Posts Tagged ‘decision making’

This past week “The Coach” and I had the opportunity to sit down, really talk and get down to the business of planning our wedding.  Personally I enjoy watching him do what he loves, it is so natural to him to coach, lead and mentor young men, and analyze and strategize the game of football.  His coaching expertise he was able to transfer to our wedding game planning.

Since we reconnected now almost 3 years ago I have seen him coach on three different levels; collegiate, professional and now high school.  So though we became engaged in May 2011, just before football season began, I knew that once the season had started, getting him to focus on wedding planning would be near to impossible.  During the season I did make a few trips out to visit with him.  We called them wedding scouting trips, me being his director of personnel:)  While most of his focus was spent coaching and mine on supporting him; we got the opportunity to pick each other’s brains a bit to discover our likes and dislikes.  For example, we addressed questions like… what type of budget were we both willing to commit to?  Were we going to elope? Would we have a destination wedding?  Where would we honeymoon?  We also touched on the topic of relocation since both of us currently live in two different states.

During those visits we agreed that we should complete the important elements of the wedding game planning, like setting a date, confirming a venue and the type of wedding we were going to have before the New Year.  Since I was also armed with the knowledge that during pre-season 2012; when the kids would be let out for the summer would be the perfect time for us to aim for setting the date for our big day and our honeymoon.  So all through last year’s season and post as his Coach’s Wife-to-Be I have been doing my part by scouting… I mean researching and submitting request for proposals to prospective vendors and venues, tapping my network of friends who had recently gotten married for tips and tricks.

So now that we are knee deep in the planning with a good amount of our wedding “To Do List” items executed.  I feel a sense of peace and relief.  I can honestly say that I am truly enjoying the process and pray that as we are not only planning for our wedding but for our marriage together we both continue to look at this as fantastic journey of new discovery.

© 2012 Lela Jefferson – http://www.memoirsofablackgirl.com

“I’m tired of this mess” … Have you ever caught yourself saying that or thinking it as you were working on something on with someone else?  Have you ever prayed for patience just before the mess began and wondered why what little patience you had to begin with was being tested?

Newsflash… You asked for the mess…ahem I mean the test.  How do you think patience is gained?  A muscle only shows definition when it has been developed… So are the godly attributes that make up good character.  Just pass the test… you asked for the mess and your proctor the Holy Spirit is with you.

John 16:33 MSG ^31-33 Jesus answered them, “Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it—saving your own skins and abandoning me. But I’m not abandoned. The Father is with me. I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world.”

© 2011 Lela Jefferson – http://www.memoirsofablackgirl.com

Habakkuk 2:3 AMP – For the vision is yet for an appointed time and it hastens to the end [fulfillment]; it will not deceive or disappoint. Though it tarry, wait [earnestly] for it, because it will surely come; it will not be behindhand on its appointed day.

Today is Sunday, November 20, 2011… It’s officially two weeks before my 33rd birthday.  I am using this time to assess and get myself organized.  It is also less than two months before the New Year and traditionally this is the time I evaluate my “I WILL” statements in prep of creating a new list for the upcoming year.  I believe this year I made some positive strives.  However, I want to make sure I’m doing the last thing God told me to do, from writing assignments to scheduling appointments to creating a book reading schedule and a financial plan that I can actually commit myself to.  Offline I have begun to track my habits and activities no matter how small they are to gage how I spend my time.  Any time wasters must be eliminated immediately…

© 2011 Lela Jefferson – http://www.memoirsofablackgirl.com

In 2006 there were a few factors that if I did not have a relationship (meaning a prayer life) with God I may have wanted to check out… nothing extreme like taking my own life. However if I could I would have just become invisible and just disappeared from the craziness of what was becoming my everyday routine. I had bouts with depression, my behavior and attitude changed, and not for the better. I was under a lot of pressure and more responsibilities than I would have cared to have. Yet quitting was not an option for me…

See, 2006 was the year my mother went home to be with the Lord. The job and career that I had successfully progressed in I no longer had a passion to do. In some ways my family was on the verge of falling apart and though I was the youngest I had to stand in place as if I was the eldest and make some life changing decisions. I felt as if I was back in time and was experiencing the emotions and happenings that I did when my dad past five years earlier. It was also the year that I was first offered an opportunity to work in fulltime ministry…

The big difference though the morning my mother passed I awoke for the first time with the unction to pray at 4AM first in the spirit for an hour and then in my natural language just to say…”God… no matter what people, places or things you must remove from my life in order for me to walk and be in your prefect will for it..I will not get angry with you, I so swear.”

