I AM NOT A CIGARETTE, SO PLEASE DON'T DRAG ON ME

Don’t waste your time arguing with people who just want to argue, talk and pontificate - the D & D Committee. I personally can’t do it. The more they talk the more characters and story lines I build in my head. Really, I do. I develop story lines based on what I feel their underlying and intrinsic issues are; or, on anything that distracts me from their la la la wah wah wah can't ain't won't dialogue.

I am occasionally in the presence of someone who often relays stories of people in her life. The thing that strikes me most about these people is their presence in her sphere of being has been long-standing. The second thing that tickles my curiosity is that these people are part of what I call the DRAG and DESPAIR COMMITTEE. This is the committee of people that will drag on you with consistent negativity about your life, about what you want to do, about suggestions to have fun, about ANY and EVERY thing.

For me, the blocking out of the blah blah blah and wah wah wah of such unproductive and dragging dialogue is my defense mechanism for that immediate moment. It is the way I teach myself patience and not to speak in what might be considered a rude or sarcastic manner. In a medium range and more permanent nature, I will eventually sit down and ask myself some questions?

Am I now dragging on other people by relaying stories of the drag and despair committee member?

If there is nothing that I can lend positively and constructively to Miss or Mr. Drag, should I consider whether or not their season of importance in my life has changed?

Do I imply that there is an open invitation to drag me down with the practices of the committee, by never saying - I would like to talk to you about why your words and conversations are always such a drag?

Is my life going to be negatively or positively impacted if I close the door on this perpetual negative energy and instead replace it with life, hope and power?

In the interim, until you finally get to the point where you are either going to pull every single strand of hair from your head one at a time; or have the conversation above with yourself -try these things. First and foremost - be quiet. Stop giving the drag and despair committee information about your circumstances. Second - separate. One of the most profound statements I have ever read in the Bible says simply, remove thyself from the accursed thing. OH BOY! If it is dragging, it is pretty safe to say it is a curse. There is entirely too much bitterness, negativity and demoting of one's spirit for there not to be. Third - get out of familiar territory. You may just need to get a new group of positive people to enjoy and do life with; who can impart wisdom, promote your vision and just hang out with you in love. Fourth - interrogate yourself based on the questions above and be serious. Just because he or she has been a friend for 20 years; does not mean their impact on your life needs to be as great as it is.

Here is what I want you to do while you are still highly interactive with the drag and despair committee member; as they talk, write a note to yourself, advising you to cease from pointless conversations, not to waste others time with mindless words of confusion. Write a reason to say something productive to everyone you encounter. Productivity breeds productivity.

The other thing I have found about the D & D committee members is they are the people in the first line of my thoughts today. They want to argue, they always want to talk about why you are wrong and they are right, they always want to tell someone else what they think you said and what they feel about what they really did not hear. Tragically, before you know it, you will mimic them in the words you speak and the spirit you emanate. You have unwittingly become the newest member of the DRAG and DESPAIR COMMITTEE. So, write a little note to the arguer, saying something as simply as – "I appreciate your energy, maybe next time it won’t interfere with my understanding of what you were trying to relay or on my invitation for you to enjoy living and life."

Above all remember this, you are not a cigarette so do not allow these people to drag on you - otherwise you will end up mashed up and squeezed down into the bottom of an ashtray. Are you not so much more than that?

LISTEN - BEFORE YOU NEED A RECOVERY PLAN

My life yelled at me recently. Baby!!! It yelled in a loud, distinct and unmistakable manner. It said and it is saying - there is failure before greatness, there are valleys before greatness, there are problems before greatness, and in every measure of anticipated and expected success there are measures of well - hell - to walk through. Can I let you in on a little secret? My life, in hindsight, probably had been whispering the things it started yelling - but I'm a little hard of hearing in my left ear and I am prone to being stubborn. My mother will tell you that of her three children, I am the most stubborn. Here is the thing - life has no respect of stubbornness. If I were a charismatic Baptist preacher, I would say - "oh y'all don't hear me. I said life has no respect of stubbornness."



