"Life"

The Amazing Thing About Life Is That You Get to Live It

From the first time I was aware of my breathing, what color my skin was, who God was to me, and how everything connected to life, I was extremely disappointed that one day it would all come to an end. I don't know the day, the time, or the hour, but I was ready for it to end before I began to live. I began to plan my exit without realizing or understanding that the middle is where it counts and where the true work is.

The spirit of fear had taken me to the end of life, and I hadn't tapped into my purpose yet. I hadn't tapped into the experience of life, nor did I understand what faith was about and how it, alone, would carry me to the future that was meant for me. I had never considered that my ancestors had prayed for a better life for me without even knowing my name, without knowing my mother's name, and without knowing my grandfather's name and so on. They prayed for my life to be purposed, and they made a great sacrifice for me by doing so. I could not comprehend that I was robbing them of the seed of faith they had planted on my behalf for a life that they wanted but were not able to live.

I now know that I am a part of a cycle of life that goes back as far as my research led me — and then some. What I know for sure is that I am a part of God's DNA. God breathed into me my purpose and the journey that allows me to experience more good than bad. Genesis 2:7 says, "Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature."

Life for me has not always been a great experience, but it has made me stronger. I grew up without a father, and with a mother who was never consistent with showing me love, with a family who didn't live out loud and own their truth.

Unbeknownst to us, we were continuing a cycle that was given to us by humans and not ordained for us by God. I believe that my family was only living to get through the day and was dwelling in the past, never looking toward the future for a better outcome. Whenever I witnessed my aunts and my mother engaging with each other, there always seemed to be a sense of anger and bitterness that they understood they lived in and that they would not let go. I always had the impression that this made them happy, and it never made sense to me.

As I look back, I think the expectation for a purposeful life was never high enough for them to embrace, so they never lived; they only existed. I truly believe that my mother and her siblings never understood their history, nor did they understand their own purpose that God had for them and that what was for one was not for the other but together they could be a powerful force. I don't think they understood that it was impossible for them to pass the spirit of excellence to me and their other children.

My goal in life, from as far back as I can remember, has always been to find out how the cycle of life began for me and my generation. I first had to embrace who I was and become a lover of life. This would be a challenge that I would never achieve until I understood forgiveness, until I embraced my history, and until I understood who God was to me and His purpose for me and me alone. The next thing for me to understand was that with each setback, fall, bump in the road, knockout, or knockdown that life had afforded me, I had to truly understand that life still goes on, especially when I want it to end.

In life, our goal should be to understand fully that with each setback there is the opportunity to allow God to set us up for the next level in our journey. We can never go to the next level until we fully understand the test. Each test then becomes our testimony to help others overcome their tests. This becomes a pattern that ensures that the next person who walks through his or her problem, situation, or obstacle will be allowed to walk through it with the confidence in knowing that he or she will make it out and be victorious in life.

While we are assisting others in their journey, we must assure them that mistakes will happen and that they will have obstacles in the road every now and then, and that they will fall. But through it all, they will have the ability to get back up and start over to pursue their purposed life that was destined for them to achieve.

There is an old spiritual song that says, "If I can help somebody, then my living shall not be in vain." Service is the key, being selfless is the example, and giving to those who are in need is the blueprint for a life well lived.

To truly understand the meaning of life, you must first understand the cycle of life. When you have embraced the meaning of sharing your experience with others, then and only then will you walk in your truth. As for me, in order for the cycle of life to work effectively, it has always started with God and embracing my ancestors and the seeds that they planted. Now I get to live in the fullness of God while operating in my truth. The process for me to operate in my truth and to get to where I am going has been to relearn, rethink, and redo all that has been taught to me over the years that has never really agreed with my spirit.

What I heard from my elders and what I learned from what I saw and what I embraced from them was ego. Ego has always been the biggest problem in my family. Ego has taught me to do, move, and sometimes speak without thinking, to live without breathing, and to never trust who I was called to be. That was a hard pill for me to swallow.

I soon discovered that this is what I was taught by my mother. I am certain that she had no idea that this was a cycle; that she was continuing this trait from her father, and it was passed to him from his parents and the slave owners who owned them.

I also learned to embrace being absent while being present. This trait I learned from my father, who has never been present in my life. I later learned that his Baptist minister father, Edward Robertson, was never a part of his life, and he passed this trait on to my father.

