This blog is meant to share thoughts on all levels, in the hope that at least one might be moved towards positive change. (Go to the "CONTACT" link and fill in the information for your email address and you will get an email update every time I make a blog post.)
When you believe you can’t………Two words will change it all…But God!
When we grow weak in our faith and hope…….But God!
When we and others are in disbelief….But God!
When death seems easier than life….But God!
When your reality seems bigger than your dreams…..But God!
All else will fail But God never will!
As we celebrate the 1st day of a new year and prepare ourselves to witness an influx of resolutions by so many well intentioned people, let us also get ready to witness the majority of those same people fail to keep any of those resolutions for even a full month of the year.
I’m not trying to be a negative force on anyone’s free-will, but year after year the same thing rings true of so many; they just can’t stick with what they plan.
I personally don’t make new year resolutions. I go about my life making improvements along the way as needed, without ever mentioning my plans to the general public.
So, to all of you who are seeking to make positive changes in your lives for the new year, I simply say, “do it!”
You can lead a horse to water and drown him in an attempt to make him drink or you can let him make the decision to drink on his own.
Personally, I would choose to allow him to drink on his own because he knows just how thirsty he is and can intake what he needs.
The moral is: You can force people to accept your will or you can leave them be. It’s best to allow them to make their own decisions because they are the ones who have to live with the decisions and not you.
Some people learn best by realizing where they failed and never repeating those same steps ever again and others represent the true meaning of insanity by repeating the same failing actions over and over again while expecting a different outcome and never receiving it.
I would choose true spiritual growth over all else, because it’s the one thing God is pleased with and it will never produce hate, envy, greed, lust, destructive anger, or arrogance.
Humble yourselves in the site of The Lord and He will lift you up, especially if you are studying to show yourselves approved a workman unto God who need not be ashamed rightfully discerning the word of truth.
Choices…..Hmmmmm!
For those of you who give gifts to receive one, start giving the gift of Christ every day by sharing the gospel with those who don’t know Him and in return you will have done exactly what you are suppose to do.
That’s the right reason for the season and not those material gifts that have become a common replacement for Christ. Christ is important daily and not just for Christmas!
Be blessed and enjoy this holiday season.
We often stunt our growth by allowing dead or non-nurturing limbs to stay attached to our lives. These limbs not only tend to hinder the life of one person but often infect and choke out the entire tree if they are not pruned away from time to time.
These infected limbs care very little about the state of the foundation of the inherited tree because their main focus is to suck the life out of everything they are even remotely attached to. These limbs see no reason to open up their leaves and absorb sunlight to provide energy to the tree and are only concerned about themselves and what they can absorb from others.
Most people find it difficult to cut off nonproductive, leeching friends and family members and often revert to continuous enabling of their leeching ways………I’m thankful I don’t have that problem. Some people consider my actions as void of love or consideration, but those same people never realize that their selfish expectations of me render them as the disingenuous ones. These leeches waddle in a world void of self-actualization and will never reach their full potential of being productive citizens in our society. It’s really easy to identify these leeches because they are the people who find it hard to step outside of their fantasy worlds and realize that they are often the common denominator in all of the problems that persist in their world and everyone else’s they have infected.
Being able to cut harmful/toxic people out of your life is easy when you love and respect yourself.
Most people who hurt others do so because they’ve been damaged from hurt themselves, and never get the proper help they need. These are the people who build a legacy of hurt that continues to pay it’s harmfulness forward.
My younger adult life was riddled with toxic people and it took several significant emotional events for me to realize I had to cut them loose.
Thankfully God stayed with me when I was going through my youth.
Progress and maturity = Healthy me.
(Names will be withheld to protect the guilty but the truth will be told.)Â
   Documenting the life story of a young man (me) who grew up in the rural Mississippi Delta, with much to tell about life, has been a roller-coaster ride engorged fully of pain, shock, lies, deception, lust, hate, anger, excitement, and joyful triumphs in life.
   (Hmm…This is where I will start!) It was a very muggy and warm day in the Mississippi Delta and attendance at school was the joy for the day. Little was it known, at the time, that a young man’s life (mine) would be changed forever because this is the day I met a young lady (#1), who would forever change my life and perspective on the type of woman I wanted and needed in my life. She wasn’t close to being that woman, but at the time I didn’t know any better or at least that’s what I have convinced myself to believe over the years.
