I fought through harsh winter storms, all in an effort to give birth to you.  Your season was approaching swiftly and everything within the atmosphere came together to promote our growth together.  The rain showers and the warmth from the sun ensured your future with me would be bright.  I feel naked without you; and as much as I enjoy your presence, our season together will come to an end.  We will have both fulfilled our purpose together in this life and my experience with you will promote growth, provide me with the things I need to promote growth in others and, of course, you will always be a part of me.

Yours Truly the Tree…

I don’t know about you but my favorite season of the year is fall.  I’ve come to enjoy the cool breeze after a harsh hot summer.  My husband and I shop heavier during this season in an effort to prepare ourselves for the season to come.  The thing I enjoy most about the fall is watching the transition that takes place with the trees.  In my opinion, the beauty that the earth reveals in this season is unbelievable.  It is for this season I compel you all to take a lesson from the trees.

One of the most challenging things in my life has been my inability to recognize the seasons changing in my life.  It seems that we all have trouble accepting the fact that some people have been designated to us for only a season.   We have girlfriends that are not beneficial to our lives, yet we hold on to them for reasons for which we are unsure.  We’ve done all we can to provide them with resources and direction, but they simply latch on as leaches and bleed us dry.  We come to believe that God himself placed them in our lives for a reason but are never willing to let them go when their season in our life has gone.

I know that in today’s economy most of us are thankful to have jobs, even though we hate the jobs that we have.  What if I told you, your season to leave that job or position came years ago but you ignored it. Now you feel trapped in a place that is not for you and because of your current state of being, you have no other choice but to stick it out and force yourself to be thankful.   Your employer knows that your season is gone and treats you as such.  They know that jobs are hard to come by and suggest that they’re doing you a favor by keeping you employed in that dead end job.  No raise, no promotions, more work, just an unhappy you!

What if I told you that you married a man that was only supposed to be in your life for a season?  You wanted to be married and you felt that your biological clock was ticking.  It’s “now or never” and “now” has turned into a divorce a few years later.  Some of you managed to hang on a few more years because of possessions or for the sake of your children, but ultimately you had to let go. Your hands and your heart worn from trying to hold on to your marriage with a firm grip, but the season proved to be stronger than your grip.

Now the lesson from the trees!  During the transition in the fall season, we see a mixture of two types of trees: the Evergreen & Deciduous trees.  The deciduous trees are the trees that we watch turn the beautiful shades of yellow, orange, purple and red during the fall months.  At the peak of their beauty, the leaves are preparing to die.  The tree knows that winter season is fast approaching and it must do everything it can to gather strength to survive the winter storms.  The trees know that they can’t continue to provide the leaves with the nutrients they need because the tree needs to preserve its nutrients in order to remain strong during the winter months.  Once the tree releases the leaves and they fall to the ground, they provide cover and nutrients to the roots as they decompose.  If winter storms come prematurely, before the tree has had the opportunity to shed its leaves, they are weighted down and ultimately break, lose branches and, in some cases, fall and die. 

Don’t ever get so caught up in the whirl wind of life that you forget to notice the seasons in your life.  In other words don’t get caught in the winter storm with leaves (people and/or things) that you should have released years ago!  Once you've released people and/ or things from your life you may feel naked, vulnerable and unsure of your ability to move on.  These feelings are natural and are just that, "feelings".  Don't allow your feelings to discourage you from going through this much needed process. Learn from your experiences and allow them - negative or positive, to promote growth in your life. 

We must learn to do as the tree:

Release and allow the experience to enhance and strengthen who we are, so that we may provide the proper love and guidance to the next generation of women. 

Are there friends or other people in your life whose season has come to an end but you have been afraid to let go?  What is compelling you to keep them around? 

Is there an area in your life where you know the season has come and gone? If so, what is keeping you from letting go and moving forward?

A Lesson From The Trees...  MMB

Whether we want to admit it or not, our image is important to us.  Even though we may say, “I don’t care what people think,” in the back of our minds we really do care.  If we didn’t care, why do we often find ourselves creating different images of ourselves based on the people that we are around at any given moment?  Think about it.  Are you the same person at work as you are around your friends?  Are you the same person at church as you are around your family?  What do the people in your community really think about you?  Just who is the REAL you?

