I Hate Sagging Pants With A Passion... But Seriously?

He Touched My Heart

Jeremiah 29:13 says You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Around 2 o' clock last Thursday morning (June 9th) I was jolted awake from an extremely sound sleep by a heart rate of about 145bpm (beats per minute). A normal heart rate is around 60-100 and when you're sound asleep, as one would imagine, it's much closer to the lower end.

For the sake of time, let me be brief.

I was admitted to three different emergency rooms that day.

I rode in the back of two different ambulances that day.

I thought my life was going to end that day.

I began to pray to God for the first time in a long time that day.

I asked God to heal me; mind, body and soul that day.

During the next few days even more amazing things happened.

And on Monday morning (June 13th) a surgeon threaded catheters/wires into the chambers of my heart to correct the problem that had been discovered.

This was no ordinary surgeon. He was a man that had been commissioned by God since creation to be the one God would work through to heal Hattie Roschelle Hoskins-Nelson (her friends call her Roschelle or Corky).

If I ever have an opportunity to tell you the whole story, it is one that will make the hair on the back of your neck rise to life, goosebumps will form on your skin, tears will fill your eyes and you will know as I now know (without a doubt or any reservation) that GOD IS REAL.

For all of you who were aware of what I was going through, thank you for your prayers, kind, positive thoughts, words of encouragement and well wishes. For those who were completely unaware, thank you just the same for being a part of my life. I thought of my life (and all of you) and how precious (good and bad) every aspect of it has been and I nor the Almighty were ready for me to part with it.

India's Song Is My Song Too

Legacy - something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past; Pride - A feeling of pleasure from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired; Lineage - direct descent from an ancestor, esp a line of descendants from one ancestor...

Sigh....

As large as the continent of Africa is, it is not; nor will it ever be enough to simply speculate about the notion that this place... this foreign... completely unfamiliar land mass holds the mystery and history of my origin.

Perhaps that's why black Americans have such a disconnect with Africans or other black Americans, for that matter. We have no past. We have no connection to our heritage. For the most part, our heritage begins with the rapidly fleeting "old plantation" stories once shared by the old aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers and uncles who've transcended this life and those important spoken glimpses into our past most likely died with them.

Was it Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone...or could it have been Cameroon or Senegal.

Like any other continent...the people that live in different countries, territories and regions vary in customs, traditions, and physical characteristics.

Who am I? Where am I from? How did I get here? What's my story?

Curiosity definitely got the best of me a few months back. So, I joined Ancestry.com. Surprisingly, I was able to trace my family tree back to my Great-grandmother's grandfather.

His name was Beverly Hope, born on a plantation in Tallulah, MS in 1820. His mother was from Georgia and his father was from North Carolina.

Sadly, when I attempted to find them the old documents changed. The categorizing of my family went from listings that included names.... to my family being listed as property...like a wood stove or livestock.

Grandfather Beverly's mother could have been BLACK FEMALE, 28 or MULATTO FEMALE, 32 or BLACK FEMALE, 18. There's something heartbreaking and numbing about glancing into the past and realizing people... my family...were chattel.

....nothing more.

Please don't mistake this post as anything other than what it is.... a thought that haunts me from time to time. A hypothesis as to the reason so many of my young black sisters and brothers seem lost and void of direction.... I didn't say all. I said many. A question I quietly beseech an answer from God about from time to time.

I heard India's Song this morning and realized it's not just India's Song...

....it's my song too. And I'm grateful for the power of her words.