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God’s dreams for us are big.
He is infinitely creative, and endlessly powerful. It is the essence of his very nature. Before time, scripture tells us the Spirit of God moved upon the surface of the deep (Gen. 1:1) and there in the void and utter darkness, He spoke words of brillant power- “let there be light.” With one utterance, life began.
That was so long ago, yet each and every day he repeats the miracle on the most intimate of venues. Deep in the darkness and silence, in the secret place of a mother’s womb, the spirit of the Creator speaks. With the smallest whisper, he joins egg and sperm and says, “let there be life.”
And in that moment, He dreams big.
He speaks again and the fertilized egg divides for the first time but not the last. It will mulitply and divide again and again as God weaves together new life according to a plan and for a purpose.
He weaves the life there in the darkness with His dreams in mind. He never wonders what the child’s destiny will be. He knows. He forms the small one, shaping and molding with the end in mind so that when at last his work is finished and the labor pains of the mother begin, the child is perfectly equipped for all the good works God has prepared in advance for him to do.
He comes forth into the bright, cold world, draws his first breath and….cries. He is concerned only for the comfort of his mother’s breast but his destiny awaits him and only he is able to fulfill it because when God was forming him, the Almighty was dreaming big. Read the rest of this entry »
One of my faithful readers, Emily, asked if I could offer resources for learning to style black hair. I am happy to announce that I will soon be featuring a monthly article on the subject complete with photos on Rainbow Kids beginning August 1st. We will start with basic hair care, move on to products for different textures of hair and then proceed with a style per month.
A book I have found to be really helpful is It’s All Good Hair by Michele N-K Collison which you can purchase through my website by clicking the link above. I have become an affilate with Amazon and have items featured on my site catering towards tranracially adoptive families and families of color. There you will find not only resources on black hair care but ethnic children’s books, and music. I also have some books on adoption, race issues and specifically transracial adoption I like and soon I will be offering ethnic dolls and children’s books on adoption. Check it out at www.sherrigragg.com!
Blessings,
Sherri
Last night as I was styling Claudine’s hair I said, “You know, when you first came home from Haiti you were pretty mad about having your whole life changed. It is okay though, I guess I would have been mad too. The thing is, I was the one you took it out on most of the time. I remember one day I had been styling your hair and I had just completed my first set of cornrows. I was so proud of myself! We went to let you see yourself in the mirror and for just a second your eyes lit up and you smiled and then you caught your self, wiped the smile off your face and said, “Pa bele.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means, ‘not pretty’” I replied.
She giggled and said, “I didn’t say that!”
“Yes you did! You were working me over good. You said, ‘Pa bele’”
She giggled again and I laughed with her.
Boy, I am glad we have made it past that time……
Bonding. It is not for the faint of heart. It takes patience, sacrifice and work but how delightful to reach a place that mother and daughter can look back and laugh together on a first set of cornrows and a ruthless critic’s assessment.
Here is a photo of last nights labors. The top is not cornrowed. Those are flat twists with braids.
”Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever.”
Pslam 118:1
A few years ago, God impressed on me that our family needed some “house rules.” I said, “Okay, God, but I have no idea what they should be so you are going to have to give them to me.”
He was faithful to answer my prayer. No one would ever catch me saying the rules are followed in our home without fail, but over the years they have become an essential part of the value system for our family.
Our house rules are written on a large piece of paper that hangs prominantly in the kitchen of our home and over the years, guests have often asked me if they could copy them to adapt for their own families. I thought some of you might find them useful as well so I have posted them for you today.
Blessings,
Sherri
House Rules
1. Honor your father and mother. (Exodus 20:12)
2. Obey your parents (without challenge, excuse or delay) (Col. 3:20)
3. Put others’ interests first and live in harmony. (Phil. 2:4 & 1 Peter 3:8)
4. Respect the property of others. (Luke 16:12)
5. Tattle only when there is danger. (Proverbs 17:9)
6. Wait your turn to speak. (Proverbs 18:13)
7. Whatever you do, work at it with all your might. (Col. 3:23)
8. Be responsible. (Ephesians 6:7&8)
9. Do everything without arguing and complaining. (Phil. 2:14)
10. Don’t harass the management. (Ask once and accept the answer.) (Proverbs 18:6)
Sherri Gragg
www.everydaymiracle.wordpress.com
Whenever I was sick as a child, I had the same nightmare. In my dream I was in a cavern which had two large rooms divided by a steep pathway formed by some long ago underground river. I stood in one room; my mother stood in the other. Just as I began walking toward my mother, a sudden avalanche of huge bolders descended, blocking my way. The sound was deafening and I was terrified by the sheer force of the crashing rocks.
