Faithfulness & Thankfulness

This is a humor piece about having faith and being thankful for what you have....

It is 2:00 in the afternoon. The traffic on Boulevard is bumper to bumper and the radio playing sorry old school is not helping. At 95 degrees with the windows down and a broken air conditioner in my 1992 Ford Tempo, you would wonder could it get any worse?

My name is Denitra, but everybody calls me D. I am what you would call the working poor. I work between 20 and 40 extra hours a week in overtime just to make enough. Now that’s sad when you have to work overtime to make enough, but that’s what it is. I don’t have any kids, I don’t have a man and I stay on the west side of the city, where they steal your car while you’re in it. Luckily, no one has stolen my green bug, as I call it. Could it be that it has stopped more than a few times in the neighborhood? Or would it be the fact that they would have to push it to their destination? For whatever reason, I still have transportation.

My birth mother says that I’m blessed and highly favored. She is a church-going, Bible-preaching, tongue-speaking woman. She stays in the church night and day, well when she’s not getting her a roller-set at Vicki’s. But other than that, my mother is a very sanctified woman. Every other word she spoke was a quote of scripture. She had a scripture for everything. Even taking a bath. Once, my brother tried to argue about washing up before bed when she finally yelled, “Thou shall wash thou a*s, or thee will spare the rod and whoop thou a*s!” I believe she makes some of it up, but I love her though.

My spiritual mother says I’m gifted in the things that I do and whatever I touch becomes good. I guess you’re wondering why I have a spiritual mother when my own mother is so anal-holy? It’s simple: my birth mother condemns but my spiritual mother uplifts. She uses her holiness to turn any situation around, right or wrong. If you so happen to shoot somebody out of anger, she will tell you with the utmost confidence that, “no sin is greater than the next…a sin is simply a sin, whether you killed him or had unmarried sex with him.” She could make anybody come out of the dumps.

Sitting in this traffic & heat makes me think about what either of them would be doing in my situation. My mother would probably have the only gospel station on the AM side of the radio blasting with her hands raised outside with her eyes closed. Can you picture that: a raggedy a*s Tempo sitting in traffic with old gospel wailing from the back speakers with a bungee cord on the trunk. One would ask, “What the hell does she have to be thankful for?” Leave it to my mother and she will turn any bad situation into a good one. Got a raggedy car? Well hey; at least I don’t have to ride the bus. Not that there is anything wrong with the bus, but you have to do what you need to. No air? Well at least I have a great working deodorant. And my spiritual mother; she will say, “If the Lord can bring you to it, He can bring you through it.” She would praying that the Lord sends a breeze beyond control to help cool off every one person that is without air; and sure enough, we would get a tornado within a few hours. That’s the beauty of her faith. Her faith is so strong that whatever she wants to see come to pass, she already sees it and believes God for it. It has never failed her thus far.

So when you put these two spiritually filled women into one bond, you then cross faithfulness with being thankful. That’s what I’ve learned from these two women. I’ve learned to have faith for what is rightfully mine, and I’ve learned to be thankful for what the Lord has blessed me with thus far because clearly he is not done blessing me. And, right now, I’m thanking the Lord for the car behind me in a hurry and the red light in front of me because, by faith, I see myself in a new car in…three…two…one…BOOM!! Hope she got insurance…