Black Women Have It Going On

Good morning from Colorado, where the peaks are tall and the tomb is empty! Today is Tuesday, and my faith is secured in Christ Jesus! Thanks for stopping by my blog, where we discuss life, faith, and the long walk toward healing.

When you are a child in a survival-mode mentality, the rules aren’t about manners; they are about staying alive. I remember when I was five and my nine-year-old sister came to live with us for a school year. My mother gave her one simple command: walk me home after school. But my sister was new to my mother’s parental authority. She left me behind, and had it not been for a neighbor girl who knew how to navigate the busy traffic of York Street, I would have been lost.

My mother’s response to that fear was a whipping—a harsh correction born out of the terror of almost losing her child while she was at the job of her 16-hour workday. Sadly, my sister never got over that moment. She wore that whipping like a scar that never healed, and it created a wall between us that lasted into adulthood. She spent her life trying to inflict pain on me, never realizing that the “privilege” she envied was a life where those whippings were my daily bread.

People on the sidelines often hold onto a single moment of “stumbling” and let it define a lifetime. My sister died without the grace to understand that if she received one whipping for a mistake, I received countless others for just trying to survive. Today, as a family historian, I choose to look at York Street not as a place of abandonment, but as a place where God provided a neighbor to lead me home when the “shepherd” was too angry to see the path.

The Takeaway for Us

• The Root of Resentment: One realizes that sibling rivalry is often just two children reacting to the same blurry reality in different ways. One child sees “punishment,” while the other sees “survival.”
• The Burden of the “Oldest”: Being the child who stayed meant being the child who was “always on trial.” The jealousy of those who were away is often based on an illusion of a peace that never existed.
• Grace for the Departed: Understanding the “why” behind a sibling’s cruelty allows the survivor to let go of the pain they tried to inflict. It is the realization that they were also stumbling sheep who couldn’t find their way home.

Community Challenge

Have you ever realized that a family member’s “meanness” was actually a reaction to a wound they received as a child? How does that “BINGO” moment of understanding change how you view the “walls” in your own family tree today?

Scripture & Prayer

• Scripture: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” — Ephesians 4:31-32 (KJV)
• Prayer: Father, we thank You for the “neighbor girls” You send to lead us home. We ask for healing for the sisters and brothers who never found a way to bridge the walls of the past. Thank You for the grace to understand the wounds of those who are no longer with us. Let the cycle of pain end at York Street. Amen.

The Spiritual Seal

Remember: You are not defined by the years the locusts have eaten, but by the new thing God is doing in your life today. The tomb is empty, and your story is rising. See you Wednesday!