Category Archives: Relationships

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Christmas Just Ain’t Christmas Without the One You Love…

Hello World!!!

On the day after tomorrow, Christmas, once again, will be here…Although it is the busiest time of the year, it is still the most wonderful time of the year…In spite of all of the commercialism, for those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ, it is a time to remember Emmanuel which means “God with us.” This is the time that Christians remember that God so loved the world that He sent us His son who was born as a baby. That baby, Jesus Christ, was born to die for our sins. And now because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we have fellowship with the Father. God is with us.  For the Christmas story in detail, please read Luke 2.

But what are we to do when the ones we love are not with us on Christmas?

This month, I have known of two people who died…A friend of mine died without warning a couple of weeks ago…I was stunned because we communicated via e-mail just days before she died…In her e-mail, she was telling me how she was planning to prepare for Christmas and now she is gone…It’s amazing that someone with so much life and influence could literally be here today and gone tomorrow…Another friend of mine lost a loved one a week or so ago too…I hope it is comforting for these families to know that our loved ones are now with the Father…but aside from all of that ethereal knowledge, I’m reasonably sure that it just plain sucks to not have them right there with them…

I have tried to offer comforting words to those I know who have lost loved ones this month, but I imagine there is nothing I can say that will truly comfort them…But what I can do is cherish my loved ones as I now realize they may not be here next Christmas…I was talking with my mom last night on the telephone, and she was kind of getting on my nerves as she often does…but as I type these words, I’m glad that I have her, my father, my brothers and a host of other family members and friends…

If you are anything like me, it is easy to focus on what you don’t have at this time of the year…but I am finding out if we are not thankful for what we have, what we have may just be taken away from us…In fact, I recently had to sit down and write a gratitude list just to remind myself of my blessings…

It’s funny sometimes the things we think we do for other people are really for us…This is what I mean…I teach fitness classes at a gym…The truth is that much of the time I would rather be curled up sleeping in my warm bed rather than working out…but because I teach fitness, I have to work out…I began this blog as a way to minister to others, but mostly I have ministered to myself….

Anyway, I digress…if you have your loved ones around you at Christmas, consider yourself blessed…And pray for the families who have lost loved ones…especially at this time of the year…

Any thoughts?

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Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby…Let’s Talk About You and Me…

True or false?

True or false?

Hello World!!!

After a blog writing hiatus (I needed it), I am back baby! So to get this party started right, I thought I would write about a subject sure to get a few comments…That’s right, I’m talking about sex…I’ve been hesitant to discuss this topic because of its very personal nature, and trust I won’t be revealing much about myself here…but inevitably, I knew I had to bring it up…so here goes…

If you’ve attended church for at least a month, you are pleasantly surprised to know that you can contact the God who rules this universe by simply praying. It’s a definite perk of being a Christian. And if you’ve been introduced to a few scriptures particularly those in Psalm, you know that God promises to take care of those who take the time to honor Him and seek His guidance – undeniably a benefit of being a Christian. And if you are at the right church, you discover that you can meet some really good people who can be “God with skin on” when you really need to hear from God through human voices…There are countless benefits to being a Christian!

But there a few edicts that come with being a Christian that frankly aren’t that appealing…one of those is premarital sex…Apparently, if you are married, you have a license to “get ur freak on,” but if you are single, you must “flee fornication. ” (I Corinthians 6:18 if you are interested…) I started hearing about all of the many verses in the Bible that discourage premarital sex when I was a teenager…At that point, it’s all good…You are still a little scared of boys anyway…Well, let me speak for me…As a teenager, I was not ready for sex…I knew I had all sorts of strange feelings when I looked at boys I considered fine, but the idea of having sex with them was certainly farther than I wanted to go…

Where these Biblical principles get tricky is when you are fully grown and you know what to do about it…Y’all know what I mean, right? It just ain’t cute anymore when you hit 30 years old, but it clearly states in God’s word, if you love Him, you will keep his commandments…(John 14:15)…So what are single Christian women and men of a certain age supposed to do when we are no longer “never scared” when it comes to sex…Being the bibliophile that I am, you know I’ve read numerous books about the topic…the most recent book I’ve read is “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity” by Lauren F. Winner. She makes a lot of good points about why it’s wise to wait…

