DEEP WATERS

I was sitting in my minivan, having just picked up my son Christian from his football team workout, when I heard the news. The car in park, I noticed I had 4 texts. I assumed they were texts from a ministry I've recently joined. We've got a lot going on this month, and when a leader sends out a text, we typically start firing our responses back at her. I checked my phone. It was from a member of this ministry, but it read differently from previous texts... "Fyi - you may already know, I just got word that Dr Karyn Purvis passed away." I was shocked. I kinda had a moment... To the point where I had to tell the kiddos not to worry. I'd be okay. I'd just read some bad news, but everyone in our family was okay. (After losing my parents so close together, I've had to give my kiddos this kind of information when anything unusual comes up.) To say I was sad to hear Dr. Purvis had succumbed to her battle with cancer is a gross understatement. In t...

There's been quite a buzz over a certain Huffington Post article this week. I first heard about it when a friend shared the article link on my Facebook timeline. (Thanks Mr. Mitchell!) Well, I thought today I'd give my take on this cool project and add to all the buzz. So what's all the fuss about?  I'm so glad you asked... The buzz is over redheads. Specifically, redheads of African descent. Redheads like the two that live in my home... My Brown Gingers - Kalin and Jada So of course I found the article "Photographer Explores the Beautiful Diversity of Redheads of Color" quite fascinating.  The HuffPost article features London-based photographer Michelle Marshall and her project that documents Black and mixed-race redheads.   "I want to stir the perception that most of us have a 'ginger' as a white caucasian individual..." says Marshall. " As we struggle with issues of immigration, discrimination and r...

Kalin, Anthony and Me in front of Kalin's MTSU dorm It's the day after we dropped my first-born Kalin off at college.  I'm a little sad. (My baby boy has grown up and started a new season away from the nest.) I'm a little bewildered. (How is that my baby boy has grown up so quickly?) I'm a little nervous. (He's on a huge campus. Will he make it to all of his classes on time? Will he study hard? Will he eat at least one real meal today?) But mostly I am very grateful.  I'm grateful that I know Kalin was ready to be launched to college. (Oh sure -- he barely cleans his room; stays up way too late watching movies, writing lyrics and dropping beats; and sleeps in as late as humanly possible in the morning...)  Yet I think of my red-headed boy today and see a mature, responsible young man who's had a clear direction in life for many, many years now. I see a young man who studies well, reads ravenously and takes school seriously. I see a yo...

My Mother, A Born Leader I've experienced that moment already... On Saturday, February 21, family and friends joined together to reflect on and celebrate my Mom's life. After a difficult illness and weeks of hospitalization, my Mom passed away on Tuesday, February 10. I was there the day she passed. I'd watched her grow more and more ill throughout her last weeks here.  And yet, the reality of my mother's passing - and my Dad's - is taking a while to sink in. I've even experienced that moment already... That moment when something happens or something is said or I see something interesting, and I think,  I can't wait to tell Mommy about this. The first time was immediately after her Homegoing Celebration.  We'd laughed. We'd cried. We'd reminisced. And I believe we presented my mother with a service that she would have felt honored to witness. I think she would have been quite pleased. I think she also would have been am...

When I wrote my last post a week ago, I had no idea I was about to lose my father. He appeared to be getting better, had begun pulling out from his post operative delirium and had begun talking again. He'd even begun telling others that he wanted my mother moved to his hospital room "to talk business." Well, my Daddy's business now is spending time with Jesus and all the loved ones that beat him to heaven... I wanted to write this post to share just a bit about my Dad and what he meant to me. A dear friend said it so well in a text to me today... "He was a smart, loving, funny, warm and generous man. Oh and good looking!"  Anyone who knew him would have used the same words to describe him. Even the hospital staff adored him. They called him "Mr. Carl", and in a Baltimore accent, it sounded more like "Mr. Cawl." We all loved him. But God loved him more. So He decided to take him Home. I'm so grateful for the 45 years ...

