"TWO CENTS TUESDAY" 10/19/2010

“I have some really good friends. I am also investing a lot of energy into my growth and development. The growth I am experiencing is causing me to out grow some of my friends. There is a part of me that has been resisting this reality. In some cases, it makes conversing challenging because I find their views so narrow - not different. How do you have a transformational experience and keep the people you feel close to in your life?”

Life is all about growth. We grow into some things while growing out of others. The thing about growth is that it happens to different people at different times which can be what is causing you to feel what you are currently feeling. I do believe that there are certain people that are placed on our paths in life that are seasonal. They have a specific purpose for a specific time and once that time is up that relationship will seem to fade.

However, real friends are forever. I am not one to subscribe to the idea of out growing someone that I authentically call friend. Friends are people we can depend on through the hardest and happiest of times. Friends are those people we can keep it real with and not feel judged on how shallow our views and ideas may be. Friends are those people that are patient with you throughout whatever process you are going through without making you feel invaluable to the relationship.

Perhaps this change that you are experiencing is not as metamorphic as you feel it is. Perhaps the conversations are becoming difficult because you have been over analyzing your experience thus shutting off different views. Perhaps you should do a little more investing in the friendships so that you can learn your friends a little better. Every conversation is not for everyone. You have to know who to discuss what with or who to share what experience with. Talk to colleagues, co workers or even try blogging to share with random people. The reason we take everything to our friends is because underneath it all we expect them to agree.

I hope I am not sounding harsh here, but I am very passionate about friendships because I have grown to understand the value of real friends through the years. I have over 15yrs of vested time with my friends and we have all grown and are growing, but we never stop loving each other. At the end of the day, you know who you can call at 3 am in the morning if you needed to no matter how narrow their views.

What I suggest is that you step back aND take a look at yourself. It is highly possible that you are pushing yourself away from your friends because you may feel that they will reject your new space without giving them a chance to fully embrace where you are. I would also suggest that you have a talk with your friends about what you are experiencing. You never know, it may cause them to begin their own personal journey linking you all back together.

Be blessed and know that in order to embrace you must start by being open.

DemondMaurice

Scattered Pieces

Have you ever come to a place in your life where everything seems scattered? It seems as though all of the pieces of your life are at different ends of your personal world and out of grasp; while reaching and trying to claim one of the pieces other pieces float beyond your reach. So no matter how hard you try to gather everything there is always something beyond your reach. When you think about it you’re almost like an astronaut floating in space with no sense of gravity.

You are not alone! I have struggled with this for so long and it’s exhausting. You reach for love as your personal goals move further out of reach or you reach for spirituality as your career moves past you. You spend so much time and energy reaching and never ever really connecting so you grab what you can for as long as you can and just sacrifice while the other parts of your life float around you. For example, when most people get their hands or arms around love they tend to be content; not realizing they are squeezing the life out of it ( LONG PAUSE………………). Everything else can be a mess, but as long as we feel that we have love it can fix everything. Love alone does not balance our lives. It is not until we lose our grasp on love we realize the other parts of our lives have been totally neglected.

As I am writing and thinking it is coming to me that the reason for this flotation of pieces is due to our EMOTIONAL WEIGHT. We become so heavily invested in one area of our life that when we try to reach for the others we tilt/ shift our atmosphere; we lean too far to the left or too far to the right; we reach too high to the top and too low to the bottom and all the while everything else is being constantly shifted. You/I weigh too much! We carry around too much emotional weight on a daily basis because we forget to exhale every now and then. The more we inhale and exhale the lighter we become and the lighter we become we can begin to find an emotional balance.

Finding our emotional balance requires that we be still; stop reaching. Whatever it is that you have both hands around at the present time let it go. There is a high probability that whatever is that you are holding so tightly is keeping other things out of your reach. You have to realize that if it’s meant for you to have then it will come back to you because you will attract it.

Instead of this constant reaching we must balance our lives. We must poise ourselves like a dancer and find our center. Once we find our center we then can begin to strengthen our core which is the most important part of who we are. In this position we will begin to create a focused and balance energy that will allow us to reach with both arms in opposite but balanced directions. We can even extend our legs just the same as long as we are focused on balance.

I believe that what will surprise us is that we will discover that we do not have to reach as far or as high as we once thought we did. I believe we will witness the magnetic force of everything we need and desire gravitating towards us.

DemondMaurice 2010

IT COULD HAVE BEEN ME.......

Over the past few months we have lost so many teens to suicide from being bullied because of their sexuality. My heart goes out to the friends and families of those that decided that suicide was the only way to have peace. I am saddened that they didn’t get a chance to live and discover that there is a peace that comes with loving yourself and accepting yourself for who you are. I am saddened that they didn't live to experience the peace that comes from our creator. I am saddened that some of them didn't get the many messages saying "It's get better."

Hearing about suicide always creates an anxiety within because I remember as a teen I wanted to end it all. I too thought that the only way I would find peace is to rest in peace. I was constantly picked on for being different. I was called names that at that time I didn't know the meaning of. As a sexually inactive teenager, I didn’t know what being gay meant. I didn't understand how people thought they knew something so intimate about me when I didn’t even fully understand it.

I would be totally telling a lie if I said I didn't already have these feelings and curiosities from my earliest memories, but I never acted on them and tried everything in my power to resist them and be as normal as I knew how to be. Matter of fact, I resisted sex all together because I knew there was something more to it than just doing it. I remember people thinking that I was shy, but I was trying to be invisible to keep from being picked on. I thought that if I didn’t talk, walk or play with others no one would notice I was around. I am thankful that I had plenty of cousins to play with, but even within my family it wasn't always easy so I stuck close to my grandmother's side.

Being with my grandmother kept me in church every Sunday and to my benefit Jesus revealed himself to me at a very early age and somehow I knew everything would eventually be alright. No matter how hard it got I always knew it would be better, but as time went on and I began to attend church less I became overwhelmed and one day after a really hard week in Junior High I sat down and wrote my mom a long letter basically telling her that I was tired and I didn’t want to live anymore. I was planning to jump off the bridge near my house just to be done with it all so that people could move on to the next person and leave me alone.

I think writing the letter instead of a suicide note helped me to exhale a little bit and once I saw my words on paper I began to pray that God would fix me because I didn't want to die. I had dreams I wanted to accomplish when I grew up and if I committed suicide I would never get to accomplish them. I thank God for answering my prayers because he did indeed fix me. He has never let the thought of suicide enter my mind since that day because that was the only thing that needed to be fixed at that time.

People say that you can't be gay/lesbian and be a saved Christian, but let me tell you, yes I am, yes I can and yes I will. Now we have worn purple for those victims of suicide and it was a very touching day of unity, but from what I know to be true, the color purple does not prevent suicide, the color red does not prevent HIV and the color pink does not cure breast cancer. It is time we start reintroducing people to a God that accepts and embraces us all. There is no way that I could have made it to where I am today without his love and his grace.

For what I suffered through for most of my childhood and all of my teens there very well could have been a story on the news about my body being rescued from the river, but God rescued me first.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN ME................

Let someone know that it gets better not easier because we weren’t meant to have an easy life. Everyone has their own unpaved road to travel on and while Easy Street does not exist, Grace Lane is just around the corner.

God Loves You