Since it does not, life and God will wait you out until they get tired of you. I mean really, God owns time and life, you can not wait Him out. I admit I have tried. Silly, silly me. When my life yelled and I was forced to listen, I realized I had some things that needed to be worked out. There were some things attached to the way and the reasons I do/did things that I had not recognized. In example, the majority of my financial decisions were made from a place of desperation; therefore my finances have always hit crisis mode several times during the year. Life screamed it and I am now dealing with the chastisement of not handling that reality while it was yet a whisper. I began to speak a powerful dream over myself, not realizing that dreams are often manifested through major battles; yet that does not mean the dream is deferred or denied. Life screamed it and I realized I should have paid attention to the warnings to be quiet now or speak now that would stir in my spirit.


When life gets to the point that it has to scream at you or to you, you will find that it will also tell you to get a recovery plan. You will find yourself like major financial institutions and the auto industry - looking for a bailout. Guess what it may not come raining down from heaven and it may not be a plausible solution that people around you will help you out with. You may just have to bail yourself out and do some things to enter into a new level of humility. Your life may effectively tell you that a bail out plan to make you an excellent manager of every area of your life is now necessary and urgent.


If you could see me now you would see my hand is raised for I am so there. While the God I serve is so able to send one person into my life to address the pressing need for emergency money - He has not. While money does answer all things, what needs answering for me is not the things that need money but the actions and mindsets that created the need. I am not being favored with cash, but favored with understanding. While the God I love is more than able to speak healing into my body - He has not. By His stripes I am surely healed and am more healed when I recognize that this temple was given to me for a reason and what I experience in it is for a bigger purpose. Since it is, I am being favored with a new respect for it and a renewed desire to live.


Life said, "Ms. Thing get a bailout plan so that you can get exceedingly, abundantly, above all you can ask for." That means making some decisions that bring tears to my eyes. That means having and working through brief moments of feeling like a failure. That means letting go of and returning some material things that no longer fit. That means being uncomfortable in my lifestyle in order to become comfortable in my life - before it yells at me again.


Take a look at your life areas: money, health, family, spirit, professional/ business; does your life need a bailout plan? Is your life headed towards needing a bailout plan? Are you missing the whispers and inviting life to YELL? In every significant area of your life write one distinct vision and one pivotal question - is my life following my vision in this area? If not, a life bailout plan is in order. What goes into your bailout plan depends on your vision, therefore discuss it with you only or with one person who knows your sincere spirit and will be honest with you. This plan is about what your life is showing you and not what others think about what you should do in your life - being mindful of that is vital. In a country where large corporate bailouts are becoming as normal as pulling through a fast food drive thru - now is the perfect time to re-order a slice of life that is effective, feasible and divinely-blessed. Grab a shovel and bail out, because when life yells it is deafening.


E. Claudette Freeman,
Arise, Write, Release

I HAVE A LOVE JONES FOR ME

I received a rather scathing email recently. My decisions on some things had clearly perplexed the beliefs of someone else. One line in that email disturbed me more than every other word listed. That line reported that my problem is I don't love myself. Wow! What a hard thing to say to someone! What an untrue statement about me. Five years ago, ten years ago - in high school - that statement would have been a glaring and blinding reality. I probably wore it like a theatre marquee over my head, DOES NOT LOVE HERSELF. I learned to love me by learning to experience my experiences and pull what could make me better, wiser, stronger and more enlightened from each of them.


