We're Having A Baby!

Yes, It's TRUE! And THIS IS BIG! 

Look At What God Did!!!

After almost 20 years together, we are reveling in the blessing of Our Very First Child. YEAH!!!


Honestly, for years I was concerned that I would never know the joy of motherhood. You see, back in 2000 I started to experience symptoms of an excruciatingly painful and debilitating illness that lasted throughout my 30s entirely.

My decade of darkness included a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, depression, anxiety, 5 herniated discs, spinal nerve damage, extremely high blood pressure and panic attacks among many other symptoms. Oh did I mention the complete financial ruin? To top it off, my team of doctor's agreed on a prognosis of lifelong widespread chronic pain.

It used to hurt simply to receive a hug. At times, I couldn't even take a flight of stairs or even hold my purse. It was horrible. My team of doctors also concurred that STRESS was the cause of it all. Imagine that! Because of this we were diligently preventing the possibility of pregnancy.

At one point, my doctors were prescribing 120 pain pills to me each month. I couldn't even keep up with the Rx. I got so tired of being in that dark place that I just stopped taking them. I preferred the pain of the illness to the darkness of the meds. And it was only by the grace of God that I didn't develop a dependency. Boy do I Praise God for that!

Throughout it all, I had been prayed for multiple times by many of our house ministers including Pastor Dollar himself. I believed God would heal me, but I have to be honest; when you are in the throws of pain that never ends, your faith is challenged on a whole new level. While I believed I would not have pain always, I couldn't even imagine how my body could sustain a pregnancy. But God knew and with Him ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE!!!

Coincidentally, the year 2000 was the same year that I had my very first spiritual experience where God outlined my life's assignment. I call it my Silent Weekend. After that, I knew that the call on my life had the potential to make an undeniable mark on the world. And clearly, all of hell had come against me in an effort to prevent me from stepping into that call.

Here's the beautiful part. Last year in November, I submitted my finalized manuscript to my publisher. I had begun writing it on that Silent Weekend in 2000. It took 11 years to the day to finish it (11th anniversary) and it was the 11th month in 2011. I had officially stepped into the call on my life - I had finally published my first book!

That was also the same month that God prompted me to not refill my anti-anxiety, anti-depressant and muscle relaxer medicine prescriptions. Those were the same meds that I had been taking since 2000. I did it responsibly, by weaning myself off...by His leading. I wasn't sure why He was leading me to do it. Actually, I was a bit concerned because I thought having my book out in the world could produce a little added anxiety and I wasn't sure how I would react to it since I had been on the medications so long. But I was obedient.

Then in December, He prompted me to not refill the medication that I was taking for Fibromyalgia.  I obeyed.

I also had a conversation with Charles in December and we decided to stop 'preventing' pregnancy. We agreed that if it was supposed to be, we would get out of God's way. It was a big decision considering all that we had been through over the last decade...but I'm 41 and it's now or never.

AND SUDDENLY!!!
In January, I felt led to begin checking my blood pressure more frequently and I realized that it was a little too low. So, I stopped taking one of the two BP meds that I had been taking. I continued to check it and it was still too low. I stopped taking the second BP med as well and to this day, my BP has remained absolutely normal.

Today, I am so very excited and grateful to say that I am taking NO medications. I am free from the pain of Fibromyalgia, anxiety and depression! PRAISE GOD!!! I even wore heels all night at a celebration for my pastor in February. It was the first time I had worn heels all night in almost 10 years! YES!!!

I can honestly say that God healed my body! Perhaps it was to prepare me/us for a Super-Natural Pregnancy? It certainly looks that way!

Needless to say, we had a 'VERY Good Valentine's Day'! :-) We are now very happily pregnant, expecting our first miracle and loving every moment of it. We are honored to have been chosen as the parents of this blessing.

So far, we're very very early in our pregnancy. We don't believe in waiting to share our news...for "fear" of 'whatever'. But we are believing by faith that God's word works and we will see the end of our faith. In November, we will all meet a brand new "Baby G"! And we wanted you to celebrate with us.

We expect nothing but the blessings of God and we will share this experience with anyone who is interested in watching the glory of God being made manifest!

After all of these years, the fear of never knowing this joy and the uncertainty of my own body's ability to even endure this process, I am more confident and more encouraged now than ever before. We have submitted to the grace and the love of God. And I am honored to allow God to do what He does best through me.

So the only thing I have left to say is, Lord, be it unto me/us...according to your will!

