Hello World,

Earlier this month, the McGhee sextuplets along with their parents Ro, a minister, and his wife Mia returned to UP for the second season of their hit show Growing Up McGhee, which comes on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EST! The next show will air on Thursday, Feb. 9!

In the second season of Growing Up McGhee, with the McGhee sextuplets now six years old, their curiosity about life is making every day exciting and challenging for Ro and Mia. As they get older, each child is beginning to express their own individuality, and with that comes new interests and experiences that keep the family busy, laughing and sometimes a bit exasperated. Mia is also discovering that she is going to need to let go of the reins as the kids start socializing with friends at school and not just their siblings. From learning how to ride a bike without training wheels, going to work with Ro or learning how to play a musical instrument – all times six! – each day brings a new adventure. For Ro and Mia, the kids maturing also gives them a little more time for themselves to help them reconnect with who they were before they had kids. The season ends with an extra special event…Ro and Mia never had a wedding when they got married, so it’s the perfect time to renew their vows with their kids in tow and get that dream wedding they never had.

Below is my interview with Mia McGhee:

Mia, you mentioned that the money you spend on back-to-school shopping for the children is comparable to the money you would spend on a college education! I know you were joking, but have the two of you become extreme couponers since you have a budget of nearly $2,000 for back-to-school shopping? What are your top strategies for saving money on back-to-school shopping?

My strategy for saving money is to shop at places with the best deals. I love coupons but with everything that I have going on, I don’t have time to be an extreme couponer!

According to you, the children need to continue dressing alike because it’s easy to pick your children out in a crowd. But the children seem like they want to start dressing differently. At what age do you think you will allow them to dress differently and how will you cope?

Our kids can stop dressing alike when they start buying their own clothes. I’m joking! Whenever they develop their own style and start picking out their own clothes I’ll be fine with it!

Of all the sextuplets, Elijah is the tallest and his clothes are handed down to his shorter brothers. How do you think he feels about that in relation to his sisters and brothers?

Elijah loves being the tallest. It reminds him of his grandfather, Ro’s dad, whom he is crazy about because he’s tall with muscles (as Elijah would say).

Madison and Olivia were looking at bras when the family went to back-to-school shopping, have you already started thinking about how you will deal with puberty with six children going through it at the same time?!

Madison and Olivia are fascinated about becoming women. To be honest, I have not thought about how we are going explaining puberty to the kids. All I know is that right now, I’m taking it one stage at a time.

I know what it feels like to have been in kindergarten twice because when my family moved from Miami to Atlanta, my parents were told I was too young to enter the first grade after completing kindergarten in Miami.(And I turned out fine by the way ) I don’t remember having negative feelings about it, but Isaac cried when all the children were told they would have to repeat kindergarten. Why did he cry, how is he doing now, and how are the rest of the children coping?

Issac did cry about repeating kindergarten because he looked forward to going into 1st grade but honestly, that was short lived. Kids are resilient and all of them have adjusted so well and we now know more than ever that it was the right choice.

Mia, you said their first day of school is your first day of vacation and Ro said, “It’s me, my wife and silence.” What are your favorite things to do as a couple while the kids are at school that maybe you can’t do in the summer months when you have to care for the entire family?

My favorite things to do as a couple while the kids are in school if Ro doesn’t have to work is to just be together. I know it sounds simple but and spending time with each other is still my favorite thing.

What do you hope families will learn by watching Growing Up McGhee? And what have learned from being a part of Growing Up McGhee?

My hope is that our show is an encouragement to other families. If we can do it with sextuplets, you can make it too, but you have to remain hopeful. We’ve learned to pace ourselves and to enjoy the moments while we can. We know we only get one shot at being parents and if that isn’t motivation, I don’t know what is.

