This blog is a continuation of the blog titled "Zion, the beginning of You" Try re reading it to refresh your memory.
Disclaimer.... the next few paragraphs of this blog are 100% true with no fabrications whatsoever
I's 40 now. OH MY GOSH I am freaking 40 years old!! When I started this I was in my mid 30's and had now idea I would go through the things I went throgh in the last 6 years. This may be a cliche, a huge over statement but I have grown so much. I felt compelled to start where I left off when I was talking about when my husband and I dated. For some reason I keep navigating back and forth from my dating story to when I had my son zion. Trust me, the storyies are parallel, you'll soon see.
So I re-red the last dating story and wow... I had no idea how much I shared. It's a good thing though. The next few blogs are about to get real deep .The good, the bad, the ugly....
The last time I shared about my life, I was talking about the beginning stages of dating. I left off with me and my now husband Bryan, at a table in Soup or a salad, professing our love!(January 2016) Lol! So sappy. Anyway,
The last time we talked, about dating, I left off talking about the pink box. We were at the restaurant and he handed me a box with gifts inside. There were gift cards to my favorite places to shop and EAT. I thought it was the sweetest thing. That was the start of so many sweet and romantic things.
There was also a letter saying how he wanted to make it official (whatever that means) lol. This was some years ago so I have no idea whats done or said now to make it official. So we sat there, ate and talked until the resturant closed. When they closed, he walked me to my car and to be honest, I don't remember what happened after that. I'm sure I went home and we talked again for hours and hours.
When I met Bryan Donta Jones I had no idea who he was. I should say when I first saw him. I love poetry, spoken word to be exact. My siblings and I were huge fans of Jackie Hill Perry, Solomon, Janette,Preston Perry,Chris Webb, Ezekiel and the artists that make up P4CM. When you get a chance, please look up these poets and listen. Janette took the poetry world by storm with her poem entitled " I will wait for you" you should listen to it. Anyway, we went to a poetry event called Poets in Autmn.This was Octobber 1
2015. It was so good and actually at that time, I felt like I was on top of the world. I know thats a cliche but oh well. I had just got a new 2016 No money down, zero percent apr by the way!!
That's a testiment to God, how I got that jeep by the way. It was a Brand new Jeep compass, no miles sunroof, leather seats, seat warmers.. what else? You name it, that's what that little Jeep had. She was my baby and I loved her! I had become vegan, which was one of the bet decisions for my health I had ever done. I was in good shape, and was developing this newfound confidence I never had. I didnt always like myself, but we will talk about that later. So yeah, I was having a good time being single. My siblings were always my bestfriends, one because we couldnt really hang out with many other people because most people's lifestyles were very different from ours. We were very churched, didn't listen to all kinds of music, only Christian and Gospel, didn't watch all kinds of movies, didnt dress like most people, only dresses and skirts. Not too many people understood us so it was easier to just stick together to avoid all the questions and awkwardness. I really want to elaborate on this but I dont want to get away from the dating story. So more on my upbringing later. I really just wanted to put context on the relatishisp with my siblings because I want you to realize how close we were.
I was 31 or 32 years old, my brother is four years younger than me, my middle sister is four years younger than him and my baby sister is four years younger than her. I had come to a place in my life where I was content with being single. Content meaning, I had finally accepted being single with out being anxious, sad or depressed about it. I really thought I would have been married AT LEAST by thirty, but when it didn't happen, I started to focus on myself and what I liked to do.
We get to the poetry event, of coure I drove everyone there including my sisters boyfriend which is now her husband. We had so much fun as we usually did together and I thought it was so cool to see some of my favorite poets live. I didn't really do things like that much. Church and work were at the forefront of my life and like I said hanging out just to hang out wasnt my thing. SO I thought... But that day when we were walking out of the building, I felt so free and it was a feeling and an experience I wanted to feel again and again. I needed that, we needed that. While everyone was talking about their favorite moments, I tuned out and asked myself why I dont I do this more often. We made it too the car, all having conversations about how we can't wait for the next one next year. When I got to the drivers side of my car, I saw a whole bunch, yeah a whole bunch, of flyers on my winshield and instantly got annoyed. I was annoyed because there were so many that I couldnt just drive off with them on my car and annoyed because I had to grab them and put them in my car because I didn want to litter. For some reason, flyers on my car is a pet peeve of mine. I gathred all the flyers and handed them to my brother in the passenger seat. I said, "why would somebody put all these flyers on peoples cars like this? I look around the parking lot and saw that everybody had all these flyers on thier cars. " And on top of that, they look like CLUB glyers. Why in the world would they put club flyers on our cars and they know this is a church! I was so bothered that everybody else in the car thought it was funny. My brother put them on the dashboard and we drove off continued our conversations, but not after I said my peice again about the "club" flyers. LOL.