Until my next post I will continue to overflow with Joy,
Queenie

P.S.
We are believing for a boy. We hope you will stand in agreement with us.

P.P.S.
Perhaps I can get Charles to add a post about the pregnancy from time to time. We'll see. HA!

My Issues With The Church Got Worse

It Got Worse Before it Got Better!

In the late 90’s, my husband and I met some friends who were Seventh Day Adventists. Wendell and his wife were students of ‘The Word’ like I had never seen before. They were so filled with faith and had such a depth of understanding of the Word, that I was intrigued and allowed them to share with me what they had learned. But this time…I needed proof.

“Don’t just tell me what ‘you think’, Wendell.” I told him, “Tell me how you came to this understanding and then show me how to repeat that process for myself.” I need to know it and be able to study it on my own.

He introduced me to a new way of studying the Bible. It involved more than just relying on any one person for impartation. He taught me that until you are really ready to gain insight and understanding of it, The Bible will remain a mystery to you. He also showed me how to study history and sociology when looking to gain deeper insight into The Book of Life.

He opened my eyes to how the sciences support and prove the Bible to be true over and over again; including, Archaeology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Biology, Psychology and Astronomy.

Needless to say, I had a little more understanding. My faith in the Word was somewhat restored. I hadn’t resolved the whole church and money conversation, but I was open to learn.

I still didn’t attend any church and had very little trust in preachers as a whole. Now that I knew how to study – I didn’t see why I needed them.  I began to pick topics that I wanted to understand more and I proceeded to study them. I began to learn so much on my own that I felt like I was finally making progress, spiritually. Know what I mean?

During this time, my mistrust in preachers turned into a mistrust of Christianity as a whole. There was just too much negativity in the church, in my perception.  I never felt good enough or worthy. Instead I felt condemned, judged, and as though I should be afraid of God’s wrath. I just didn’t feel any ‘love’ coming from that ‘group’. Instead, I felt useless and quite honestly, in my heart of hearts, I felt that God wouldn’t want me to feel that way. Ever felt that way?

After all, I had big dreams and there was no-one in those churches who was where I wanted to be. Everyone was in need. There was lots of lack and a constant feeling that there would never be enough money, time, forgiveness, healing, good relationships, etc. There were no mentors in that environment.

I categorically rejected the ‘so-called’ Christian message and it’s self-righteous, hypocritical messengers and sought out a different method.

While it looked like I was lost and confused, this process actually helped me come to the some powerful conclusions that I hold as truth to this day. More about this on my next post…

Have you had an experience with the ‘Christian Church’ that made you question Christianity?

Then It Happened...I Thought I Lost My Mind

I had been having panic attacks, and muscle spasms so bad that I would end up in the emergency room at least once every month. The doctors all concluded that stress was the cause of ALL of the symptoms that I was experiencing. (More about this another time)

My team of doctors had no clue what was wrong. 

There’s nothing like being in constant pain and not knowing why or how to make it stop. It got so bad that I started seeing a therapist. That was actually the best thing I could have done for myself at the time.

I highly recommend it if you haven’t done that for yourself.

After almost 2 years of working with a therapist/counselor, it happened.  It was late summer of 2000. I had just been placed on disability because the spasms and pain in my neck had gotten so bad that I couldn’t turn my head to drive.

I remember, I was in our bedroom and my hubby, Charles was in the shower. No-one else was in the house when I heard a still very faint voice say, “Kellye, can you hear me?” I looked around like someone was standing behind me or beside me. There was no-one there.

I thought to myself, “Hmm the TV is not on, Charles is in the shower, but I know I heard something.”

Then I heard it again, “I know you can hear me. Kellye, can you hear me?” 

In that instant, I fell onto the bed, laughing hysterically; because I knew that it was finally OFFICIAL! ~ I had lost my mind!

I couldn’t stop laughing. “OK, now I am hearing things…oh this is just great”, I said out loud.

At my next therapist visit, I remember telling my counselor, quite matter-of-factly, “Someone is talking to me, maybe it’s my spirit or something, but I know I can hear it.”  She looked at me, trying not to be alarmed, but I knew just what she was thinking, ”This girl has flipped her lid, and there was no going back”.

I had not reconciled the fact that the voice was God’s voice until My Silent Weekend, later in the year at Thanksgiving, 2000. 

So, have you lost your mind lately? Or is it just me? What was the first thing God ever said to you?