Then, the avalanche would die away and the quiet left in its place seemed as intense as the fury which had gone before it. In utter silence, the dust settled to reveal my mother still standing on the other side, but no longer alone. Beside her was a little girl whom I had never seen before and I watched as my mother turned to the child and handed her a small yellow flower. My heart broke as I realized I had been replaced….forgotten.
That dream came to my mind tonight as I was thinking about this past week. The emotional avalanche has passed and in its place is the quiet of recovery, adaptation and the business of getting on with life. Just as in my dream, the dust settles to leave me pondering the losses sustained but that is where the similarities end because that is where my childhood nightmare always ended. In real life, I found in the aftermath not only sadness but traces of God’s grace, and hints of hope.
I gained my bearings to find my daughter standing there and to my astonishment there was laughter and joy in her eyes. There have been plenty of tears along the way but somehow she still postively exudes joy. I listened and the quiet was broken by her infectious laughter that comes so, so easily. There in the dust left behind by destruction I found her footprints and the pattern revealed she had been dancing.
Somehow, she has remained vibrant, loving and breathtakingly beautiful inside and out.
Yes, she is a bit scarred by all she has been through, but what is astonishing to me is she came through with her spirit intact.
I could not help but cry again, but this time with tears of joy. I had to stop and shake my head at the wonder of it all. I thought about how I chose the title “Everyday Miracle” for this blog and I realized she is my greatest miracle of all. There have been so many times I worried about her but suddenly I realized deep, deep down in my soul that I need not worry any longer. She has survived so much already. By the grace of God she has what it takes. She is going to make it.
There is still laughter in her eyes and it is time to move on…..
Jeremiah went to the doctor at the end of last week. Today, he is going for an EEG to see if he is having siezures while he sleeps. He needs to fall asleep for the test today, so the instructions were that he could only sleep four hours last night.
Did I mention he is five years old?
We were not quite sure how we were going to accomplish keeping him awake for so long. My husband suggested I take him to the latest showing possible of Ratatouille. The movie began at 10:15pm. I looked around as we stood in line to buy his popcorn and was acutely aware that he was the only child in the theatre. The other patrons stared at us curiously. I am sure they were thinking what a terrible mother I was to have my child out so late. It reminded me to not be so judgemental because things are rarely what they appear.
When we reached our theatre we looked up into the stadium seats to find we were all alone. We sat down right in the middle and Jeremiah began to nibble his popcorn. It was very quiet.
He turned to me and said, “What if the movie doesn’t start?”
“Then, I will go ask the manager about it,” I said.
“If you go ask the manager, who will take care of me?” he inquired.
“I will,” I said. “I will always take care you. You will go with me.”
“What about our stuff?” He asked.
“We will take that with us too.”
Then, a slow grin crossed his face and he looked all around and said, “What if somebody steals our seats?”
I laughed out loud and he giggled at his own joke. I reached over and rubbed his head and said softly, “You are so beautiful, you know that?” Then, I sighed and said, “There can’t be anything wrong with you. There just can’t.”
I managed to keep him up until 2am last night and this morning he seems to be handling the sleep deprivation much better than me. I had the worst time preparing breakfast. It is obivious to me my brain is not functioning fully.
I had another post prepared for today but when I went to edit it, I found my mind was too foggy and I just couldn’t do it. So, I decided to go back through the writing I did while I was at the Abbey. I worked exstensively on a book of scriptural mediations while I was there. I scrolled through the documents and found Surely God is Here. I hope that reminder is as much of a comfort to you today as it is to me.
Surely God is Here
Scripture
“Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’” Genesis 28:15&16
Meditation
Jacob was in a dark and frightening place. His mother had just coerced him into deception and thievery of his brother’s blessing. He barely had time to mourn his father’s death before he was forced to flee Esau’s fury. So, Jacob ran. He left everyone and everything he loved to flee headlong into the unknown all alone. He was running for his life.
How dark and lonely that first night away from home must have been as he set up camp. A stone was his pillow and the regrets of a lifetime served as a blanket.
