What about those days when life just “ain’t” right, when there seem to be more challenges than victories, when it feels like more loneliness than company, when we experience more struggle than pleasure? What about those days when it just “ain’t on and poppin?” The days that leave us fighting for our peace and contending for our joy?

I’m talking about the kind of days that leave us (some of us) wearing the mask and faking if for our friends. What happens when life gets “too real?” What happens then, when there is no catch phrase or high minded words to express where we truly are, what do you do on those days to keep from going under?

I find a way to wrap myself in tomorrow’s hope, because no pain has the right to take me out. I find a way to dance in a simple truth: my Father said that in my darkest hour He would give me “beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning.” I find a way to rest in this new reality: I am not alone, even though it “feels like” a lonely season, I am not alone. I find myself resting in the images that are tattooed on my soul: images of hope in-spite of, images of coming over no matter what, images of survival, images of strength, images of winning, images of hell in my rearview mirror and hope in my future. I find myself fighting for my joy, because I will not go down without a fight. I find myself sitting in pictures . . .

MizJAI

When the holidays come, it has a tendency to magnify the hole that may already be in your soul. Nothing is wrong with you. Life is happening and your heart is aching regardless of the season. But don’t let it overtake you. Do something now. Consider being with your family and just sitting still together and remembering . . . and when you are done, get up together and go do something wonderful that the person you miss would do.

And if the person you miss is alive but on the other side of the country or the world, then create something that will make their day like a photo album, a cool website that they can see, a movie. In other words, make a memory and send it, reminding them that you love them and even though you are strong (I know you are) life just ‘ain’t the same’ without them.

-MizJAI-

First of all you are not alone. Many of us have lost loved ones during the holiday season. And sometimes it just doesn’t matter when you lost them, you miss them at Christmas. It’s ok to feel your loss as long as you don’t allow it to take you under. So how do we celebrate the people we miss without being overwhelmed with pain and drowning in our loss. How do we find the joy in the holiday season?

We become what we miss the most for another person.

You miss your grandmothers or your parents. Then become that spirit for another person. Use your talents to bless someone else and quiet as it’s kept, it will liberate you from your pain. You still may feel the heaviness in the mornings and the evenings, but while you give it lifts (at least for a time). And as you begin to taste these moments of life again, the best parts of you want more because we were meant for joy. I have spent Christmas after Christmas taking care of other people’s children. And that fact has been a saving grace during some of the most challenging times of my life: death of family members and death of a marriage.

There are three things that I do to reclaim not only my Christmas:

1). Redirecting myself so that I can focus my energy on something that will lift me up and not allow me wallow around depressed has saved my life (and I know I’m not the only one).

2). Realizing their life, instead of focusing on the pain of their death, has had me laughing even as the tears fall. When it’s all said and done I still have a life to live and the fact that I have loved someone that has come and gone is reason enough to live a life that matters because people will see the person I love in small ways through you.

3). Rejoicing at the best in them that has become a part of me and leaving the pain on the table is my constant way out. I have felt like a fat man trying to shed a hopeless amount of pounds: but, it seemed like the more I walked it out, heavy weight and all, the lighter I began to feel (day after day after day). The pain can be temporary, the heart beat of who the where in your life and who they are in your heart can be eternal. Rejoice in that and let the pain go.

I love you.

-MizJAI-

Are you chronically sad and waiting on someone to solve your problem?

Are you consistently overwhelmed and waiting on someone to worry about it for you?

Are you the one with the long face who is secretly upset because everyone seems to ignore your long face?

Maybe you are surrounded by a bunch of self-centered people who just don’t care enough about you; or maybe you are surround by a family and friends who are just absorbed in their own lives but who are also waiting on you to take the bull the horn and live your life! What if everyone is not against us, but we are just not for ourselves.

We shape our lives, and though people have opinions about it and fears about how our decisions will affect them, we are still in charge of our own joy. So, what would happen if you became your own knight in shining armor.? What if you turned off the tape of all the reasons why it won’t work and turned yourself onto your solution. Every body’s situation is different. Chances are there is no one more qualified to fix your life than you and God. You could begin by getting some help to

Address the stinking thinking that holds you back.

