Look At Me, I’m Changing…

by Stefany J. Jones on Thursday, July 27, 2020, at 2:00 pm

I know it’s been a minute since my last post, but it’s just like that sometimes. There are a million and one thoughts going through my head on any given day at any given time. This week has been my hurricane Katrina for this season for sure. I experienced death, transition, the ending of friendships, and the illness of my daughter – all within three days. But guess what else I experienced, I experienced the calm before the storm as I was able to spend the day and evening on my friend’s boat.

It was a beautiful day, and I had the most beautiful time. I won’t go into details, but I will say that going out to sea and using a yacht as your mode of transportation to your restaurant destination is second only to arriving there by plane or helicopter. It’s absolutely an experience that everyone should have and is one that I’ve had on many occasions, so I consider myself blessed.

Anyway, as God would have it, it would be a fabulous night. To top it off I think I landed 2 or 3 deals as a result and met a pilot (and fellow yacht owner from the marina) who has his plane and told me just to call anytime I am ready to go, and all I would have to do is cover the cost of fuel. Now, how great is that? I know I can hardly believe it still, but he’s dangerous as we spent this week going over possible dates and destinations for taking-off (smile).

I would soon realize that the joy of that day and those subsequent deals would be short-lived as one of my mother’s dear friends and our mutual soror would die in her sleep not to wake on Monday morning. Even worse, I would get into the biggest exchange of drama with someone I believed myself to be very spiritually connected with, and worse still one hour before my scheduled time to minister to a group of young women I would be struck with the most painful headache I have ever experienced in my life.

The pain was so severe that it is gradually progressed and took my eyesight with it. By the time it was done, I could barely see, and my eyes were almost closed shut from the throbbing. Even when opened, they were blurred to the point where my attempts to blow up the fonts on my notes were futile. My mother came into my room, where I was trying to pray and prepare and made me go to the kitchen and eat something. The pain began to leave, and I was feeling better. My eyesight returned, and by that time, I had to go on.

I want you to know that I still couldn’t thoroughly read my notes, and I was still a little tired from the recent episode. Nevertheless, I delivered that word, and I know that people were blessed. It wasn’t because they called me immediately afterward to tell me, or because they invited me to return the following week before the close of my message, nor was it when I asked my mother, and she replied, “it was good, it brought tears to my eyes.” I hadn’t remembered much of what I said, but the following day my mother’s housekeeper called her, and my mother put the phone on speaker.

I could hear through the thick Trinidadian accent the woman marveling and going on and on about how blessed she was and how good she felt and how God loved her, and she was praising the Lord so hard because of the message. It took a moment, and then I realized that the conversation was about me. She was calling my mother to tell her to thank you, and to have her; please tell me what my message did to her and for her. She was calling to share how she had been blessed the very next day, and she bestowed compliments that I didn’t know how to receive. The entire time she was speaking and going on and on, the only thing I could do was cry. And cry I did, just like a baby. For the entire conversation, I sat and listened to this woman who was at a point of hopelessness, and despair speaks about the inspiration she received. I just cried and could not stop.

At that moment, I realized that all the things I had been going through were necessary and part of God’s divine order in preparing me for what lies ahead. I guess you can say what lies beneath is the reason I am where I am and on this path to what lies ahead. I realized that all of the weekend’s turmoil was par for the course and that I am on this road to destiny. I’ve been talking the talk, but I can see myself walking the walk, and I feel myself changing. I think it, I know it, I acknowledge it, and I honor it. It is the ‘perfecting’ of sorts, and while I joke about it all the time, there is nothing but the truth all up and down in my statement that “walking in alignment with purpose is not something that always feels good, but the destination is always a good thing.”

So I can say even as that was five days ago, and even more ‘drama’ has happened since, that in the midst of it all, I continue to keep getting blessed. Over and over again, God just keeps making deposits into my spirit into my purpose account and into my destiny certificate of deposit, which is about to come to maturity soon.

Through my tears, there are smiles, through my pain and anguish, there are slight chuckles. But through it all, there is no greater emotion than the one I feel when I see myself in the mirror, and I think, “Wow, look at me. I’m changing”. Changing is not an easy thing to want to do, be willing to do, or handle while you’re doing it. One thing is for sure, I LOVE the skin I am in, I’m starting to have a LOT of respect for the spiritual gangster in me, and for the first time in my life, I believe that THIS TIME, I dare to see this thing through, even if I have to do it all by myself.