But….God was in that place. Jacob just did not know it.
Somehow, the young man slept and as he did, God sent him a dream full of promise. A stairway appeared before him between Heaven and Earth. It was a bridge to span the uncrossable; a means to reach the unreachable. In Jacob’s dream, God foretold the coming Messiah who would make a way for fallen mortal flesh to reach Heaven.
Then, the Almighty spoke. To that lonely, regretful young man he spoke words of security, hope and promise. (Genesis 28:13 – 15)
Are you in a lonely, frightening place today? God is there with you.
Even if you don’t know it.
Prayer
“Father,
My heart cries out to you in a dry and weary land. Come to me now and speak your words of comfort, security and hope. I believe you are here. Give me ears to hear your voice. ~ Amen”
My sons are at their grandparents’ and the girls are playing together in the back yard while I prepare dinner. I am alone in the house and it is peaceful and quiet. Golden rays of evening sun filter through the kitchen window while soup bubbles in the pot and I began to place cheese between slices of bread. I bought the bread in the health food section of the supermarket. It is made from seven sprouted grains, supposedly according to some ancient recipe found in the book of Ezekiel and reputed to be a powerhouse of nutrition.
Gotta keep my babies healthy. Gotta keep my babies safe.
Then, the fracture in my soul formed the day before deepens and widens unexpectedly and suddenly I am sobbing because I did not keep her safe. Read the rest of this entry »
Occasionally, one of my kids (or more than one of my kids) will get into some kind of trouble that instantaneously drains all of the energy right out of me and I think, “Okay. That’s it. I’m done for today.” Inevitably, dinner is simple that night and I skip bathing the children in order to get them in bed as soon as possible. Then, I sit and stare off into space for a bit.
My first child, Christopher, has always been a very energetic and creative child (translation: hyper and mischievous). Even when he was a baby he would occasionally produce one of those days for me all on his own. There was the time he climbed to the top shelf of the linen closet and hid there. When we finally found him, our hearts pounding in panic that someone had snatched our “angel”, he informed us, “Dis is my special seat, and nobody can make me come down!”
There was another time that he attempted to take off all of his clothes and jump into the fountain at the mall. Oh, and my personal favorite: The day I walked upstairs to find him sitting in the middle of the floor with a tub of Vaseline which he had proudly smeared to about 1/2 ” thickness all over his body and the carpet too.
But now, I have five children and that Vaseline covered toddler is standing on the brink of adolescence. Two of my children were adopted from Haiti a year and a half ago and spent the two years previously living in an orphanage. Sometimes, after a day like today I think about how the Vaseline episode threw me for a loop and then I say to myself, “If only that were the worst of my problems today.”
If only….
Two years is a long time to wait for a child. It is also a long time for a child to wait for her family. I remember thinking a few months after my girls came home that it was like there were all of these little boxes inside of them and that I had no idea was was in them and therefore was parenting “blind”. Over time however, the boxes popped up less frequently and then their appearance tapered off almost completely.
I guess that is why today when I came across one that was previously unopened I was caught off guard. It came out of nowhere and when I opened it, I am quite sure I heard something inside me fracture.
When I recovered, I was in awe that my little girl had been walking around with that box inside her and I had no idea. She had been laughing, playing, learning, and loving all the while.
And there it was. Unopened. Waiting until she was whole enough to look inside, her hand placed firmly in mine.
So, we looked inside together and then we cried together and held each other for the longest time. Then, I took her little face in my hands and reminded her what I told her in the beginning:
“I love you no matter what. I love you when you obey and when you disobey. I love you when you are nice and when you are not so nice. I love you when you make good choices and when you make bad ones. I love you when you are first out of the tub and smell clean and sweet and I love you when you are dirty and are stinky! I love you when you succeed and I love you when you struggle. I love you whether you are here or in Haiti. I have always loved you, even before you knew about me. Nothing can change my love for you because you are mine.”
But on days like today, I long for problems as simple as Vaseline on the carpet.
The following story of an Everyday Miracle is told by Margrette Brent in her own words:
“It was the summer of 1949. I was eight years old. My favorite time of the year was the summer when the days were hot, long and filled with games and roaming the hill side where we lived in rural NE Mississippi, with my sister and cousins. My favorite means of moving from point A to point B was to skip. Polio was rampant in 1949, especially in the hot, humid days of summer. But I don’t know that I had ever heard of this dreaded disease because to my knowledge, unlike many communities, it had not visited ours until it came to my house.
