Hello

The Meaning Behind The Unapologetic Disciple

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I just wanted to introduce myself and let you into my world to give you a better understanding of not only me but my mission.  Life is a funny thing.  When we are younger we always have this idea of what we want to be when we grow up.  For me I wanted to be a hairstylist with my own salon and my best friend was going to have her store right beside me.  I am the oldest of three.  I had to grow up fast because my mom was a single mom most of my life.  I was the one that had to cook dinner for us and watch my little brother and sister when my mom worked.  Because of that I was always known as the responsible one.  That was a very hard title to live up to especially in a small town where every body knew you, your momma and your whole family.  When I talk about my childhood I have great memories and not so great memories.  Growing up I never realized what kind of impact it actually had on my life up until recently.  As I have grown more mature, I have learned that if I want to get to know someone and why they are the way they are, ask them about their childhood.  I grew up missing a key component to any child's upbringing, the other parent.  In my case it was my dad.  That's a long story but ironically he had always been there.  I just never knew he was my dad until I was around 21 years old.  I must mention this before I go any further.   As a parent you should always be honest with your children.  They are smarter than you think.  We can actually do them more harm unintentionally by keeping secrets from our children.  

I was always a curious child.  Since I was the first born of a teenager, I was pretty spoiled as a baby.  From what my mom told me I would ask lots of questions and get into it a lot of things as a toddler.  There is one story that she will often bring up of something really gross having to do with a toilet that I will leave to your imagination.  I don't remember much of my life before the age of 5, but who does?  What I've learned is that 5 is a magical number for children.  Maybe it's because that's the age when most kids go to school for the first time.  Maybe it's because 5 is a milestone age and we tend to celebrate the age 5 in a big way in my family.  I remember 5 like it was yesterday.  I loved school.  I still can picture my Kindergarten classroom.  I can still picture what my teacher looked like.  We had these wooden open lockers that would hold clothes for dressup.   I used to love to where a white lab coat or the firefighters uniform.  I can still remember taking my lunch in a brown paper bag.  I used to get a fruit roll up from one of my friends.  I loved Kindergarten.  I can't tell you much about 1st through 4th grade.  I remember a little bit of 1st grade because I remember a new girl moved to our town and I became friends with her.  I won't go into details now but let's just say that God has a way of protecting you in ways we will never understand.  

Like I mentioned previously, I loved school.  I loved to read.  I wasn't super smart, but I just loved to learn.  If I had As and Bs I had to work really hard to get those grades.  Once I got in middle school, I was pretty much considered a nerd.  I was always reading something.  I loved the teenager chapter books.  Back then we had an Accelerated Reader program.  So one of my friends and I would get out of school, go to her house and just read for hours.  Then we would take the exam on the computer and we earned free personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut.  So Pizza Hut became the hangout because we got free pizza and it was right by the school.  I was also involved in a program called Governor's Minority Program.  It was for minorities only and it helped to build personal skills and increase knowledge of our black history as well as prepping you for college.  It was for kids all over the region so that's actually where I met 2 of my best friends.  We are still best friends to this day.  

Middle School is always hard because you're transitioning from being a little girl or little boy to being a young lady or young man.  Hormones are all out of whack.  You start liking the opposite sex.  Your body is doing weird things.  I was also picked on as a child.  I wouldn't call it bullying but not so funny jokes at my expense by immature kids.  It didn't break me nor did I ever feel like it did. I just began to ignore it and eventually it stopped.  I wasn't one of the cool kids with the the parents that had money so I couldn't do things like Girl Scouts, Softball, Cheerleading, Gymnastics, Band, you know all of those things that cost money.   Those were the things little girls wanted to be involved in that made them feel like they were a part of something.  I loved basketball, but every time I tried out I never made the team.  I couldn't do a lay up of all things.  Since I was tall people always thought I played basketball or that I should.  Since I never made the team, I did the next best thing and became the team manager.  I got to record all of the games and record all of the stats.  I loved it because I loved basketball and it made me a part of the team.  I was also a part of the yearbook committee so I helped to design the yearbooks.  