THe flyers rode with me for a couple of days becasue every time I got im my car I was in and a hurry to get out. When I finally had time to pick them up, I looked at them "Ohhh", "These are not club flyers" I chuckled at myself. The theme of the event on the flyer was "Bless The Mic" but they looked just like the club flyers people would put on cars at that time. Now we got Facebook, Instagram, but in 2015 flyers were still a good means of advertisement.
To be honest, they judged they flyers, we all did. But they judged them to the point of not even wanting to entertain what the Bless the mic event was all about. When I saw it was a church event, I told them "look they're going to have poets and praise dancers, and mimes and everything! We were church kids. That kind of thing was it was our thing. I was the leader of our praise dance/mime ministry. Our ministry had three members and a sound person who were as follows: Member one ME, Member two, my middle sister Member Three my baby sister. We did at one point have one other member who brought so much life to our group and was well missed when she left to be a full time support and praise dancer at her dad's church. And our sound person can you guess? Yep my brother. This isn't to downplay. It's to show you that we depended on eachother alone, the ministry depended on us showing up and our church depended on us heavily as well. I took it very serious because I felt like God had given me a specific talent, and he put me in the position to lead. Even though it was my parents church. I looked at my role as being very important to the Lord. They respected me as the leader too. My sisters didn't give me a hard time when I wanted to go over the dance routine again and again, at 10:30 at on a Saturday night. Thinking about it now, I miss those days. I miss the closness we had, I miss working together to perfect something God had given us, and I miss how we huddled to pray together in the small church bathcroom right before they called us to dance on special Sunday mornings. (deep breath) I miss my sisters, my brother, my family and what we had....
.... As this blog progresses, you'll began to see how my family dynamic changes. My prayer is that you learn from my situation(s), and it will help you with your own family or relationships. ANYHOO ya'll know I have a habit of going on a tangent! Lets get back to this Bless The Mic thing!
They, decided they werent gone to make this one. I couldn't make it sound exciting enough for them. One thing that caught my attention was that this event was a fundraiser for cerebral palsy. If you want me to volunteer or join anything, tel me it's for a cause and I'm dropping everything to show up. I remember when the flooding happened in Houston in 2017 and the hurricane in Florida. All I kept saying to myself was how I wish I could help in some way. I'm not kidding, that night, my sister in law told me and my husband that FEMA was paying people to go help in Houston and Florida! I said God that was fast! I just wanted to volunteer to help but the fact that they were paying??? Yeah so you know I went. And of course I showed up for that cerebral palsy event. I kept asking my siblings until the very last minute if they wanted to go because I didn't want to go by myself. I was at work and it was maybe 4 oclock. We were about to get off and I asked one of my co workers if she wanted to go also. She said she had to pick up her kids. That was the last attempt of trying to get someone to go with me. I told myself, you have to go because you need to get out the box. You need to go enjoy yourself and do what you want to do even if it's by yourself. I remember telling myself that it was ok to enjoy without your siblings. At first I was dissapointed in them because they didn't want to go and support a local church. I remember feeling some tpe of way about them because they hyped up the Poets in Autumn but they didn't want to have anything to do with this local church event.
We had really just started visiting other churches and still weren't freely allowed to go to other churches unless it was with our own church. But I was older and was making wise decisions so my parents were beginning to slowly loosen their reigns lol. I went online and bought the ticket at like 5 o'clock . I thought to myself how I was wrong for being disappointed in them just because I wanted to go and they didn't.
It took me a while to find something to wear because I wanted to be cute. I was at the age and mindset to realize that however I showed up in the world, that's what I would attract. I remember thinking I need to be cute because no telling who I'll meet. To be honest, I was hoping to run into a cute church guy. That may be lame but it's the truth. I had grown up thinking they or he was just going to float my way and I didn't have to do anything but leave the house every morning. But by the age of thirty two, no one had floated... so I figured I needed to do something about it myself.