I don’t remember exactly when I first noticed a stiff, sore neck, but I told my parents who immediately took me to the doctor in town. You see, my oldest sister had been a healthy, happy little girl one day and was dead the next after complaining of a sore throat. My parents had done all the right things, even had her admitted to a hospital, but she died anyway from what the doctors called “strep throat”. After that they never took any chances. The least whimper and we were off to the doctor. The physician told them that he did not know what was wrong with me, gave me vitamins and sent me home. Within 3 days I was completely paralyzed on the right side. I remember awakening and trying to stand on that third morning and was unable to do so. The world changed as I knew it. I would never skip again.
The same doctor was called to make a house call and again he told my parents that he did not know what was wrong but that it could be “infantile paralysis”. My aunt worked as a nurses’ aide in the local hospital and told my parents about a new doctor who had just come to town. God always makes His appearance on the scene at the right time and He was faithful to do so then. It just so happened that this doctor, Dr. Wendell Stockton, had just interned in a polio hospital. He made a house call and knew immediately what was wrong, but he told my parents that he needed to bring back an IV solution (Gamaglobin) which would prove whether or not I had polio. He also performed a spinal tap to send off spinal fluid for examination. Later that evening he came back and started the intravenous solution into my arm. I remember that shortly after the solution started into my vein, I had a hard chill and shook violently. Dr. Stockton discontinued the solution and told my parents that I definitely had polio. He also told them that he would make arrangements to have me admitted to a polio hospital in Vicksburg, MS.
We lived much closer to Memphis, TN, where there were hospitals for treatment of polio patients however, at that time The March of Dimes paid for most polio patients’ treatment and they required for the patient to be treated in the state of residence. It was 260 miles from Quincy, MS to Vicksburg, MS but it might as well have been a million miles away for us. My mom and dad begged Dr. Stockton to admit me to the local hospital and treat me there, but he said that even if he had the means to do so, they could not afford it. The next morning my uncle and cousin drove my mom, dad and me to Vicksburg. I remember laying across mother’s and daddy’s laps in the back seat of the car and having to ask them to move my arm for me. How confusing and frightening for an 8 year old to suddenly be unable to move one arm and leg. When we arrived at Mercy Hospital in Vicksburg, I was admitted to an intake ward, which was full of other little girls and boys. I remember being very uncomfortable because there were boys in the same ward. I had been a very protected child, and my only close up and personal contact with boys had been my little brother who was 2 years old. Shortly, I was moved to an isolation room with two beds. At first I was the only patient in the room, and then a teenager was admitted to the other bed. My parents were told they could not stay with me, so they slept in the car that first night and came back to see me the next morning before their trip back home. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for them. They had already lost one little girl to a frightening illness they did not understand, with my daddy setting by the bedside in the hospital. How could they leave another one with a mysterious illness so far away? But somehow they did. I am amazed at what the human spirit can tolerate when there is no other choice.
As you can guess I was so frightened, alone and homesick. I had never been away from home except to spend the night at my grandmother’s and granddaddy’s just down the road or at my favorite aunt’s house just across the hollow. I knew no one. I could not move my arm or leg; I was having muscle spasms and was in a room by myself. Nights were the worst. I couldn’t sleep and when I did manage to fall asleep I dreamt of home which made me even more homesick. Since I could not move my right arm it was left lying across my chest. When they did try to move it they found it was frozen in place from a contracture in the elbow joint. One morning the nurse, when giving my bath, just jerked the arm straight. That really hurt but at least I was not left with an arm that I could not use. Even into adulthood, if I slept with my arm bent, it was stiff when I awakened.
Polio is caused by a virus so there were very few real treatments. The body’s own defenses must fight off the virus with an immune system that was compromised or would not have succumbed to the infection in the first place. One of the main treatments was the application of hot packs. I still remember the smell but they did bring relief from the muscle spasms and pain.
Finally it was time for me to move out of isolation and my parents were allowed to visit. Those visits were bitter sweet, since I knew they would be leaving and I would be staying in the hospital. They could only afford to make the long drive every two weeks, so I knew when they left that I would not see them again for awhile.