My ebb and flow relationship with #1 lasted through my 3 years of high school, 1 semester of college at Alcorn State University which ended on a revoked scholarship, and turned into something life changing after I joined the Army and returned from my first combat deployment to Desert Shield/Storm. That life change came in the form of a conversation that went a little something like this: #1 – I have something to tell you.
Me: What is it?
#1: Promise me you won’t get upset.
Me: OK, I promise. What is it?
#1: I’m pregnant. What are we going to do?
Me: (Without freaking out or thinking too hard.) I guess the best thing to do is to get married and take care of my responsibility.
#1:Â So, we’re getting married?
Me: Yes
Once I said, “yes” is when my heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach and everything my mother ever told me seemed to mean more than ever before.
Me:Â How far along are you?
#1:  I don’t know…….a few weeks I guess. (That response should have told me that something just wasn’t right, but why should I have to think that I was being deceived.)
[Years earlier-the upbringing:Â My mother, the family disciplinarian, and motivator, always preached to me and the other siblings that if we were ever grown enough to create a responsibility before marriage, we better be ready to take care of that responsibility and never run from it.]
I even went against my mother’s advice and guidance by trusting that #1 was pregnant without ever seeing a pregnancy test. My mother told me on a number of occasions, including the day of my wedding to #1, that #1 wasn’t pregnant and was only trying to get a ticket out of Mississippi. Was she ever correct in her motherly wisdom!Â
Fast forward months later after getting married to #1, moving her to Fort Hood, Texas and starting life as a 20-year-old husband and future father: I get woken up one Saturday morning and #1 tells me she has something to tell me. After asking what she wanted to tell me, I find out that she, in fact, was not months pregnant but was only a couple of weeks pregnant. Yes, you read that right. She told me that she wasn’t pregnant before we married but had gotten pregnant since I had moved her away from Mississippi. Anger doesn’t begin to describe my feelings at that point and I reserve the right to not share what my real thoughts were and what I thought about doing; thank God I didn’t act upon my thoughts because I wouldn’t be typing this blog post.
Our marriage really didn’t last long and she’s currently married to the guy she said was just a friend (sex partner) while I was stationed in South Korea and she and my 6-month-old son lived in Mississippi.
I can write hundreds of pages about that part of my life, and I have, but I will end this thought by stating that I don’t blame her completely for executing a plan to get away from the rural Mississippi Delta, but I often wished she would have chosen another target of opportunity, not linked to my journey. (The rest of 22 years of this story is in my book.)
Many years later, I would realize her choice helped fuel the fire of success that burns in me this very day. We just happened to always be on two vastly different levels and it would ultimately have the greatest negative impact on my son’s life and I won’t be blogging much about his life (It’s in my book).
Stay tuned for more of my life in the next Maximum Exposure blog post. To be continued!
Sometimes opposites shouldn’t attract, and should never, ever, ever come in contact.
The byproduct of such engagements often tends to be problematic. This knowledge in my younger years would have certainly kept me from making some of the life-altering decisions I made.
We can sometimes get ahead of God’s answer to prayers about our lives, by growing impatient and making our own choices….or in some cases, our ignorance leads us into falling for the snares produced by the deceptive plans of others (ignorance in youth and lack of social exposure).
These types of events run recklessly in teenage and young adult relationships because most have yet experienced life outside of the bubble they grew up in and trust. Anything new and better is foreign to their minds which also leads to entrapment and premature decisions about some very serious life choices like marriage, children, education, and I can go on and on!
This topic is one I’m so very familiar with because it is something that forced me to grow up way too fast!
Journaling for many years was a means of recovery and healing and has lead to the preservation of some very interesting stories in one of my books, that I will share in this blog.
Some of the stories of my life. Strap in and hang on for the ride!
Judge me, if you must, but also be ready to learn whether you are in one of my true stories or not. (The names have been changed or omitted to protect the guilty and innocent, too!)
-from 34,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, on my way to Hawaii…
When the world first dignified color with race, separation and privilege…..is when things first began to go wrong.
The only way to change things is to teach our newborns and youth the right way to see others, and they in turn can be the catalyst of learning for a legacy.
God is greater!
Be blessed.
Roy
If people/friends appreciate your things more than they appreciate who you are, I submit to you that they are not people/friends you need in your life.
Always be a selfless blessing and it will come back to you unexpectedly.
Roy
The Glory of Hope 