Why is it so hard for us to be the same person with everyone?  I think it’s hard for us to be the same around everyone because of our perception of other people’s expectations of us.  Our children expect us to be healer, confidante, nurturer, maid, cook, and chauffeur.  Our spouses or significant others expect us to be companion, lover, confidante, and life partner.  Our friends expect us to be their shoulder to cry on, to celebrate with them, to keep their secrets, and to make them laugh.  Our bosses expect us to be on time for work, produce great quality work, be a team player, and work our way up the corporate ladder.  With all of these expectations, it’s no wonder we can’t figure out which person we should be on any given day. 

Another reason we create different images of ourselves is because we are really afraid of what people think about us.  We don’t want people at church to know that we like to go out dancing on Friday night.  We don’t want our children to know that we used to do some of the same things that they are now doing.  We don’t want our family to know what we really like to do when we hang out with our friends.  In other words, we do not want to be judged.  We don’t want to disappoint people.  We want them to believe that we are these good wholesome people.  The truth of the matter is that we all have faults.  We are not perfect. 

I will be the first to admit that I do not always present myself the same to everyone.  I am very cautious about who I can be “myself” around.  I have to really get to know people before I can feel comfortable with letting my guard down.  I also have come to know and understand that not everyone can handle all facets of my personality.  Therefore, I pick and choose which parts of myself to share with people.  Is that good or bad? I don’t really know. 

Again, I ask “who is the REAL you?” What does it mean to really “be yourself”?  Are you ok with showing people who you really are or will you continue to portray the image of who people think you are?  Will the REAL YOU please stand up?

Tonya D. Zeigler

I had a conversation with a woman the other day in the bookstore.  I’m not sure why she started talking to me nor am I sure why she chose to share her personal experience with me.  She just made it more clear to me how an otherwise good person can make a poor choice that can affect many people.

She was a divorced, single mom.  And like many other divorced women, she had come out of her divorce feeling insecure, unsure and afraid.  She felt insecure in her ability to ever find anyone else to love her, unsure that she could actually make it on her own, and afraid of her unknown future, and the possibility that she would remain alone for the rest of her life.

So imagine her surprise when men started reaching out to her…old friends searching her out on Facebook, new friends introducing themselves to her in the grocery store and the gym. Of course, this new attention boosted her confidence and made her feel better about herself.  She started talking to men on the phone, texting, chatting on Facebook, etc. all under the guise of “friendship and support”.  She started entertaining conversations with men she knew had a wife at home or were otherwise in a committed relationship with someone who surely did not think their man was establishing an outside relationship with another woman.

So when she met a man in her office and had become friendly with him, she did not think anything of it.  In her mind, they were just colleagues.  They started out stopping by each other’s desk to ask about their weekends, then moved on to grabbing a quick bite to eat at the company cafeteria, then on to meeting with a group of people for happy hour after work, and finally, on to meeting alone for a drink after work.  The next thing you know, they were sharing stories about where his current relationship was lacking and how boring or nonexistent his sex life was. To her, he was no longer a married man, but had become a fine, sexy man who is not having sex with his wife. All of a sudden, they had accidentally fallen into an affair.  But was it really sudden?  Was it really accidental?  It wasn’t sudden because the stage was slowly being built as their interactions became more personal and more frequent. It wasn’t accidental because at any point, they could have/should have stepped back to see where that relationship was going. And could have/should have nipped it in the bud before it got out of hand.

Long story short…she woke up one day and asked herself…”What the heck am I doing????”  She had allowed herself to become the type of woman that she hated…the woman she blamed for participating in the death of her marriage.  The woman who will settle for a piece of someone else’s man because she does not feel that she is worthy enough to wait for a man of her own.

My only contribution to the bookstore conversation with the stranger was the food on someone else’s plate always seems more appealing than the food on your own plate.  Sometimes women put their need for love and affection above the needs of others.  If we thought about how our actions would be affecting the household of another woman or family, maybe it would cause us to pause long enough to make a better choice…one that does not involve getting romantically and sexually involved with a married man. What are your thoughts? Let’s talk about it!  -dcf