My Beautiful Parents: Lovely and Refined as Always After spending over a month watching my parents' health quickly decline, I have spent many hours sitting by their bedside, talking with my Mom and Dad and visiting with the many family members and friends that have visited them.  One more thing I did a lot of -- think.  And talk with the Lord. Now that I'm back in Arkansas with my husband and kids, I find myself still thinking quite a bit. And feeling a lot.  So this blog series is the baby birthed out of all that thinking. And praying. And feeling.  There's so much I could share... About the way my father's hand felt as I held it after his second surgery. How it felt to tuck my mother in at night before I left the hospital, placing her sheets and blankets snuggly around her shoulders. How it felt nurturing and loving, and made me wonder when exactly I had reversed roles with the woman who had tucked me in bed every night as a child. How I watched...

So... in case your joining me for the first time or the first time in a while, let me fill you in on what you've missed. Monday I began a series  birthed out of the four weeks I spent beside my parents' hospital beds. My parents are both very strong, and are hanging in there for sure, yet they still have long roads to recovery ahead of them. It has been a challenging month. It has been an amazing month. It's been a month where the reality of my parents' age and season of life has become a reality for me. When you have parents that look a decade younger than they are, come and go as they please, drive themselves wherever they have to go and remain active in organizations, sororities/fraternities, church ministry - even church leadership, you kind of forget that they are elderly. Until they become ill. But that's the challenging part. The amazing part has been all the God-moments I've experienced. Time with family and friends I wouldn't have...

My Mom: Fashionable and Blessed as Ever Yesterday I began a series of posts  inspired by my parents, who are both very ill right now. Their illnesses made for a tumultuous holiday season, but also blessed my sisters and me with some deep moments of reflection, conversation and heart-connection. Some of those heart connections grew from relationships with aunts, uncles and cousins that I don't see very often, since I live far away in Conway, Arkansas. Some came from a collection of my parents' long-time friends-like-family, some of whom I haven't seen in years. And some of those heart connections were nurtured through daily conversations and moments with my parents.  It is from those moments and conversations that I've gleaned all kinds of wisdom from my sweet, elderly parents. Yesterday, I spoke of the first piece of wisdom, advice that's much older than even my parents. It comes from the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and reads, "Honor your father and...

My Parents -- Beautiful, Strong and Healthy When I was young, I expected to learn things from my parents. Etiquette, social skills, spiritual lessons even. In my teens, during my college years and even throughout my twenties, I still expected my parents to teach me much about life.  However, in my middle-age, I thought my parents' school of life had finally shut its doors. I knew they still had a lot of wisdom that I'd continue to glean from, but I didn't expect their thoughts, their words to impact me on any deep level. How wrong I was... I just spent four weeks in Maryland with my parents, watching both of them age before my eyes. I traveled there on Sunday, December 14, after hearing that my Mom had become so sick, she'd been transferred to ICU. Her body had gone into septic shock, and her organs were failing, one-by-one. I boarded a plane a few hours later, praying that I could see my Mom alive one more time. Praying that I could tell her how much I love...

It's been exactly two weeks since Michael Brown , age 18, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.  Other than a few discussions at home with my family, I haven't talked much about this volatile situation. I've wanted to share about it here in Deep Waters , but I've wanted to speak intelligently about it. There's just so much I don't know about this case right now. And then I received an email from a sweet sister-friend that told me she'd checked my blog for my reaction to the Ferguson crisis. She encouraged me to "weigh-in" here, and I knew I needed to break my silence. I feel like I did when I wrote about the Trayvon Martin crisis back in May 2012 in "Our Sons Are Trayvon." I feel the way I did when I wrote about the verdict in the Zimmerman trial back in July 2013 in "Zimmerman Found Not Guilty/The Church Found Guilty" . I feel like there's so much I don't know. I wasn...

Okay so, if you know me at all, you know I love a good read. AND I love to tell other people about that good read. So today I'm passing on a book maybe some of you have heard about, some of you not. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell is a great read. As a matter of fact, I think it should be required reading for parents of children under age 21. Outliers  details the fastest route to personal success. And by personal success, I don't mean becoming insanely rich and famous. As a matter of fact, Gladwell himself states, "It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfills us." Instead, Outliers chronicles those who have found fulfillment and efficacy in life and shows the rest of us how to achieve the same in our own sphere of life. He also shatters the myth of the "self-made man" or the "overnight success." His theory: our background, culture, famil...