Fifth and last day of my gratitude challenge. Really not much of a challenge. I have so much to be thankful for. Here we do. 1) Believe it or not I am grateful for my disappointments. An early romantic relationship that went bad taught me the pervasiveness of racism and motivated me to study this evil. Failure in high school athletics prompt me to concentrate on my intellectual, instead of physical, abilities. Academic rejections forced me to refine my talents as a writer and researcher. Of course the disappointments hurt and I naturally do not want more of them. But they give me perspective and direction when I am willing to learn from them. But boy is it hard to do that. 2) I am thankful for the characteristic God gave me. He made me male and He made me Black. I have been given societal advantages and disadvantages in these and other social characteristics. I have not earned those advantages nor deserve those disadvantages. But they help shape me to be who I am today. 3) It is hard to list a final gratitude because there are so many things I am thankful for. So let me end with this. I am thankful for having a sense of humor and at times being irreverent. Life is complicated enough without having some fun. I try not to offend but sometimes perhaps we need not take things too seriously all the time. I probably should change and be more respectful. But I do not think that is going to happen any time soon. Well those are my gratitudes. It has been a blessing to do this. I want to include a lot of people in on the fun and want to see a lot of thankfulness on my news feed. I am suppose to challenge others. Let me first challenge some of the people from my current church Daniel Nash, Jason Wooldridge, Ricky Texada, Tracy Carmack, Betty Prior, John Prior, Christiana Fegalo Bolaji, Stephanie B. Johnson, Julie Moseley Reeves. Now let me challenge some of the Christian graduate students I have had the pleasure of getting to know this and in previous years. Lindsey Huang, Jacob Huang, Daved Kuntz, Tyler Kenefake, Sean Lewis, Charis Wong, Laurissa Backlin, Sarah Michelle Daniels, Laney Bassham, Yolanda Obaze, Mary Mixter, Joseph Comeau, and Ay Marie. Finally, I want to challenge some of the people who have worked with me in areas of racial reconciliation. This includes Michael Emerson, Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Soong-Chan Rah, Efrem Smith, Lisa Sharon Harper, Mark DeYmaz, and others I am certainly forgetting right now. Forgive me if you are someone I missed in these three groups. But really the challenge is good spiritual and mental health for anybody. So if you are reading this post then I encourage you to take the challenge as well.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:19:18 +0000
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