Only one little girl in the entire ward could walk. We did not like our food but the nurses made us eat everything, so we devised a plan. The little girl who could walk would take all of our food to the toilet and flush it down. The nurses bragged on us for eating our food and we just smiled and accepted the complement. However, a short time later when my blood work showed that I was extremely anemic, and I had to start having painful iron shots, it was no longer as funny.
Eventually, there were so many of us that the hospital was running out of places to put us. They moved about 8 or 10 of us little girls, all about the same age, out to a screened porch which was on the 4th or 5th floor. August in Mississippi is hot and the windows were left open at night so we could sleep. (No air conditioning then) One night a terrible thunder storm came up. There was lightening, thunder and rain. The wind blew the rain in the windows on us and of course we started screaming but the nurses were no where to be found. I suppose they were on their break. The nun however, heard us on the floor below us and came to our rescue. She closed the windows, dried us off and made sure we were comfortable. Then she went in search of the nurses. To say the least they never left us again.
There was one little girl named Sandy, who was in an iron lung. Patients became dependent on the lung for their breathing and could not tolerate the iron lung being turned off. The nurses would take me to sit by Sandy and distract her while they turned off the iron lung. Eventually, she was able to leave the iron lung and go home. That is probably when the seed was planted in my soul for nursing. The ability to help another human being felt good and that remained with me all of my life.
I remember walking for the first time after becoming ill. I pushed a chair and walked behind it. Eventually they would fit me with a brace on my right leg and provide crutches for me to walk. I was given physical therapy and became very fond of my physical therapist. After 3 months I was allowed to go home. I had always made all A’s in school but by the time I arrived back home school had already been going for two months, so they averaged my grades and the A’s I made became C’s. That was very hard for me. At first I had to hold my right arm steady with my left hand in order to write, but gradually my arm became stronger and I no longer had to do that.
When I was discharged from the hospital, my mother was taught how to perform the passive exercises to strengthen my extremities and to prevent painful and crippling contractures from forming. My parents were told that I needed hot baths prior to the exercises. That was a real problem for us since we did not have running water in rural MS. The community well was some distance from the house down a hill. My dad carried buckets of water up the hill to fill a wash tub and the water was heated on a wood cook stove. I was blessed to not have developed deformities that many post-polio patients grapple with today. I am sure that had my parents not made the sacrifice to see that I received the exercises, as prescribed by the physical therapist at the hospital, I would have much more disability to contend with today. Gradually my legs became stronger and eventually I was able to shed the brace and crutches.
Polio never stopped me from doing anything I really wanted to do, with the exception of running. I became a stronger, more determined person as a result of my challenge. My parents constantly told me what I could not do and I became more determined to show them that I could. I don’t know what I would have been like without this experience but I do know that I learned many lesions as a result. I learned that if you wanted to be treated well you had to be nice to others. I learned to trust God to take care of me at an early age. I developed a passion for nursing while in the hospital and never wanted to be anything else.
Polio was my first real challenge in life. School was never a challenge, and I made friends easily. Without my challenge I might have been self sufficient and never learned to trust God to help me. I have grown to believe that it is not so much what happens to us as it is how we handle it, whether good or bad. I am grateful that I was taught the Word of God from an early age and I learned that God can bring something good out of every bad situation if we allow Him to.”
Editor’s note: This is a story awash in everyday miracles: the miracle of courage and parents’ love; the miracle of determination, healing, and seeds of promise sown in the darkness of the wilderness. It is the miracle of survival and….transcendence. It is the miracle of Romans 8:28 which promises that no matter what comes our way, if we walk with God He can turn it around for our blessing.
Sorrow and tragedy come, but He takes the sting out of it for His children.
This story is also the miracle of a life fully and abundantly lived because the one living it refused to succomb to self pity. She refused to be defined by her disability.
As a matter of fact, I lived with her all my life and had no idea she was disabled until I was about 9 years old. She just never let it slow her down.
You see, the little girl in this story grew up to be my Mom.
After I wrote Black, White and the Cornrow Inbetween my Nigerian friend from the U.K. asked for some pictures of my hair creations. So, here they are. I also did some cornrows with beads on my oldest daughter a few days later who has very long, straight blonde hair (if you look closely you can see it in one of the pictures below) but I did not get a picture of them before I went out of town and now they have deteriorated signifigantly.
Enjoy the pictures!
The next pictures are of my baby girl Ro. This was her first full cornrowing with beads. Check out the parts on the top.