Little did I know that promise I cried out to God in the wee hours of the morning on March 15, 2006 would be tested time and time again in the years to come…

To be continued… I welcome your comments!

Lela Jefferson – http://www.memoirsofablackgirl.com

Psalm 45: 1 (Amplified) MY HEART overflows with a ^[a]goodly theme; I address my psalm to a King. My tongue is like the pen of a ready writer.

“Spiritual Vomit”!?!? What the heck is that you may be asking…?  Does it sound gross to you? It should. The repercussions that come from not purging your soul, can cause you to have unexpected verbal accidents.

As I have been taught, man is a tri-part being he is a spirit that possesses a soul/heart (where his thinker, feeler, and chooser reside) and he has and lives in body.  When we die in the physical our spirit man is separated from our flesh (our earth suit) and the decisions we made while we were alive affect where we end up living out eternity.

My spirit man, when I became born again was made new. However my soul/heart needs to be renewed daily.  That means what I allow into its gates through my ears, my eyes, by what I touch and what comes out of my mouth must line up with the Word of God.  This way my spirit and soul/heart can become on one accord.  When they are not, the possibility for verbal accidents based in flesh to happen can seem unavoidable.  For example, I have been called snappy on more than number of occasions, as it relates to my responses… snappy means briskly cold. Am I proud of it? No, it’s an area where I need to continue develop in.  It’s an area where I can visualize my spirit man physically getting ill because it has to witness my soul/heart controlling how my body reacts to situations.  Its base is fear…

Going back to the topic of this article, “Spiritual Vomit”; if you noticed above I made mention that our soul/heart is where our thinker, feeler, and chooser reside.  So it is safe to say that if you think a certain way, and feel a certain way you will choose to do a certain action, right?  Again hypothetically speaking, if I think on doing something for a while (mediate on it), I will begin to have strong feelings and eventually will choose to do it or because I have been mediating on it for so long, I will begin to act out on my thoughts by instinct.  Think of a person that has learned to drive.  After awhile the fact that in order to keep the car moving forward requires them to press their foot on the accelerator and hold onto the steering wheel to keep the car steady will become almost as instinctual as breathing.

The same can be said about a person and their attitudes towards others. If you think a particular way about a person, you will begin to feel also a particular way about them and so either way good, bad or indifferent will begin to treat them based on those feelings.  When you see them your face may also read a different message to what you are actually saying.  This scenario can also cause you to seem phony, not truthful to people because you are attempting to mask your feelings.  I am not saying it’s ok either to go around telling people exactly how you truly feel, because it can be considered offensive.  Depending on the delivery, the timing and the words you use… Trust me, I know.  Choose your battles… However, I do recommend that you examine yourself before you react.

If you are not cautious with your words, you may even begin to make comments that reflect flesh based feelings.  These little comments may seem accidental but are really what you are feeling in the city of your soul.

Usually what makes you angry is what you are afraid of.  Or what annoys you, is what you have given power to trigger negative reactions from you.  When my Pastor taught these two points a number of years ago it really hit home.  What more than anything hit me is that I can choose how I react and what I react to.  I have the ability to stop verbal slip ups from escaping my lips.

Now what are some of the repercussions of NOT purging your soul?

1)      Lost relationships

2)      Doors of opportunity being shut

3)      Communication breakdown

Cheers to fewer clean ups in the aisle called you!

Reference Scriptures

John 6:63 (Amplified) It is the Spirit Who gives life [He is the Life-giver]; the flesh conveys no benefit whatever [there is no profit in it]. The words (truths) that I have been speaking to you are spirit and life.

Romans 8:1-7 (Amplified) ¹THEREFORE, [there is] now no condemnation (no adjudging guilty of wrong) for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live [and] walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit.^(A)

²For the law of the Spirit of life [which is] in Christ Jesus [the law of our new being] has freed me from the law of sin and of death.

³For God has done what the Law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [^[a]the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh [^[b]subdued, overcame, ^[c]deprived it of its power over all who accept that sacrifice],^(B)

⁴So that the righteous and just requirement of the Law might be fully met in us who live and move not in the ways of the flesh but in the ways of the Spirit [our lives governed not by the standards and according to the dictates of the flesh, but controlled by the Holy Spirit].

