Relationships are everything to us, especially love (and lust that we sometimes call love) relationships. Some stats say that there are more successful women than men, so that when you reach a certain status there are not enough men to go around. And if you are a black woman looking for a black man, the stats claim that it’s even harder on us with more black men going to jail than college each year.

My dad says the tide will change with men in general because “we are waging a war and staging a revolution.” When he says this, he’s serious and doesn’t back down when challenged. So I shifted my perspective to see what he sees. My family runs a boys home filled with teenagers black, white and both. Some of them have been with us since elementary. Who knows what decisions they grow up and make, but while they are here with us, we teach and demonstrate manhood, womanhood, and love. I realize that they are learning about men and women everyday. As they watch my family and hear our words, we play a role in the type of men they grow up to become and the type of women they choose to love, and that is a revolution. But it doesn’t stop there. The church has been so divided on race and gender issues, that different churches have driven away different groups of people. Some are void of children, others void of men, and still others void of young adults.

In the process of learning how to love, we discover that God makes room for and creates ministry for all types of people and their pain. When we get together in love and truth and allow our mess to get checked at the door, then we grow together and we improve together and we change our communities together.

We don’t come out the womb knowing how to be successful women, we learn from what we see. And when we see mess we have to retrain ourselves. That’s what a healthy church is supposed to be about, retraining ourselves to live love in all we do. But some of us have been blind sided by cruelty in the church and mistreatment that creates a quiet rage that is understandable, but destruction.

I’m thinking my dad is right, we are staging a revolution that centers on integrity and character. Live a life that is real and honest. Serve the people around you. Actively impact your community by getting involved for the right reasons. Change the landscape of a man’s (and a woman’s) heart with love and truth. And you change the world by degrees and make a bigger impact than I realize sometimes.

We all matter, men and women. God says so and makes room for us, so why shouldn’t we do the same for each other, make room for us to grow together . . .

-MizJAI-

To build a business or a simple dream that captures the attention of our souls.
An idea that captivates our minds, our will, our intellect, our imagination, and our emotions.
To solve a problem that causes the best of us to rise to the surface and that motivates us to address and change the worst. That’s what we are all looking for professionally, a role to play that makes us better women

Which leads me to the point that some of us create products that make money and hurt people; products that make fame and harm families; products that make more problems instead of true solutions. We pretend that character is something for the home and has no place in business. When in reality my business is my character, and if I am without honor on the clock, then I am without honor in my life.

But then there are those of us on the other side, who are filled with ideas that we keep to ourselves. Solutions that we never or seldom reveal. The people curse her who holds back grain [when the public needs it], but a blessing [from God and man] is on the head of her who sells it (Pr. 11:26). Our grain is our dream, the thing that we can give the world, the problems that we can solve, the solutions dancing around in our heads. And our blessings are the people we impact, the lives we change.

We can do business in a way that blesses our own lives with the profits and blesses the people with products and pricing that makes sense and changes the world around them. If you can figure out a way to do this inside your own dream, then your entire life will change; and a little, unexpected gift comes to you . . .