Both of my parents took on the broken spirit of rejection, and I became the result of two lustful people who saw sex as love. This was the result of their one encounter: my mother's first sexual experience and my father's lust for women. Their need to feel wanted was passed on to me.

I was conceived on September 18, 1967. It was my mother's twenty-first birthday. Both of my parents were still dealing with the spirit of rejection, brokenness, and pain given to them through the cycle of life through their parents until their deaths. I have made it my personal goal to break the cycle.

A lot of what I saw in them that was wrong, I see in me. I have often wanted to fix that part of me that felt unloved and unwanted and needed to be validated. My problem was that I lived in fear and shame. I never allowed myself to move to the next level that was for me. Many times, sex, drugs, and alcohol became my escape from reality, and they were setting me up for failure. My reality became my fantasy, and my fantasy then became a quick fix. This process became toxic for my purposed life.

When you become what you think you are in a drug-induced or intoxicated state of mind, you then believe what you are feeling, and it never ends well for you or the people in your life. Your way of thinking becomes cloudy and becomes your new normal, but it is not normal for your purposed calling in life.

I began to question my life and why I was given my gender, skin color, and family. Life for me was not living my truth, nor could I see my purpose. It became a lie that I lived in black and white with blinders on. I was just existing, with no purpose or desire to live out loud. This soon became my rock-bottom moment, my end of the road, and my I-don't-care way of thinking.

While at the end of the road and while at my rock bottom, I was able to stop, stand still, look up, and ask for help and a better way to be the best me I could be. So I asked God to show me who I truly was, what my purpose was, and what His plans for me were. I had to be open, willing, obedient, and ready to do as He instructed. I had to remove myself from everything that was my normal way of doing things and embrace a new normal that was destined for me to fully operate in.

That meant I had to change the space that I was living in, the people I was involved with, and the city I lived in. I also had to renew my mind. I had to learn to replace lust with love. I had to reexamine every area in my life and everything that was taught to me that did not agree with what was my true purpose. More importantly I had to change my walk with Christ. The path I was on was my mother's path and not my own. I would soon learn that how she viewed God was not how I viewed Him. This changed everything for me.

I had to put away the Me-Myself-and-I way of thinking and embrace the idea of what I could do for others. I was committed to changing everything that was not helping me to walk into my calling. My first lesson was to learn how to walk again, to embrace the path that was set up for me, to lead with my heart and not with my mind, and to teach with that same passion in my heart. My spiritual mother once told me, "Stop thinking with your mind. God wants your heart." That one statement changed my life forever and has been one of my greatest spiritual encouragements of faith.

My journey to this place in life has been rewarding, refreshing, and humbling. Learning to walk again has allowed me to build a better temple and to honor God and my temple with dignity and respect. It has allowed me to acknowledge the purpose that was intended for me and prayed for me by my ancestors. While it has not always been easy and I have certainly stumbled, I've always been able to get back up and keep fighting. I have allowed myself to love me, to forgive me, to embrace the calling that God has planned and purposed for me. It is my duty and honor to share with you the lessons that I have learned on the road into my season and all of the seeds that have been planted in my life that I have embraced along the way. It has allowed me to learn to walk in the divine calling that was ordained for me. This book is my offering to others, to show them how, with God's grace and mercy, you too can walk in God's divine calling for your life.

"Growing Up"

When you raise up your expectations, you celebrate your ancestors.

I often wonder how my life would have gone if I had been given another name or had been born into a different family. There have been many times I can recall me day-dreaming of having another mother and another life that seemed to be better than the one I had. I didn't grow to love my family until I became a man and was able to see other families interact with one another. I began to realize that, while my family was broken in many areas, our family was not the only family with these issues.

This was the path I had been chosen to walk in and live. With God's help I was able to embrace all the brokenness that came with being born into my family. I later learned that broken people live what they are shown, not what you wish for them to be, especially if they don't see and/or know how to break the chains that bind them in their minds.

I must say that growing up with my family has been a blessing for me. I have had the great fortune to know all of my mother's sisters and brothers and their children. It has allowed me to see that I wasn't the only one who recognized that something about our family was different. There was a brokenness about our parents that could not be put into words. They were only able to express their deeply rooted pain the only way they knew how, in pain.