⁵For those who are according to the flesh and are controlled by its unholy desires set their minds on and ^[d]pursue those things which gratify the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit and are controlled by the desires of the Spirit set their minds on and ^[e]seek those things which gratify the [Holy] Spirit.

⁶Now the mind of the flesh [which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit] is death [death that ^[f]comprises all the miseries arising from sin, both here and hereafter]. But the mind of the [Holy] Spirit is life and [soul] peace [both now and forever].

⁷[That is] because the mind of the flesh [with its carnal thoughts and purposes] is hostile to God, for it does not submit itself to God’s Law; indeed it cannot.

⁸So then those who are living the life of the flesh [catering to the appetites and impulses of their carnal nature] cannot please or satisfy God, or be acceptable to Him.

© 2011, Lela Jefferson. All rights reserved.

Exodus 34:9 (Amplified Bible)

⁹And he said, If now I have found favor and loving-kindness in Your sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray You, go in the midst of us, although it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your inheritance.

Did you know a generational curse can be broken and become a generational lesson…? How? If it is received by a teachable heart, humble spirit, which is also willing to make sacrifices and make, changes by faith for the better.

The other day as I was entering my apartment building I was confronted with something that I had wished I hadn’t. Yet, it brought me to the point where I felt compelled to write this article. What I saw was a young girl, the daughter of one of one of my childhood playmates clearly pregnant. The reason why I wish I had not seen it was because just a generation ago, her mother had been in her shoes; under 18 and pregnant with her. Just like her mother, she was very beautiful, popular and book smart. However, again just like her mother, she had let temptations win the battle to bring her to her present state underage and having a baby out of wedlock. To be very frank, she could have been my own daughter, had I made different decisions.

My mother too had become pregnant before she turned 18 and before she was married. Not with me but with one of my siblings our ages span a difference of almost 30 years. Unlike my friend though my mother who was born in the late 1930s; grew up in foster care because of my grandmother’s early death and my grandfather’s inability to take care of his 5 children on his own. He was an alcoholic, and a World War II veteran that had his own demons. When he married my grandmother her family had disowned her. She had come from a prominent family in Barbados and my grandfather was a half black half Native American service man from Virginia.

Due to my immediate family strong influence and their desire not to see me repeat their own iniquities, instead of condemning her, I felt in my own way I needed to empower her. I find that too many times we look at how we meet a person or see them in their present state and typecast them in a sense cursing them. What I wanted to do was envision her future as bright as it could be.

For it is not my place to judge nor did I want to; in my heart and under my breathe I began to pray. First interceding that the strain of sin that seemed to still be active in her family to stop and also let loose a blessing that her child and her would finally learn the lesson and become the generations to be delivered, healed and restored from iniquity.

It only takes a generation to make a difference, and change the course of a family; you can be that generation.

© 2011, Lela Jefferson. All rights reserved.

Totally random… So I have this love, really a lust relationship going on with Reese’s peanut butter cups lately.  Well, today I went to Kmart to pick up a few items and they had jumbo bags of them on sale for $2!  In my weakness I picked up 2 bags and brought them to the office.

However,  me and God are working on something in regards to my weight and making healthier choices when it comes to my eating habits…the gym is for another blog article

Going back to the chocolate, instead of hoarding them in my desk drawer and slowly eating both bags over the course of a week, and feeling guilty for doing so, just because I got them on sale.  I decided to share both bags with my co-workers and in the process made a few new buddies.

My point in sharing this little victory is that if you don’t take the time to calculate the cost of your actions, their price in the long run may inflate to a price beyond what you thought was originally a savings.

I was wrong with my initial intentions of buying the bags of candy.  However in the end I was able to make a U-turn from the detour off the path of gaining more discipline in my life and in the process made more connections at my office vs. gaining extra pounds from a though delicious chocolate binge

Do you remember the song…”Whip Appeal” by Babyface?   Yes, I am dating myself.  However, I was thinking about it tonight while I was mediating on my scriptures for the day Joshua 5:2, Romans 2:29 and Colossians 2:11 all in which talk about circumcision first of the body and then the subconscious mind otherwise known as our hearts.

If you can follow my train of thinking the Word of God has “Whip Appeal”.  Once you begin to really dig your heels into it, it whips everything that does not line up to it right out of you!  You begin to desire it more and after awhile don’t mind that it is whipping the fleshy things right on out.

In truth true freedom begins first in your mind.  Once your mind is renewed… the flesh has no other choice but to submit.