I was as cute as someone who grew up in the church could be, so you know, the covered up no make up cute. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just trying to give you a visual and my perspective.
Let's fast forward this a bit, sometimes I get hung up on details.
I pull up the the church. Trinity Christian Worship. I had never been there. I gave the lady my ticket info at the door and went in to find my seat (in the back). I'm a little early so I had to go to the restroom to take a couple of selfies. Little did I know that 8 years later, I would be taking selfies in that same bathroom. The event was on October 9th 2015 this picture below was taken October 15,2023. And when I took it, I didn't even realize the time or the significance until I looked at it again when I got home. Wow, crazy.
So I'm sitting there and my single woman radar kicks in. So I'm scoping the room, ok the musicians are over there... performers, mime and dancers over there... no single guys in the audience... hmm I'm giving y'all the real, because now that I'm married, I see the importance of being open and transparent for other single women. We smile in pictures and post about our girls night out or brunch, but some of those times, when I got home, I was a little depressed. The house was quiet and I had to sit there by myself after having such a good time, with nobody to talk to about it. It's a real thing and when I was single I had to work really hard with being satisfied because that was just the place I was in. I had to find happiness somewhere within myself so that wouldn't get depressed. I read all kinds of "be single and happy books" but it didn't take away the feeling of wanting somebody else in my life. I'm going to talk about this more because it's very important now more than ever.
That's why my radar was up. I felt like I had done the work to be happy with myself and by myself, that it was time to be with SOMEONE ELSE! I looked at it as putting myself out there. In a healthy way. You just show up cute at church or art shows or networking events and let God do the rest!
It worked for me... and I didn't have to do anything but show up. Well wait that's not true. What I had been doing years and years prior was praying and preparing and getting my heart right. Yes I know, but I have to be completely honest and I know it works differently for others. But for me it was all I knew to do. My prayers weren't for a husband, my prayers were for God's will, God already knew I wanted to be married so He already had plans for that. He knew the glamour I saw in being a wife. And I was raised to be that. My parents raises us girls to be just that. I didn't know it at the time.
Let's wrap this up
The show starts and Scars the Poet comes up and introduces himself. Then he does a rap, when he's done a comedian comes up. I remember being upset because the comedian said a cuss word in his act. I was like what?... don't he know where he is. I was also super religious at the time which made my judgement on the comedian worse. For a while I couldn't focus because I was wondering why they let him finish his act when he up there cussing. At my church they would have pulled him off the stage embarrassingly. These were my thoughts at the time.
A young girl later comes up in a wheelchair and recites a poem she wrote. It was beautiful. Scars the Poet Comes up and tells us she has cerebral palsy. She amazed the crowd because of all her accomplishments despite the difficulties of having cerebral palsy. He then presents her with a scholarship for college, which was a complete surprise to her. She cried, I cried, everybody cried. It really touched me to witness a young person giving back to a young person for a good cause. Like I told you if it's for a good cause for some reason I'm all for it.
This was impressive to me, and it may not even take much to impress me, but I'm impressed by good hearted intentions.
So it's time to end and Scars the Poet asks everyone to text a specific phone number to win a prize. I was still emotional and didn't even want a prize. The whole event was a prize to me. So I just put the number in the notes section of my phone and that was that. He called his little boy back on stage and this time I wondered why he didn't call his wife up. I thought to myself she must be shy like me and asked him not to call her up there. Those were literally my thoughts. So I looked in the front row to see if I could spot her wearing one the the matching t-shirts that he and his son were wearing but I didn't see anyone. So I thought maybe she was in the restroom. Why was I looking for his wife? Because I just knew that this man who is obviously caring and doing good things on the earth had to be married. And he had a kid so that must mean he was married. For someone coming from a very sheltered life, I saw life one way. Even at the age of 31. Everything was black and white for me and anything outside of black and white was just wrong. I learned real fast after that day, that life is everything BUT black and white. The next few months and after that made me grow up and I experienced things I had NEVER experienced, good, bad, and ugly things. So here I am, getting ready to leave the event at a high, feeling so good inside but I had no idea what what I was about to go through...
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