Growing up in D.C. was an amazing experience for my life that allowed me to enjoy the rich history of the Nation's Capital. It kept me busy and away from home so that I would be out of my mother's view. I was able to escape the pain that I saw and felt from her by staying as active as I could. Many people would say that she was abusive both verbally and physically. I can now look back and say she was only doing what she was taught by her father, who was also taught to express his feelings in his brokenness. Many times she kept her pain bottled up inside, and I was often the outlet that she used to express that pain on. As a child I hated her for it.

My mother's life was filled with shame and embarrassment at the hands of her father who raised all nine of his children -- seven girls and two boys -- with an iron fist. He was the head of his house and he made no apologizes about how he operated in his domain. He spoke to his children and my grandmother, his wife, with authority, and he didn't tolerate back talk or any attitude. If he didn't like how his children talked, walked, dressed or even smiled, he would punish them. As my mother once told me, his words could cut them deeply like a knife. When he would chastise them, he would go on and on for what seemed like hours. When he would discipline them, he would tell them, "I'll beat you until I see blood."

Mother once told me the only time they knew peace in their home was when he was gone. When he was there, they would walk on eggshells and try their best not to move, breathe, or say anything that they thought would upset him. He never expressed love to them in any way such as hugging them, kissing them, or encouraging them. When they achieved recognition in school or church, he said nothing. When guests would come to the home, they were viewed as the help, cleaning, serving and being ready to be put on display. In those days children were seen and not heard.

The children went to one church, while he and my grandmother went to another church. The children ate one thing, while he ate and was served another. Many times he would instruct his children to cook his meals for him. He always made sure that any boy who looked at his daughters or even walked by his home knew that the Eubanks girls were good Christian girls and that boys were not welcome.

My mother once shared a story with me. When she was in her early teens, she was outside with her neighborhood friends, many who lived on the same block. Boys being boys, sometimes showing her that they fancied her was hard. Because she knew the rules, she wouldn't give them any chance in hell.

One particular day while running up and down the street, my grandfather sat in the window watching her. He then called for her to come into the house. When she came indoors, he wanted nothing. He just stood there and looked at her for a few minutes. Then he instructed her to go back outside. He told her to take her Bible and a chair and sit in the front yard and read it until he told her to come into the house. She said she couldn't understand why he would do that to her in front of the whole neighborhood. As she walked outside crying with her chair and Bible, all eyes were on her. She did as he had instructed her to. The other kids laughed and pointed at her calling her names. She said she felt so humiliated. The whole time he just sat and watched her and he said nothing, with a smirk on his face.

Because of this she had a hard time finding love and letting any man into her heart. She never trusted men and she didn't know how to let them treat her like a queen. If she did meet a good man and he said the slightest thing that she did not agree with, it was over just like that. In her eyes if she saw any signs of her father, it was not a chance she was willing to take. Many of the men who wanted to fix what they did wrong walked away not understanding what they did that was so bad that it couldn't be repaired.

If her father was seen as the devil, her mother was seen as an angel. My mother honored her mother until her death. My grandmother did everything for her husband and her children. She cooked, cleaned, made clothes, and even gave my grandfather nine children out of wedlock. My mother said she saw love in her mother's eyes for him and she just could not understand how a woman who was so sweet could love a man so evil.

What they lacked from their father they got from their mother: kisses, hugs, encouragement, and she knew how to talk to them and not at them. Even as a young child I can recall my grandmother being very warm and tender with me, always giving the best hugs and rewarding me with treats, kisses, and love. She was always about her family. She had two sisters who did not play with my grandfather and had no problem voicing their opinion when they saw him going too far.

Grandmother was his second wife and he was her first love. I can see it in photos that I have of them. The love she had for him was evident. In many ways she is a strong presence in my life. I feel her love pushing me daily, speaking into my life, allowing me to feel how proud she is of me and the man I have become. Had it not been for my grandmother telling my mother to get me into Bible school, I would not have the relationship I have with Christ today.

Growing up Eubanks for my mother was the best of both worlds, good and evil. I would imagine this is something my mother never knew how to balance in her life while raising me. Growing up I can count on one hand how many times I heard my mother tell me she loved me. She showed her love by buying me things. But I always felt her pain and her hurt. I never understood where it came from. I not only saw it from her but many times I viewed her as mean, bitter, and angry. When life was rough for her she made sure I knew it.