So why did the statement in the email bother me? Because it reminded me that I have not totally moved into loving me completely. I still occasionally take a step back when my life and my decisions offend those close to me. I still occasionally feel guilty about doing little things or great things for myself because of the criticism of others. I still occasionally allow the glares, comments and opinions about the extra pounds and what I do with them, to make me feel like the little fat girl in Ms. Liotti's class. I still occasionally, though I consciously fight this now, sometimes put on boxing gloves and pound myself about things that I really have no control over and are not mine to fix or ponder. I do love me. I love my crazy long toenails, my fat fingers that look like stubs when my nails are short. I love my big ears. I love the gift of writing that graces my life. I love this tapping into my inner self and releasing it.


I do love me and today I say to me it is really okay to consciously love me totally and unconditionally first. That kind of self love will certainly teach me to love my son on a deeper level and my God as well. The really great thing is when I learned to love me - I also learned how to get unloving relationships or relationships where love was secondary out of my life. You know what I think? I think aside from parents and children, no other human vessel should pull more love from you than the love you have for yourself. God gives you the ability and the reasons to love you and anything and anyone that discounts that - should be approached with caution.


I do love me - the me that I am today and all of the variations of me I have been over the years. The fat girl in elementary school that the kids picked on. The smart fat girl in high school who the guys respected but would not date. The young woman who purposely dated married men because I didn't think I could do any better. The professional woman that walked away from a job when I was told to choose between that position and being a new mom. The professional woman that went back to that job until it was clear there was nothing that I could contribute because it was time for me to move into what I had been praying for. The Christian woman who has realized that God is a hard man to love, but the ultimate right one to love. The patient woman facing hard medical conditions and believing none of it is unto death and I will be healed. The maternal woman who has learned how a hug from a little body, my Lord, can make up for all the hell that comes against you. I do love me.


The truth of the matter is, I haven't written a love letter to myself in quite some time. You have to write letters of love and adoration to yourself every now and then. On the surface, to remind you just how fabulous you are; but more importantly, to continue to evolve into a loving, loveable and in love with self kind of person. No one can love someone who has no love for himself. For loving self creates respect, esteem, vision, power and purpose. Will you do something for me? Write the most intimate, moving words of love to yourself - today. Let your words love on you, love you through the hard moments, love you until you cry out in the sheer joy of who you are. Look up. What does the marquee over your head flash? I am thrilled to say my marquee now reads LOVING ME NOW AND LOVING ME BETTER.



E. Claudette Freeman
Arise, Write, Release

TALK TO THE HAND

Can you believe she said that? And said it with some sense of power in your life. Can you believe he had the intestinal fortitude to say something that off-hand about you? Even more bewildering, he had the audacity to say it with some sense of power in your life. Well, how about that!

I’m often around people who feel it necessary and absolutely okay to say whatever they choose about my decisions and my capacity of being. That would be okay if I asked for their opinions – which are usually negative, based on their world or far away from my divine conversations. I have learned to engage in a disengaged conversation with them until they are done preaching their correction to me. It has also been my experience that opinions can not be solicited from everyone. You see, some believe that once their OPINION is voiced, it is in fact a DIRECTIVE that you should act on immediately. Troubling is the reality that for many of us we do take the opinions of others as mandates for our lives.

For a long time, I would obsess on the things those people said or thought about me, my personal vision, my personal dreams, my no sense of fashion, the fact that like to keep my finger and toe nails long - even my hair style. Then I started writing the left of what they thought was right. In other words I would write the truth - my truth - and that overruled their opinion. I honestly believe that anyone who gets caught up in the exterior of anything never fully sees its beauty nor experiences its spectacular abilities. So those who offer sought and un-sought opinions, may say it is right and perhaps it is - for them, or even for you. But the decision as to its proper place in your world must be yours completely. A decision to live someone's personal responses also means you make a decision to live someone's consequences.

Remember in pre-school or kindergarten, when you would take your favorite colored-crayon and trace your hands - wasn't that the coolest? Take a look at your hands now, trace your left hand and pen what is left in your life after you silence all of the other opinions, beliefs, notions and attitudes. If everything is silenced, you have QUIET, in the quiet you should begin to HEAR - your true spirit, which means you will sense DIVINE DIRECTION. Imagine that you have never heard any opinion or thought about what you should do and instead with each life line you draw on that left hand: list a purpose for your life, list an item or person that brings a smile or sense of joy, list something silly that makes you laugh. On your life lines dream again - what would you be if you could be anything in the world and how would you become it. Strange, look what you created without everyone's input? A dream and a plan to go get it.