Also, UP is doing a “Watch and Win” sweepstakes with every new episode! The details are: UP will be giving away over $50,000 in 2017! During each new episode of an UP original show, the network will give away $1,000 to one lucky fan by engaging UP’s audience in a “Watch & Win.” Each week will be a new sweepstakes with a new chance to win! During a commercial break, the network will give fans a word or phrase they must enter online at WatchUPandWin.com for a chance to win. From there, fans can participate with the brand in other ways to earn additional entries like signing up for the UP newsletter, watching UP content and correctly answering trivia about UP shows on Twitter. Each week, UP will announce winners on-air and talent will encourage viewers to enter. UP will also be giving away 2^nd place prizes of $100 Amazon giftcards. Series included in the giveaway are Bringing Up Bates, Growing Up McGhee, Small Town, Big Mayor and Date My Dad.

Any thoughts?

The post ‘Growing Up McGhee’ Returns for 2nd Season on UP! appeared first on After the Altar Call.

As of this month, I have owned my modest townhome for seven years…In this time of economic confusion,  I don’t see this feat as a minor blessing – Particularly since just months after closing on my first home, I lost my job…About a year after that, I still hadn’t found a job in my field and my roommate moved out…It was a trying time for sure, but the Lord brought me through, and here I am seven years later…

This may sound like hocus pocus but about a year before I closed on my townhome, on the morning of my birthday, the Lord revealed to me that I would be a homeowner…I don’t know how this happens, but sometimes although I don’t hear audible words, I sense that the Lord is speaking to me…This was one of those times…I sensed this revelation as I read the book Dancing in the Arms of God by Connie Neal.  (By the way, it’s a great book if you want to know how to develop a personal relationship with God!) At this time of my life, I wasn’t very making very much money at all so I wondered how this would happen…(Not that I’m rolling in the dough now…but I am doing better – praise God!)

There is an African proverb that states, “When you pray, move your feet.” After praying about the matter and coming to the conclusion that I had heard from God, I got moving. I began researching how to buy a home and even took a one-day seminar about buying a home, I talked with a friend who works in budget counseling about the costs of maintaining a home, and I started saving up my down payment money.

A few months later, I interviewed a woman for an article I was writing about her son who had won several scholarships to college. While I was at her home, I told her that I thought her new home was beautiful and that I was planning to start looking for my own home. She told me that through God’s favor, she was able to buy her lovely home although she had never thought she could afford a home as nice as that one. Then, she added that she rarely told the story of how she got the home to anyone. However, she said, to those to which she choose to tell the story, each one was able to get a home in spite of difficult circumstances…Finally, she gave me the name and contact information for her mortgage lender…My father said that the only way that you know that someone has truly prophesied is if the prophesy comes true…I called that mortgage lender…and you know the rest of the story…

This is a nice example of how the Lord has worked in my life. But as people are losing their homes all over the country, I wonder, if they, too, felt the Lord had blessed them with their homes in spite of unfavorable circumstances…I also wonder in light of “The Prosperity Gospel,” have many of us thought we heard from God when it was really just wishful thinking? Read this article below. It appeared in Time magazine on Oct. 3.

Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mess

Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That’s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”

Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: “The pastor’s not gonna say, ‘Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,’ but I have heard, ‘Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you’ll get that house or that car or that apartment.’ ” Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: “It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, ‘If you give this offering, God will give you a house.’ And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy.” If so, the situation offers a look at how a native-born faith built partially on American economic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.

Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the Bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are “worthy of having more and doing more and being more.” In some cases the philosophy has matured with its practitioners, encouraging good financial habits and entrepreneurship.

But Walton suggests that a decade’s worth of ever easier credit acted like a drug in Prosperity’s bloodstream. “The economic boom ’90s and financial overextensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the Prosperity message,” he wrote recently on his personal blog as well as on the website Religion Dispatches. And not positively. “Narratives of how ‘God blessed me with my first house despite my credit’ were common. Sermons declaring ‘It’s your season to overflow’ supplanted messages of economic sobriety,” and “little attention was paid to … the dangers of using one’s home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations.”

With the bubble burst, Walton and Butler assume that Prosperity congregants have taken a disproportionate hit, and they are curious as to how their churches will respond. Butler thinks some of the flashier ministries will shrink along with their congregants’ fortunes. Says Walton: “You would think that the current economic conditions would undercut their theology.” But he predicts they will persevere, since God’s earthly largesse is just as attractive when one is behind the economic eight ball.