My Issues With The Church

As I grew older, I began to notice people in church leadership using judgment, fear and condemnation to manipulate or control the behavior of the people attending church. Did you notice that too?

And those same ‘guilty’ people would defend the manipulation and blame themselves for it.  It began to look like a very dysfunctional, and dare I say abusive relationship with the church.

I couldn’t reconcile the fact that God, who is love, would sanction that type of behavior from the church leadership. That couldn’t be GOD!

Then I went to college and I discovered that there were books that were intentionally left out of the ‘Holy Bible’ called “The Lost Books”. This made me question the authorship of the Bible even more. Could man have created and manipulated this ‘work’ just to control the masses? “Why? And to what end?” I wondered.

Then in 1987, it all made sense, so I thought. Jim Bakker, a televangelist, was indicted for fraud and that’s when I put all of the pieces together.

The ‘church’ was all about Greed ($$$). They are manipulating people into giving away all of their money to the church.  All the church wants is my money. There was no real teaching or understanding of the Bible and no true reflection of love, at all. My opinion, at the time, was that the Church was a poor representation of God and the truth in His Word. Have you ever felt that way? I know I’m not the only one.

To this day (aside from a few Sunday School Bible stories), the only ‘message’ I can remember from sitting in all of those church services was from First A.M.E. (aka FAME) in Los Angeles, CA. Pastor Chip Murray gave a sermon titled, ‘Give God your Beeper Number’.  [Don’t laugh at me…yes, I was a 70’s baby and yes, pagers were ‘all the rage’ back in the day. LOL] At the time, that was the only church that I could ever see myself attending more than once.

I even remember going to a church here in Atlanta that closed the doors and refused to allow anyone to leave until they met their financial goal. Can you imagine? That was the last straw for me. I had figured it out and no church was going to ever convince me to give them another dime. PERIOD! I didn’t want to have ANYTHING to do with Church, so-called Christians and their confusing book. I just had to trust that if I were a good person, everything would turn out OK.

It’s a good thing my curiosity didn’t stop there.

So, time went on. I didn’t step foot into a church for about 8 years and I was proud about it.

I made some great decisions and accomplishments. I also made some painful choices, and even endured lots of heartache. And I did it all without God, so I thought.

Have you ever been turned off by the ‘Church’, the hypocrisy, the judgment, condemnation, criticism and the blatant lack of love?

You’re not going to believe what happened next…

(Continue...My Issues with The Church Got Worse...)

My Childhood & The Church

As a child, my mother (Queen Mom) took us to church and I liked it for the most part. I loved the singing the most and I got a chance to play with the friends that I would only see on Sundays.

We often visited churches of friends and family and I learned that they were all very different. I know you can agree. I’ve attended Baptist churches, Methodist, Science of the Mind (Religious Science), and African Methodist Episcopal, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Islamic Mosques, Catholic churches, Seventh Day Adventist, non-denominational churches and Kingdom Halls (Jehovah’s Witness).

We even watched church on television (TBN) and that added a whole new dimension to what I came to know as “My Relationship with the Church”.

Having such a broad Spiritual exposure made me really curious about why God was so different to so many people. They all read the same Bible, so I thought. Have you wondered the same thing?

For instance, in some churches, women and girls were not allowed to wear pants, while men and boys were required to wear ties. Some wouldn’t allow women to wear makeup…which was BEYOND Me - HA! (My pastor jokes, “That’s not Holy, that’s Ugly!”)

Some wouldn’t allow girls to play sports. Some had women and men who would “Catch the Holy Ghost” and dance till they passed out during the singing. As a child I used to wonder why God would only choose those same few people to ‘touch’ every week. It was a mystery to me.

Some churches rejected members based on what they believed was ‘bad behavior’.  Most had an atmosphere of judgment and condemnation. And there was always an underlying feeling that you should be afraid of what God will do if you ‘mess up’.

Some were really quiet and the people would listen to the message in a very subdued atmosphere, while others had people shouting in agreement with the pastor throughout the entire sermon.  

I especially liked the ones that served lunch to the congregation after the service. :^) 

All in all, it was interesting to see so many different ways of experiencing God.

Church, for me, was never an every Sunday kind of thing. There were times when we would go every Sunday. Then there were times when we didn’t go at all.

Through it all, my mother (Queen-Mom) was always steadfast in the Word. She prayed every day. I watched her every night as she would fall to her knees beside her bed and pray to God. Although I strayed away from the practice, she did teach my sisters and me to do the same.

