Black Women Have It Going On

Good morning from Colorado, where the peaks are tall and the tomb is empty! Today is Wednesday, 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 working two 8-hour jobs and bleeding out 16 hours a day, you quickly realize that you cannot afford for anything to go wrong. For my mother, “perfection” wasn’t a choice; it was a survival strategy. Because she was at the forge of her 16-hour sacrifice, she had to know that the “Little Shepherds” she left at home would follow her instructions to the letter. There was no margin for error.

This is where the guilt of the provider meets the survival-mode mentality. My mother “double downed” on the whippings because she was terrified. She whipped us until we behaved exactly how she wanted, not because she lacked love, but because she lacked a safety net. If I didn’t act like a woman of forty at age twelve, the whole house could crumble. She used fear to teach responsibility because she was too exhausted to use tenderness.

People on the sidelines see the “harshness,” but God sees the “pressure.” My mother was a stumbling shepherd who was trying to protect a flock she couldn’t see for 16 hours a day. As a family historian, I now see that those whippings were the manifestation of her own fear and the limited tools she had to keep us safe. She wasn’t just disciplining us; she was trying to beat back a world that felt like it was trying to swallow us whole.

The Takeaway for Us

• The Burden of Provision: One realizes that a parent’s “hardness” is often a “shell” grown to protect the family from the outside world. When survival is the goal, soft words are often the first thing to be sacrificed.
• The Perfection Trap: The “Little Shepherd” of yesterday can finally realize they weren’t “bad” or “dumb”; they were simply living under a standard that was never meant for a child to carry.
• Grace for the Forge: Understanding the “16-hour workday” pressure allows the adult child to stop resenting the discipline and start mourning the exhaustion that caused it.

Community Challenge

Have you ever realized that a parent’s “mean” rules were actually born out of their own terror of failing you? How does knowing the “weight of the provider” help you lower the walls of resentment in your heart today?

Scripture & Prayer

• Scripture: “And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” — Ephesians 6:4 (KJV)
• Prayer: Father, we thank You for the providers who worked until they had nothing left to give. We ask for healing for the children who bore the weight of that exhaustion. Give us the grace to see the fear behind the force and the love behind the labor. 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 Thursday!