Living on Code: Faith That Overcomes Fears

The bad stuff is easier to believe.

Most people who remember actor Julia Roberts when she played the role of a brazen prostitute in the movie ‘Pretty Woman’, heard her when she told billionaire “Edward Lewis” (played by actor Richard Gere) her story about how she got into the game.

Her mother, the attic lock-up where she pretended to be a princess in the tower waiting for her knight in shining armor … even if you haven’t seen the movie (I make allowances for Millennials — the movie was 30 years old -give or take a few- when they were born, but…), you get it.

He said “You could be so much more.” She said “The bad stuff is easier to believe.”

With all those gifts and talents, with all that abundant beauty busting at the seams -evoked from a little country gal raised in the northwoods of Georgia, somewhere in or near Cobb County, (she used that line in the movie, by the way)- she told a story about how a bad relationship with her mother led her to become something she truly was not meant to be.

In other words, she was living her fears out instead of her faith in herself, the main person she didn’t believe in.

But when opportunity came literally stomping on a gear shift pedal on the streets of Hollywood Boulevard trying really hard to kick it into first gear, she met the destiny that would forever turn her around.

We never have control over the opportunities that may or may not come, but we can afford to be mentally prepared in the event that it does. There are no guarantees, but we get ready inside … just in case.

She was living her fears, but her faith brought the future to her door even when it looked like she was stuck there with no way out.

Talk to me.

By the time she made it to his penthouse hotel room on the promise of a night of hedonistic debauchery, he was perfectly clear about it being a place of employment only. She, like he, “screwed people for money,” in his own words.

In her words “I’m going to treat you so good, you will never let me go.”

He told her “Seven nights, three thousand dollars, and Vivian, I will let you go.”

He closes the door, she puts a smile on her face, and the deed is sealed when she speaks the evidentiary words of her own faith “But I’m here now.”

But I’m Here Now

Sorry the same can’t be said of the main character from ‘The Color Purple’.

I’m here! … Now, meant something entirely different. Celie (played by actors Desreta Jackson and later by Whoopi Goldberg) was a young girl who had been circumstantially tainted by her own father, or so she believed, and then turned into a tamed house-ho by her own husband, Mistah, who was just looking for someone to cook, clean, keep his nappy-head “chillun” and relieve himself ‘like he was going to the toilet on her’ whenever he felt like it.

Rock Bottom Has a Basement

Good thing for Celie that she had already birthed the only two children she would ever have — because a pregnancy with the likes of “Mister” couldn’t have done anything more at the time than proved that rock bottom has a basement.

In the end, with Celie busted but not broken, often broken but undefeated in spirit and zeal, her “low-vibration” faith turned into a high-hatted faith that saw her out of Mister’s grip and into a home and a home-based business of her own with plenty of luscious land to live on and farm.

Her faith overcame her fears and eventually reunited her with her dearly beloved sister, Nettie (actor Akosua Busia), and her two children (‘Adam’ and ‘Olivia’) that Mister (actor Danny Glover) tried to tell her she didn’t have. Amazingly enough, he was the one who bought their plane tickets home in the end, and in the eyes of the movie watchers, he made amends for all of his past sins and transgressions in that one act.

Flying By the Seat of Our Pants

I spoke earlier about how me and my Evil Twin finally reconciled after more than 60 years.

She had said some pretty rough stuff to me and I had retaliated in ways I don’t even want to talk about any more, but when I realized she and I had more in common than I was willing to admit, the “twain became wain” and the operation thereafter came with nothing but a hungry desire to see the world as it really is.

My denial of her vile and vicious ways nearly killed me, gave me eons worth of nightmares, and finally showed up in the form of my deceased beloved Aunt Mabel and my first first cousin -her only daughter, Delphine- the only two people in my family who ever had any real indisputable unquenchable love for me.

They both came to visit me a couple of weeks ago, in a very lucid dream, and I knew they were dead as I slept the night away with both of them — but they showed up together to let me know that I was still loved by them, no matter the transitions that separated us.

I didn’t get it, but I wasn’t afraid to see them — they were kind and held my hand, even let me stay a minute and chill. Then “Pheen” said “You gotta go back. You got things to do. We’ll see you later, but not now.”

I flew.

Reconciliation That Takes Fear Away and Leaves Empowering Faith

Now is the time when I can get back on code and let the Spirit within that balances me and her out survive and do what it do.

It is now a matter of being on auto-pilot and keeping her under control without me having to threaten her or kill her dead, which she was trying to do to me for the longest. We can’t live without one another, and that’s the end of it.

She drives me even when I want to throw in the towel and call it a life.

She is the one who kept me from sleeping in a bed I made, she is the one who told them old ladies at the church off when they said I had to let my ex-husband beat on me for 15 years “so his soul could be saved,” and she is the one who answered back when the Lord God said “GET UP RIGHT NOW and DO WHAT I TELL YOU TO DO!” when someone else prayed for me on my deathbed when I did not have the wherewithal to pray for myself.

She said “I don’t have to lay in the bed I made. I can make it up, then burn it to ashes on the way out.”

She said “If the Lord’s sacrifice on the cross isn’t good enough for him, his ass will burn in hell waiting on me.”

She was the one who said “Yes, Lord! I hear you!” when my soul was saying no. She has faith even when I do not.

I had to realize that sometimes, even with her evil ways, she’s a better woman than I am.

Not all the time, but sometimes…she’s absolutely right.

Ball Your Face Up…then Move On

You can tell yourself anything you want to, but as one mental health counselor said to me “Go ahead and frown it up, but when you’re done balling up your face…you’re going to realize I’m telling you the truth.”

I did.

Seventy times seven times you will need to forgive yourself and your evil twin for showing up and acting a butt when not wanted, but for not showing up when you needed her (don’t even bother keeping track of it); and 70x7 times you will need to open up your own heart portals to the only thing that will ever sustain you in this wicked lifetime — the faith that it takes to move a mountain, whatever that mountain may be.

As one 96-year old woman was overheard saying “Don’t tell me what God can’t do.”

The world says — “when you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere to go but up,” but I can challenge that lie this day out of my own personal witness.

Rock bottom does have a basement, and endless unmitigated fear will be the first thing to drop you down in it levels deeper than you ever thought you could sink.

Rise up.

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