A recent publicly posted testimony by a congregant at the Brownsville Assembly of God, near Pensacola, Fla., seems to confirm his intuition. Brownsville is not even a classic Prosperity congregation — it relies more on the anointing of its pastors than on Scriptural promises of God. But the believer’s note to his minister illustrates how magical thinking can prevail even after the mortgage blade has dropped. “Last Sunday,” it read, “You said if anyone needed a miracle to come up. So I did. I was receiving foreclosure papers, so I asked you to anoint a picture of my home and you did and your wife joined with you in prayer as I cried. I went home feeling something good was going to happen. On Friday the 5th of September I got a phone call from my mortgage company and they came up with a new payment for the next 3 months of only $200. My mortgage is usually $1,020. Praise God for his Mercy & Grace.”

So this article,  I think, can lead to some interesting discussion at our churches…How do know that we have truly heard from God? Does God “bless our mess?” Does God call for us to throw reason out of the window when He has revealed something to us? For goodness sake, why do people always say they are “blessed and highly favored,” when life is really sucking for them – at least at the moment – I swear…Does getting blessed by God always follow a large donation to our church? I’m sure that you can think of your own questions. Let the commentary begin…

Any thoughts?

The post The Lord Blessed Me With A House! appeared first on After the Altar Call.

I’s married now…Just Kidding! But I got your attention, didn’t I? Since Shug Avery shouted those words in one of my all-time favorite movies, “The Color Purple,” I have been waiting to say them. Maybe I will have the opportunity one day to shout those words about me and my huzzband! But for today, that hasn’t happened…

But nevertheless, it gives me great pleasure to say that on Saturday, Oct. 18, I will have the pleasure, God willing, to watch one of my dear sorors and friend, Renee, and one of the luckiest men alive, Lincoln, be joined in holy matrimony. Marriage is, indeed, a gift from God, and I’m glad that my girl is finally ready to receive her gift!

It is with her permission that I dedicate today’s post to my friend and her upcoming wedding and marriage. I met Renee about 10 years ago….I cannot really remember exactly when I met her, but from the moment I saw her effervescent smile and heard her high-pitched, raucous laugh, I knew she would be my friend.  She is one of the few people that I know that “to know her is to love her,” and I know why Lincoln was immediately smitten with her when he met her at a speed dating event some years ago. (Yes ladies, it can happen anywhere…)        

I almost have never seen her without a smile on her face, and she is an attorney of all things! In fact, my father, who has noticed her natural agreeableness, said her joy is a gift from God, and I believe that is true. A friend once mentioned to me that she had seen Renee cry once. My eyes widened and my mouth fell open in amazement. Apparently it took a few minutes for my friend to actually notice she was crying though because even as she cried, she was smiling. Ain’t that somethin’?

I know Renee is getting married not dying, but I will miss her on the single girl jaunts to Old School Second Saturday, Agave, Omega (Gotta Love the Bruhs!) cookouts and anywhere we darn well pleased…Oh well…I wonder if she will still be available to ride out on our vacations. At one point, we had a crew of five that vacationed together. Now that number has dwindled down to two (at least as of Saturday)…the rest are married…I wonder if she will still send out frantic e-mails at the end of her workday asking folk to meet her for an after work drink or will she have to head immediately home to her huzzband….I wonder if I will be able to call her late at night or will that now be couple time…    

Okay, you’ve probably guessed it…I’m elated for Renee and Lincoln, but I’m a little sad for me…But thankfully, I’m mostly elated for them. In fact, I want to share a poem I once read in a wedding program that I think applies here.

Love One Another

Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart.
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Khalil Gibran

 

Also, I wanted to insert a video of a love song I hope we get to dance to at their wedding reception – probably not, but that’s okay.  I know this is a song I hope to lip synch with my huzzband on our wedding night.  Of course, I will be Margie and he (where are you?) will be Ray Charles. I hope y’all enjoy it….

One time for Renee, Two times for Lincoln, Three Times for Renee & Lincoln. If you know the happy couple, feel free to wish them well here. If don’t know the couple but are a fan of black love, drop a line.

Any thoughts?

P.S. For the rors that will be in the house on Saturday, you may want to brush up on this song…

The post I’s Married Now!!! appeared first on After the Altar Call.