I may bring up some points from her book as I write this post, but let me bring up a few reasons I think that premarital sex may not be the way to go with or without the Bible verses…By most studies, women and men are getting married later in life as time progresses…Chances are most people have dated quite a few people by the time they finally do get married…so the potential to have had several sexual partners in a lifetime is quite possible…I just have to think that eventually could be draining mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually over time…Maybe for men that would not be as much of  a factor, but from the women I know, every time you get involved with a man fully and it’s not your husband, a little piece of you dies…And it’s hard to be optimistic about dating over the long haul when you invest so much only to get back so little… ( I don’t care what the women in Sex and the City say…)

And while I believe in women’s liberation and all, we know that there are double standards in what is appropriate sexual behavior when it comes to women and men that cannot be denied…when you have sex with a man who is not emotionally invested in you, no matter what comes out of his mouth, he is not feelin’ you the same way you could be feelin’ him…A man recently told me that if he has sex with a woman he is not into, her whole house can go up in flames with her in it the moment he is done having sex with her, and he frankly wouldn’t care…That’s straight harsh, but it’s something to think about…And we all know that it takes a while for a man to get emotionally attached to a woman – typically much much longer than it takes a woman…And because men are hunters, we gotta respect the natural order of things…men respect what they have to wait for…if you just give him  “hot sex on a platter” if takes away from the hunt…

Since I’m a black woman, I have to speak from that perspective…I think much of our issues in the black community can be traced back to our loosening values when it comes to premarital sex…In a conversation I had last night with a fine man (yes, I’m talking about you 🙂 ), I told him that if all single black women in the A decided to stop having sex unless they are married, there would be some real and quantifiable results. Let’s say that today, Sunday, October 18, 2009, women declared on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse that there would be no sex without a ring…A year from today, I guarantee the marriage rate – whatever it is – would double…Women may be able to go without sex for a long, long while, but most men cannot go without sex for the same length of time…And the people who got married would be more likely to have long-lasting marriages as women and men would make choices that wouldn’t be as dependant on sexual attraction…As it stands now, when you tell a man that you are a celibate, he may stick around if really wants to be there, but he has many, many options if he suddenly decides he can’t take it anymore…

There would be no children born outside of wedlock…Yes, it’s possible to raise a healthy child as a single parent…I’ve seen it many times, but I think most single parents would rather raise their children as a two-parent household…Goodness gracious, I cannot even fathom all the changes that could come as a result of children being raised by two parents rather than one…We’ve all heard of some of the issues that children deal with when they are missing their mothers or fathers…More men would know how to be or even want to be real men because they would have seen it growing up…More women would make better choices about men because they were raised with their fathers…Poverty would decline as many single parents are poor…The jails would be less full because people would be more likely to learn responsible behavior because both parents were in their lives and were able to devote full attention to them…I know I’m skipping over a few things, but just consider what the ramifications could possibly be…

Who knows where sexually transmitted diseases come from, but I guarantee there would be less of them if people refused to engage in premarital sex…I don’t know all of the stats, but I think I’ve heard there are hundreds of STDs although only a few of them are well known – obviously HIV, HPV, herpes, etc.

I could go on, and this is by no means an organized discourse on the topic of premarital sex….these are just some random thoughts…The older I get, the more demystifying the term “sin” is to me…I simply think that sin is something that harms our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with others…I think God declared that premarital sex is a sin because He knows how far reaching the effects are…

Any thoughts?

P.S. Yes, I know that one of the effects of this edict would be that the premium would go up on prostitutes…that’s another topic for another day…

P.P.S. And maybe the music about sex would get better too…Although everyone seems to be having sex nowadays – married or not – no one can really sing about sex like the old school singers…I remember the first time I saw the video for Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” I think I was six years old…I didn’t know what sexual healing was, but I was sure it was good…

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Blame It On Me aka Anatomy of a Breakup…

Hello World!!!

It’s still my birthday month! Yeah, my b-day was Labor Day this year, Sept. 7, and I’m still accepting gifts LOL 🙂 . 

But that is not the reason for this post….If you’ve read my blog over this past year (yes, it was ago Sept. 2 that I created this blog with the help of my friend Tess Gadwa), you know that one of my favorite topics to wax creatively on is relationships. But as I’ve known since the ninth grade, sometimes you just want out or sometimes someone else makes that decision for you. Yes, that’s right I’m talking about breaking up…It’s hard to do sometimes, but it’s a fact of life without question. I remember the first time I broke up or rather was forced to break up with someone. (As I write this, I wonder if I have shared this story before as I’ve been blogging for a year now.)

