#WisdomFromTheThrone: The Ying-Yang Life

This article is not meant for the folks that are perfect. There are some folks that have grown up in life and nothing too bad has ever really happened. (That’s kind of a joke because nobody’s perfect, but incase you can’t relate don’t feel bad)

A lot of us lean towards God when life seems to spin out of control or we want to make a change. I remember the first time I set foot inside somebody’s church I was immediately uncomfortable. I didn’t grow up in a church and there was this expectation of perfection I felt although it was said that there wasn’t. Before I chose what beliefs I believed, TRUST ME I explored ALL OF THEM (we’ll get into detail about that in another article). I couldn’t do it Fam. I tried, for years I tried and I just wasn’t like other people. I was never going to be someone who believed in dressing up my outside on Sunday while my inside was messed up. I was never going to be a person that believed God would kick me out of church for not being in some fancy outfit. I was also never going to be a person that followed all of the rules, showed up every Sunday, and every time I couldn’t meet those expectations I’d leave.

Before some of you go crazy, quit church, call me a heathen, and misinterpret the point of this, I’m going to explain….. The problem in that equation wasn’t church. The problem was me. The choices we make to live as better people rarely happen in a church. You can go to church your entire life, sit on the front row and be at the front of the line for the conga line in hell. Standing in a church doesn’t make you perfect just like standing in my garage is not going to make you the Cadillac I want (if it does, please go stand in my garage). This is not a religious conversation either; I don’t believe in religion personally, I believe in relationship. Your decisions about how you live your life, how you treat people, occur outside the church, synagogue, temple, mosque etc. Those choices are personal decisions and if you want the influence of God in them, you’re going to need a relationship with Him for that. How do you grow any relationship? You spend time with it, you learn the other person involved, you practice.

For some of us… this is a constant uphill battle. I call it the Ying-Yang Life. Nobody was born a terrible person. NOBODY. We are hardwired to love. Love is the most natural emotion that is embedded into our DNA. The emotion of love actually has its own pattern of brain chemicals that are released, it truly is an amazing wonder. Love is so powerful that a life full of it can produce an overflow of it and affect the people around it. Sadly, it works just as well in reverse. Lack of love can pour like a plague and effect families, communities, etc. Lack of love never looks like a “lack of love” because we call it so many other things. Here is a very simple way to identify situations where there is a lack of love. Hurting people hurt other people. PERIOD. They may not even do it consciously… think about that one person at the job who is so miserable they spread their misery. This is not an excuse, it’s the truth. Here’s where the problem (in my opinion) is… when people look for help, they often don’t find the help they need and they don’t ever ask again.

One of the most common things I hear from those of us who fall or have fallen into the Ying-Yang Life is it just seems like every single time we do something right, ten things go wrong. Try to go to church, lose your job. Try to not flip out on anybody, a loved one gets shot. Get a job, it’s not enough and our significant other cheats anyway. We try to help a friend and they end up stealing from us. I can go on and on and on but I think you get it. It seems EASIER to just stay the way we were because we were used to that. I know for years it was easier for me to discern a no-good man that approached me on the street then someone who wasn’t that so for a long time, I like most people stuck with the devil I knew because it was easier then facing the one I didn’t. I will tell you right now, this is a TRAP. Complacency is a TRAP. Settling is a TRAP. Defeat is a TRAP. Sometimes we are all guilty of the self-righteous attitude “Why me?” … WHY NOT YOU? Who are YOU? Nobody. None of us are. Life is a gift. If you have life, you have the same gift as everyone else and what you do with it ultimately is your daily decision.

The TRAP is for us to give up. We don’t realize that Karma (reaping what you sow, what goes around comes around) does not have an expiration date and just because you decide to stop smoking …doesn’t mean you might not pop up with Cancer in 5 years after smoking for 30. I am not telling you this to discourage you. I’m telling you this so you don’t give up on your quest to be better. Why do you trust people? They’ve earned it right? Hummmm *LIGHT BULB MOMENT* we (none of us) are entitled to anything. Ever. If you are breathing, it’s a gift. You’re not entitled to anything else, and whoever told you that you were is a liar. Your children are not entitled to $200 sneakers, it’s a gift. You could have got them clean shoes at Salvation Army or a Thrift Store. Life happens, we can’t stop those things. The only things we can do is keep going, keep trying. The sooner you look for the wisdom in a situation or grasp the lesson in it, the sooner it’s over. We evolve as individuals and in our relationship with God as soon as we focus on our personal responsibility and commitment to the decisions we make.

Bad things happen. TRUST ME, I know better then a lot of people. If you have ever had a moment you literally wanted to (or actually did) pound your head into the wall and question the purpose of you walking the earth, you know exactly what I’m saying. I have ways about myself I work on DAILY Fam. I have ways that come from the type of life I lived for MOST of my life that are hard to shake. Anytime a new person comes around me my first question is always, “Are you an asset or liability?” People laugh because I’m a clown but I’m always serious and I wait for an answer. See, my teenage years were spent in an environment that if you weren’t from there, you didn’t go there. So as an adult I tend to demand an answer for your presence before you even say hello. If you walk to close to me, I’ve already prepared myself to defend myself. I have personal space issues. Fam, go head and laugh.  I don’t mind. If I can’t tell you the truth about myself, why would you listen to anything else I ever say?

I know first hand that coming from a “colorful” past sometimes makes everyday situations difficult. Just like the Ying-Yang it’s like the darkness is always on your heels. We’ll talk about me since I don’t want to offend anyone else…. LOL Having a quick temper is something that I’ve worked on for years, but MY GOD there are days where I feel that it would be righteous to slap certain people. I know that’s not nice, but I’m serious. I have those moments I have to focus and pep talk myself not to do anything that might send me to jail. I hate the grocery store. I go when it’s very late, why? During peak time there’s thousands of people and folk crash into you with their carriages while you’re minding your business or trying to engage me in a conversation in line while I just want to pay for my milk and go the hell home…I feel at times that creeping urge to wild out….. start throwing things off the belt, knock over the magazine rack, climb over the aisle, let all the balloons in the floral department go before I make my exit. On a more serious note, I think I mastered most of my self-control points the day I found out my X-husband was sleeping with an extended family member that I used to be close to as well as watch her children while she was busy screwing my husband. I had given this person food when she had none, I let this person come to my home during the night when her boyfriends would beat her. This person posted my wedding picture on MySpace with me folded out and wrote “Nobody wants to see us together” under it. This isn’t a joke and all 100% true. That night I sat in my living room with several other people, firearms on the way, and mentally was preparing myself to spend the rest of my life in prison.

Thank God for a phone call from my Sister. She said “You have every right to be insane right now… but please don’t throw your life and everything you have accomplished away. They’re not worth it.” She was right. I can tell you now years later that that very situation gave me a strength to get through other things, one after the other… choosing the high road eventually became easier because it was now the way. It took me a VERY long time to understand that God would fight my battles and His judgment on situations is far more just then anything I could ever dish out. It gets easier Fam… you can’t give up. The Ying-Yang life can feel like a blessing and a curse… but it was designed to be a blessing. Tyler Perry said once something along the lines of “when bad things happen to you, you can use them as a teaching tool for others or you can stay in it and let it ruin your life.” Many of us have plenty of reasons to sit in a corner, cry that nobody loves us, and use it as an excuse for everything that’s wrong in our lives. If you choose to live better, you will not ever fail. You may not do it like other people, it won’t happen overnight, bad things will still happen but it will not define you or destroy your life. That only happens when we let it. It is never too late to start over & it is never too late to start making better decisions. Choose love Fam, it never fails.

Be Blessed-
QTP