Chances are that you are the kind of person who says, “I know how to pray,” in a tone of voice that lets the people around you know that you are not only a ‘pray-er’ but an expert. And they are to never offer you advice in the prayer realm again. You are the champion in this area. You give the advice, not take it. (If you are nodding your head yes, and that’s how you feel and act, then there’s a problem. Chances are, it’s you and not primarily the people you deal with. I would diagnose it as a case of debilitating-I-know-better-than-you-PRIDE! And it’s catching, so you need a cure quick! My hospital of choice is a dose of scriptures on pride so that I can know exactly what God thinks about it and sound message from a minister who lives what he/she teaches (that way I don’t have to find all the scriptures on my own, because they have done it for me. Now, all I need to do is study it.)

Once you are free of that pride thing, then you can get some stuff done. Pride has an uncanny relationship with fear. Alot of times prideful people are attempting to overcome a real emotional fear with a insincere, sense of power and authority. When the only real power is an overflow of the Love that you tap into. It flows from God right into your spirit and right out into the framework of your life. And through the process of Love, everything in you gets dealt with, and I mean really dealt with. This includes all of our pride issues, all of our fears, all of our desires, all of our pain. The best relationships require honesty, us getting real with our partners, and this time that partner is God. “Yes Lord, I can deal with you dealing me, all of me.”

Once we get our minds straight, we can see how to make the impossible a reality as it relates to the business of living the dream.

It’s time to recapture our F-R-E-E-D-O-M, get a divorce from our fears, and shut up with all the complaining (and excuses). Let’s live, because ‘ain’t nobody gon’ do it for us.

-MizJAI-

In the wake of what appears to be broken destinies and unmet dreams, darkness slips in and attempts to hijack the space that belongs to the overcomer that lives in the deepest parts of our souls. Fight for what is ours. Hope is ours.

In our darkest moments we can draw light from our Love. God places Himself there on the inside of us, if we let Him, for such a time as this. So, we push for the kind of Love awareness that speaks to the best in us, and we awaken the strength to come over into a new life, we Fight for what is ours. Joy is ours.

In the face of a dull and uneventful existence we dance in our passion for living, reminding ourselves to reach and cry and laugh and ‘be’ because we were made this way; to truly live, more that just exist underneath heaven, we were made to Fight for what is ours. Passion is ours.

We ‘got’ a right to blaze and really heat up the road in front of us with the ideas and beauty that God gave us. We have a road map of how to do it without loosing our ‘first love’ (God Himself). We have this fire that burns in our chest, so why should be afraid of to Fight for what is ours. Dreams into reality, that’s ours.

“Father, let us be fearless, let us be faithful, and let us be free, forever; Lord, let us never be fools, nor enemies of our destinies. Let our faith run deep. Let us be strong enough for each day and wise enough to always grow and change. Let us be light. Let us be true. Let us be blessed. Let us draw close to You forever . . .”

-MizJAI-

There are days, when the past gets to us and the future seems too far away.
There are moments when the pain echoes louder than the promises.
There are those times when suffering feels like it’s bigger than our destinies.

These are the moments when depression creeps in filling up the space that belongs to hope. These are the moments when pressure swells in our chest and our tears burn on our cheeks,
the moments when we almost forget to believe in our power to dream of a better time just one moment away.

Even when we face death, relationships that break, people that change; when we encounter things that the average woman has never seen before; even when we are required to be stronger than what seems fair, know that you are woman enough to reach up again, you are blessed enough to survive again, you are loved enough to overcome and help others come over with you. So, find a reason to smile again . . . in your children or by discovering a fresh way to serve somebody in need. There have been seasons where my own pain lessened on the tutoring table as I taught a stranger’s child how to survive in the classroom. Go tutor, go sing, go dance, go cry but get up again and again and again. Walk yourself right out of depression, go worship, go live, go to the places where you can feel God holding you, go overcome, no matter what you face.

She Can, She Do Overcome the Tears on the Page.

-MizJAI-

Sometimes you just need to move. In order to shake yourself up, you have to get into some type of physical groove.

Have you ever felt ‘blah’ for no particular reason? It’s like anybody could say anything to you at these times and make you feel even worse about yourself and your life.

Well, own it. Sometimes:
a good walk, a jog, or dare I say it, some weightlifting;
followed by a soak in the tub by candle light (or a warm shower for the rest of us),
sometimes that’s what we need…to air out the surge of emotions that swarm around is.
Sometimes, our feelings are just ‘a chemical thing.’
So sweat it out. Clean yourself up. Start over.

But at other times we need a little more . . .

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve . . .