Indianapolis Recorder
09-28-2001
Acts of Faith: Funny how God works
As I sit here, alone, at home on a Friday night watching artists of all
shapes, sizes and colors lead an unprecedented simulcast over 30 national
broadcast and cable networks, 8,000 radio stations and the Internet to
raise money for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I finally
figured out something about God. He's got a sense of humor.
Even when we take him for granted and tragic events unfold on the national
stage or in our personal lives, he's always there when we need him. When
it's our time, he's there to welcome us into the gates of heaven as I'm
sure he did for the more than 6,000 men, women and children who were taken
in an instant on that bright beautiful day in September. When it's not our
time, he's there to make a way out of no way, whether it's down a blackened
set of stairs in the World Trade Center or by keeping us several feet away
when a Boeing 757 comes burrowing into what used to be your office at the
Pentagon.
So where's the humor in these tragedies? It's not the tragedies, it's how
God chooses to manifest his will in us as he sees us through these storms.
I should know because I've been through quite a few storms of my own.
The abandonment by my father at the age of 13 and the financial and
emotional toll it took on my family. The death of my beloved brother,
Billy, at the age of 21. He had managed to survive a nervous breakdown
stemming from our father's abandonment. He recovered, accepted Christ as
his Lord and Savior only to lose his life to a teen-age gang member's
bullet, which he took while trying to shield others from violence.
The loss of a husband of 11 years, in 1995, who meant more to me than life
itself. Why? For no good reason, really, other than his failure to forgive
himself for things he never told me and his decision, afterward, to try to
build a life chasing the skirt of a woman he described as a less
threatening version of me. Last I heard, he was living in his brother's
basement in Atlanta and his girlfriend had a fiance. God's got a sense of
humor.
Since then I've loved and lost, not one, but two, good Black men who came
this close to loving me but couldn't quite go the distance. If I allowed
them, both would have been content just to sleep with me every now and then
and call it a day. Because they were honest with me, I remain friends with
both of them -- one, of whom, Michael, works at the Pentagon and managed to
survive the Sept. 11 attack.
Following several frantic phone calls, I was thankful to speak with him
later that evening and learned that he escaped death by being only two
wings away from the side of the building where American Airlines Flight 77
crashed. I truly knew he was fine when he began to slip into his old but
familiar love talk -- charming but meaningless banter that offered intimacy
but no commitment. How is it that someone of my generation, who values
commitment, attracts two emotionally wounded men who love their pain more
than me? God's got a sense of humor.
It took four hijacked commercial airliners to make all of us drop the
hyphens and just be Americans. And with the dropping of pretext some of our
leading icons revealed poignant but seldom seen sides of our shared
humanity. During an appearance on the "David Letterman Show," the
unflappable Dan Rather cried. And America's verb-challenged President
George W. Bush delivered a masterful address to both houses of Congress on
the eve of a U.S. war with Afghanistan and all who harbor terrorists. Yes,
God's got a sense of humor.
In my own life, it took all the marital hopes and dreams I had worked
toward to come crashing down to help me see clearly that working in public
relations was blocking the blessings that would surely come from returning
to my first professional love, journalism.
After making that decision, including returning home to Indianapolis
earlier this year given my frequent travel to both coasts, it took two
Black women from Indiana, one in Los Angeles and another here, at home, to
not only ground me in journalism but to do it in a mighty way through the
vehicle of television.
It's not something I ever dreamed about as I'd just recently gotten the
courage to co-author a forthcoming book. But God dreamed these dreams for
me. So here I am, ready, willing and able to take on the world from the
vantage point of the 12th largest media market in the country after
establishing my career in the top three. Yes, God's got a sense of humor.
If I've learned the secret of life, it's this. God didn't promise us
perpetual joy or, even, prosperity. What he did promise was to be with us
every step of the way and to see us through. In Matthew 16: 24-25, Jesus
said unto his disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow me: For whosoever will save his
life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find
it."
Whether through national tragedies, or personal ones, God's admonition
remains the same. To find our highest calling, to "come after me," we must
deny ourselves. Deny ourselves those things we take for granted, even those
things we cherish. Sometimes, even, our very lives so that others might
live. America lost something precious on Sept. 11 -- our sense of safety
and well being. But just like other times of great national disaster or
war, we will go forward. We will regain our strength and reach heights
which, even now, we cannot imagine.
I've learned that it often takes a tragedy for God to get our full
attention. But when he does, all things are, indeed, possible. It's that
assurance that makes me smile. And, if I can smile, I know that laughter
can't be far away.
Article copyright The Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper.
Article copyright The Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper.
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