As a ninth grader, Imani, who was a grade ahead of me, was my first official boyfriend. He was great. He was smart and cute – a chocolate drop with wavy hair. And his wardrobe was the business. He used to wear the fresh jogging suits with the matching sneaks. And wonder of wonders, he liked me. He walked me to my classes. He bought me stuffed animals. He wrote love letters to me. He called me almost every night. (Now that I’m well into my ’30s – 36 no less 🙁 , I realize how unique he truly was…) I couldn’t date yet, but he was diggin’ me anyway for nearly three months until almost suddenly he wasn’t…And I was crushed…I couldn’t figure out how someone who was obviously into me just wasn’t anymore…aaah, such is life, such is life.

We had a fairly civil breakup in that we talked about it and then went on our way. That was very mature of us at the time…but sometimes the breakup is anything but mature…I admit I’ve been guilty of the immature breakup. In college, I, to my friends’ delight, coined the term the “slow diss.” Sometimes, I just didn’t have the courage to tell a guy I wasn’t into him anymore. So I slowly disengaged myself – getting off of the phone very quickly, not calling back, not accepting invitations for dates and on and on – until the relationship died by slow starvation…sad but true….Sounds mean, huh? But trust and believe, what goes around comes around and it has certainly been done to me…On one of my favorite shows (as you know by now) “Sex and the City,” Jack Berger broke up with Carrie by a Post-it!  on which he wrote, “I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.” After such a stunt, of course he would be hated.

So what is the best way to breakup? Is it best to meet and discuss things face to face or does a simple or not so simple phone conversation suffice? Didn’t some athlete in New York recently break up with his fiancee by text…now, that’s bout it…and mean…And once the relationship is kaput, what’s the best way to get over somebody? I remember my best friend in the eighth grade told me the best way to get over a guy is to think of all the things you don’t like about him any ole way. Wise for her young age at the time for sure! That principle still works! A friend in college told me the best way to get over one guy is to get another aka the rebound dude. That can work too — although in my ’30s, I became fond of taking six-month breaks after dating a guy.

A friend of mine a few years ago gave me an invaluable article that I have often used to navigate my way through a breakup. “The Four Stages of Grief aka How Much Longer Until I Feel Good Again” is the best the article I’ve read on breaking up and getting over it! But another one of my favorite ways to get over a dude is listen to breakup songs. If it hasn’t been done before, somebody needs to make an album of the best breakup songs. Well, below is my soundtrack for breakups.

  1. “Blame It On Me” by Chrisette Michele – this has got to be the most popular breakup song this year…This young girl has obviously known heartbreak…it oozes out in this song…
  2. “Let It Flow” by Toni Braxton – once I started playing this song in college, I knew it was a wrap…I was done with you and you’d better be on your way…
  3. “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt – as much as I love to talk, sometimes there are no words we need to say except that “it is over…”
  4. “Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles – “Margie” in the movie Ray sang that song with all of the venom that a breakup sometimes involves…
  5. “Not Gon’ Cry” by Mary J. Blige – I’m glad that Mary is doing “Just Fine” nowadays, but she know she can tear up a breakup song…I was your lover and your secretary, and you still did me wrong…
  6. “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce – Trust, you ain’t the only one where that came from…
  7. “It Ain’t Me Babe” by Joaquin Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon – I know these actors recorded this song for the movie “Walk the Line” about Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, but they put their foot in this song. It is a classic “it’s not you, it’s me” breakup song…And it ain’t nothin’ like a country song to get you through…
  8. “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor – I’ma be alright…I WILL SURVIVE!
  9. “Show Me Love” by Robin S. – Who is this chick? I don’t know, but whenever I hear this song, my arms immediately move over my head…I’m tired of giving my love and getting nowhwere…sang it girl!
  10. “Call Tyrone” by Erykah Badu – This song really works when you’ve been dealing with a dude that is straight trife…Man, get outta my face…you ain never bought me nothin’ no way…

So what songs are on your breakup soundtrack?  How do you get over someone? What’s the worst way you’ve ever broken up with someone? Has it come back to haunt you?

Any thoughts?