It is something about that left hand. What is left? Left is to edify you, left is to remind you that it is your thought patterns and God’s thought streams that matter, left is to direct you to divine power – for you can do all things… you are more than a conqueror, and why would you expect anyone to understand a "peculiar people." Peculiar are those who would put extreme faith in the unseen and bring its truth to dynamic realities. What is left? Left is your power, in your hand, to be used for your edification. Talk to the hand and it will certainly tell you some awesome things about YOU!

Arise, Write, Release,

I’m E. Claudette Freeman

ARISE, WRITE, RELEASE: THE MORNING HOUR JOURNAL

An e-book full of inspiration and invitations to write your new vision.

THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL

It’s the middle of a horrible week and you feel totally overwhelmed. If one more thing gets added to your schedule YOU WILL ABSOLUTELY GO CRAZY! Oh God - there can not be another problem centered around me - can there? Clutter chokes even the most simple thoughts. You really want to just find a quiet spot to awaken it with your screams.

When we find ourselves in the place of too much and not enough of to get through it – we have to remember to one pivotal thing - just stop for a minute. Stop thinking. Stop processing. Stop accessing. Stop the what if. JUST STOP!

Look at the writing on the wall. Seriously, take a big sheet of paper, it does not have to be a Post-it pad (although those are beautiful); it can simply be a paper bag ripped open or a piece of construction paper. Do not get caught up in the paper! I say that because we are inundated with problems, perplexities and negative possibilities we begin to fixate on all the things that can not help us focus on pushing through the darkness. So, do not allow the paper to become a continuing invitation to stay in darkness. Instead rip up the invitation, by simply grabbing some paper - any kind of paper. Now tape it to the wall and write words, BIG WORDS, little words - but write. Write words that say what you feel. Write word that say what you want to feel. Write words that describe what you felt when.... whatever happened - happened. Write words that say what God is speaking to you - even as you write all over the wall. Here's a little secret, this works just as effectively when you use your computer as the paper and pen.

Now breathe, you’ve released it. Pull out your journal or start a journal, (again don't get caught up in the paper) and have a talk with you about each big word on the wall and watch the clutter organize. You see you begin to breathe as clutter, strife and stress leave your psyche; once you do something happens - peace fills the spot where overwhelmed had become comfortable. Peace clears the way for fruitful and productive thought streams. Your mind and your spirit become centered again and now the words on the wall change.

Remember what I learned the hard way - you can only take care of the things that you can, the others are in the hands of the divine -God and when He feels you are ready to deal with those - He will give you the wisdom to do so. I make it sound real easy, don't I? I assure you it is not. I have been through emotionally-wrenching, professionally-insulting and spiritually-tumultuous times that have left me physically drained and of ill countenance. These were times that were eradicated or eased only through prayer and through my ability to write my truth without intimidation. My big words on the wall surely were similar to yours: STUPID, DESPERATION, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, DAMN FOOL, GOD DO YOU EVEN CARE. I know that our pain is never easy but it is a challenge of life than can be defeated and used as an awesome stepping stone to our ultimate life, spirit and soul success.

Do not fret about tomorrow, baby it will bring its own stuff, I want you to remember this powerful truth that I am learning to be ALL TOO REAL - Sufficient is the grace you have for today.

Arise, Write, Release,

I’m E. Claudette Freeman

Hey, by the way, join me January 30-31, 2009 at this funky little hotel called HOTEL BIBA in West Palm Beach. It is my first literary empowerment conference and I would love to vibe with you. Here's the link: http://soearise.eventbrite.com.