High School brought some of the best experiences in my teenage life, but also some of the worst.  I'm from a small town.   To put it into perspective, my graduating class had around 100 students.  Everyone knew each other, knew your parents and your grandparents.  Everyone was also in each other's business because there was nothing better to do.  When you get to high school you want to fit in.  I had a few people I called friends but I was a nerd.  I loved to do homework and study even on days when I didn't have homework.  My bright idea to fit in was to get a bad grade in English so I could try to relate to other people who didn't get good grades.  I got a D in English my freshman year.  I don't know if my tactic worked.  I wasn't like the other girls that had a high school sweetheart.  I did eventually have a few friends but they either had girlfriends or just didn't want to acknowledge me or didn't want a relationship.  That came with it's own issues that I could talk about all day long.  For any young people that may run across this be sure you are ready to have sex.  It comes with a lot of emotional baggage that you may not be prepared for.  Don't feel pressured to sleep with someone for the sake of having sex.  Even as an adult sex carries a lot of pressures.  You will have plenty of time for that.  I had my fair share of struggles but I found something I loved in high school and that was running track.  I ran track for 4 years.  There was a time when I almost gave up on it due to some emotional things I was dealing with at that time.  That's one of the down sides to living in a small town.  You have to be private in order to protect not only you but your family.  If not you would literally be the talk of the town.  Track gave me something to look forward to and it actually helped me to set goals and stick to them.  

I graduated high school and attended college for 4 1/2 years and was just months away from graduation before I had to drop out.  That moment became a major turning point in my life.   Have you ever looked back at the decisions you made and said to your self if I could just go back to that moment again?  That is a moment that I wish I could go back and change.  

My life could be a best selling autobiography, but I'm not finished yet.  I'm also not famous, yet. Unapologetic Disciples are the people that have survived or are surviving all those things that Satan has tried to use to destroy you, because you have unknowingly been under the protection of God the entire time.  You may have grown up feeling like you didn't belong to this group or that group.  Maybe you felt like something was always missing in your life and you didn't know what it was.   At some point in your life you made a decision and it set you off on a road that you never would have went on had you stayed the course.  Still, God was with you.   Many times you have disobeyed God and even pushed him out of your life.  Still, God was with you.  You may have hurt others, some intentional, some unintentionally.  You've been stubborn and even outright hated by people.  Still, God was with you.   When you look back at your life you realize that Satan has tried to destroy you since you were little at every significant period in your life.  Yet you are still here.  

Then when it's time for you to fulfill God's purpose and he shows you why you had to go through everything you went through to get to where you are today, then you can stop feeling sorry for yourself and sorry for the situation you're in.  You realize God was putting you together like a puzzle.  The box comes in a thousand pieces.   I used to glue my puzzles to cardboard like a canvas.  You pour the puzzle pieces out onto the cardboard.  Consider that your foundation.   Most people start with the border.  Each piece that gets connected is an experience that is meant to mold and form you.  God begins to build the puzzle.  Sometime the puzzle has to sit unworked for a while because you took a detour that God knew you were going to take.  Sometimes you need to break it and start all over again because of a bad decision that you didn't consult God on.  Maybe a piece, that represents you, gets lost and it has to be found before you can connect another piece to it.  The more the puzzle comes together the harder it is to break a piece off because it's connected on at least 3 sides.  It's unclear what the puzzle looks like when it's just beginning to be put together.  Half way through you have a better understanding of what it's supposed to look like.  Then the puzzle becomes easier to put together.  That is you finding who you are and the choices you make after that nurture the person you are becoming.  Eventually the puzzle is completed and you admire your work.  Then you take your glue and rub it all over the top of the puzzle.  It seeps into the crevices of the puzzle to bind all the pieces together.  Once it's dry you can lift the whole puzzle up and glue the entire puzzle to your piece of cardboard.  It's secured and you know that at that time it's not going to fall apart.  

Unapologetic Disciples are a strong group of people.   God gives His biggest battles to his strongest soldiers.  You are not weak.  You are not crazy.  You are not rude.  You are not conceited.  No matter what you've been through God has always been there.  He never gave up on you.  You never gave up on Him.  At a time when you needed Him the most you called on Him and He appeared or He will appear.  God built you with something special inside of you that only you could handle.  He built you to be a blessing to someone else in a mighty way.  You don't have to apologize for your opinions.  You don't have apologize for your judgments of someone's spirit.  You don't have to apologize for wanting to protect those you love.   Those people didn't expect you to make it out of that situation.  Satan was hoping you would die in your sin.   No one can handle what you've been through like you can.  So stop apologizing for being a Christian and realize that you are truly blessed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Now go tell somebody else to stop feeling sorry or feeling scared and speak out with no apologies because they are blessed!