yet, I remained attending Central faithfully every Sunday….I must confess I felt obligated to do so as the pastor’s daughter…And I secretly wondered what it would be like to not just visit another church but to actually become a member of another church…

However, about a decade ago, Central began experiencing some difficulty…The neighborhood around the church had changed and many people had moved away…People got busy… People died…I’m not sure what else, but church attendance sharply dipped for a while…And I got very discouraged…Although I’ve never been a pastor and have no desire to be a pastor, I had lots of advice for father…I finally declared that I was tired of feeling like I had to attend Central and told my parents to consider themselves forewarned…I was church shopping and not hiding it…It was what I needed…I went to megachurches, medium-sized churches and small churches throughout the city of Atlanta and satisfied my curiosity about “greener pastures.”

And then one Sunday morning, an elderly woman called me and asked me to bring her to church…The first Sunday, I did so and thought nothing of it…And then the next Sunday, she called for another ride…By the third Sunday, I realized that God was speaking to me through that woman…I was needed at my church…And in spite of my church’s shortcomings, there was more for me to do there…So I returned…However, I came back with a new approach to being a member of Central…I decided that I would attend Central every Sunday, but I would not feel internally pressured to do something because I was the pastor’s daughter and I would feel free to attend another church on Wednesday evening for Bible study…It can get weird after a while if your father who has been your father for all of your life has also been your pastor for all of your whole life (at least as far back as you can recall)…And this approach works for me…

While I believe that you should receive a lot by attending and being a member of your church, being a part of a church is just as much about what you give…And sometimes, you can give in ways that you may have not considered…One of the ways I hope I give to my church is being an example to some of the children at the church who are from a disadvantaged background…I want to inspire them to dream big and allow God to bring them to heights they only thought possible for other people…

And over time, more people began coming again, and Central was on longer “The Valley of Dry Bones.” We returned to life…As the population of the church changed, I didn’t think it was possible to meet a potential husband at my church…And then one day Robert showed up…He came up with one of my friends who I grew up in church with…This friend was one of the friends that had moved away from Central and then he returned with a handsome friend to boot 🙂 And you know the end of the story…

Anyway, I’ve said or written all of this to say that deciding to leave a church is a serious decision and should not be done haphazardly nor without prayer to know God’s will…I’m not mad at or resentful about any of the childhood friends that have moved on to different churches…I trust that the same God who leads me to Central each Sunday leads them to wherever they go each Sunday…

Here is Pastor H.B. Charles Jr.’s perspective on “When It’s Time to Leave a Church.” Thanks to the TheOldBlackChurch.blogspot.com for the post idea…

Any thoughts?