She imparted into us the importance of having a relationship with God, and she never used God as a means of manipulating us to do the ‘right’ thing.  Her answer was always, “pray about it”, even when I didn’t understand!  And we always would.

So, as a child, what was your experience like, with God or the church ?

As I grew older, I began to learn and notice some things that were very disturbing about the church. Things that made me question everything that I had been taught all those years. I’ll share more about it in my next post. 

(Continue to Learn about My Issues with The Church...)

My Silent Weekend

It was a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend in Nov 2000, and as Charles and I prepared for the feast that we would share alone together, he said to me in a sweet gentle voice, “Babe, let’s not talk this weekend, I just want us to have a silent weekend, is that OK with you?”

Imagine my reaction.  In my mind I was thinking, “You’ve gotta be kidding.  Have you lost your mind? This is not just any weekend. This is Thanksgiving weekend. Four whole days of saying NOTHING!  Are you CRAZY?”  My mind was racing. I thought, “He’s not mad at me. We’re doing pretty well actually.  Why doesn’t he want to talk to me ALL WEEKEND?  A whole 4-day weekend!”

So, after I collected myself, we made a deal.  I wouldn’t talk to him, but I would write down every thought, every joke and every comment that I wanted to say to him. Then on Monday, after the weekend was over, I would “Let Him Have it!”  He laughed and then agreed.

So there I was, still suffering from unbearable pain in my back as I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner.  I grabbed a spiral notebook and placed it on the counter with a pen on top just in case.  I was ready.

As I began to cook dinner, an idea popped in my mind.  I thought, “Ooh this is good, let me write that down.”  I continued to cook and more thoughts began to race through my mind.  I quickly jotted them down and returned to the stove.  I found myself writing so much that I began to worry that Charles would never keep his end of the deal. There would be too much to say by Monday.

I found myself writing thoughts, memories, projects that I’d like to start and reminders to myself.  Nothing was off limits. I wrote all day Thursday, all day Friday and all day Saturday. 

By Saturday night, I found myself curled into a ball on the couch in tears as though I had just suffered the beating of my life.  I couldn't stop the tears. I had read what I'd written and I realized that it wasn't Me who was writing. It was God writing through me... to me.   I was in shock, I was anxious, I was amazed, I was nervous, I was grateful but most of all, I was terrified.  

At the time, I wasn't in the church. In fact, I hadn't stepped foot in a church in almost a decade. To be honest, I had some serious issues with the church that I just couldn't get past. So this wasn't something I ever expected that God could or would do...especially for me.

What I realized was that throughout those 3 days, God had unveiled my life's assignment to me.  Not only had He revealed to me my purpose, He showed me how every step that I had taken in my life thus far had prepared me for it.   It was amazing!  Had it not happened to me I might not have believed it myself. 

He showed me that I would write books, many books.  Then He reminded me of times in my life when I was commended on my writing and my writing style. 

He showed me that I would speak to women and impact their self-esteem and teach them how to love themselves, the same way that I was learning to Love Me.  He showed me that I would, through this very story, be an instrument to show women how He wants to speak to them.

He told me that I would inspire a movement; a powerful assembly of women who knew how to hear from Him and who understood His true character by experience, not tradition.

Then He reminded me of all of the gatherings that I had in my home over the years teaching women about loving themselves.  I never saw more into that than what it was, a gathering of girlfriends. But even then He saw so much more.

Of course you can imagine that this is merely a nugget of what He shared with me, but I must admit, the weight of responsibility that was placed upon my shoulders that night made me more afraid yet more committed than I can ever remember. 

I was afraid because I knew that none of this would come to pass by my strength alone.  I knew that He would have to guide me through this. 

I was committed, because I felt chosen. I knew then that my assignment was much bigger than me. I knew that it required my dedication because I was the only one equipped to carry it out.  

My instructions from God were - “Keep Writing, be obedient and trust me.” And so I did.

Talk about re-ordering my priorities.  At the time, I was a business analyst for a software development company, on medical disability after having just been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.  I was in excruciating pain, barely able to take a flight of stairs. How in the world was I going to do all of this?

Looking back, ‘how’ and ‘why’ were none of my business.  My business was to have faith, keep writing and move when I heard instruction.

That was Thanksgiving weekend of the year 2000 - 11 years ago. And so today, here I am...standing in the midst of the manifestation of that very weekend...sharing with you The Movement that has changed my life and the lives of women all over the world.

Continue on to my next post...