DEEP WATERS

I've been thinking about one word a lot recently... LEGACY. My thoughts can be traced to a recent event in my life. This past week I spent time in my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. I traveled home for my Uncle Alvis's funeral on this past Monday. His funeral was one of the most precious I've ever attended. The room was filled with people whose lives have been touched one way or another by Uncle Alvis. Family members, colleagues, neighbors, fellow church members -- we all crammed into his A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) church home to reminisce and illuminate a life fully lived. My uncle spent his life serving college students as a professor in the School of Social Work at Howard University in Washington D.C. (my alma mater, by the way - HU!!!). As the president of Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina for a short time. As a member of the peace corps in Liberia, West Africa (which my family and I visited when I was only 4 years old). As a social activis...

Yesterday my husband Anthony and I returned from Long Beach, California. No, we weren't there to surf or walk hand-in-hand along the shore, the cool sand rubbing between our toes. We were there to attend the 2013 Mosaix Multi-ethnic Church Conference . We were there to hear from amazing speakers like John Perkins, Eugene Cho, Choco De Jesus, Efrem Smith , and many, many more. We were there to meet and reunite with friends and co-laborers - other pastors and leaders of multi-ethnic churches around the country, and world even. (There was an amazing group of church leaders from Congo, Africa.) But one special treat for me was connecting with other pastor's wives like me. Other women who get me and this life I'm living. Other women who know that it's hard being a pastor's wife, but it's even harder being the pastor's wife of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-social economic church. Other women who understand that we're waging war ev...

Okay, so let me just say this: I have a love/hate relationship with reality television. I have wept over performances on The Voice and So You Think You Can Dance . The beauty I've seen in the fresh talent on shows like that has left me amazed and, at times, in tears. But as the Mama of four kiddos with so much to do and so little time, I just can't commit to reality tv. I just don't have the time to tune every week to see if the girl with the fiery voice or the guy who floats through the air like an Alvin Ailey dancer makes it through to the next level. I just don't have that kind of time... And then there's the reality television that eventually reveals the depths of every character's worst flaws -- a la Jersey Shore . You know, the kind that makes you say, "Wow, at least I'm not that much of a loser..." I personally despise that kind of reality tv. So, it was with much fear and trepidation that I watched the first episode of TLC...