A Woman Of Honor
I think I learned what the word chivalry meant from Dad! I knew it was going to be a spotty bit with my creative imagination and flights from reality I took from time to time but if anyone were to have asked me what I wanted to grow up to be an Honorable Person would have been the answer.
Remember Shawn from around the way? While he was on probation and happy to be out of jail we talked about the honor among thieves. I did not want to be a thief but; the honor part I found appealing. I wanted to be braver than I was and standup for the truth. Unfortunately, I found myself just shy of the standing up part and often keeping silent in the face brutality & injustice. (a fact which still leaves me woeful today). For this reason I disagree with whippings, which is the cause of lies not the other way around. You know this is my humble opinion. It plants the seed of desperation & degradation all for the sake of domination over not correction of or leadership towards something better. This is difficult to uproot.
It took me great distance from my childhood to learn that telling the truth can be so liberating.
I remember looking into the face of a friend I loved and saying I will not lie here~ this space is sacred between us. Now that was not true for him unfortunately~ but what a feeling for me. Your truth will not make a person honest with you but it does increase your faith in yourself. My relationship with God & myself has been most important of all. I guess that is a no brainer but well true for me.
Lies erode our sense of value in our life. It cheapens who we feel we really are and the residue is evident. Have you ever been lied to and just known it. Or met a liar and known that! There is something to be said about the honesty and Honor. Each time I lied growing up I hold as a mark of my cowardice and try with ardor to live better now.
Now: the care I offer patients and clients, my friendships, the work that goes into my acting,& the love and care of my family, nieces & nephews all stem from the ground of an honest sacred space. It grows and grows and my courage grows with it. When I die that is what I want said of me: “She was a woman of Honor”!
So cheers to honesty & intergrity and authenticity I know how tricky a road this all can be.
2 comments:
Every man has a part of the image of God that they are meant to represent, in my observation. Dad was a representative of honor. He tried to inject his perceptions of the honor among thieves motif into the family. I had the opportunity of talking to one of my little ones about how Dad protected his words with us. The expression "Dad said" still brings my heart into palpatations. Either he said it or he didn't and if he said it it was law... He was certainly extreme about this, but I do see the image of the God who spoke "let there be light and there was light". I am grateful for his picture of honor among thieves and his many stories of the gangster life he lived as a teenager that scared us from the streets and built into us a comeradery and team mentality. He pointed out every example of disloyalty to a cause or purpose and showed us the difference between loyalty and disloyalty. Thank you for loving us enough to remind us of the loyal woman of honor that you have become and hug Shawnee for me, when you see him next.
Yes I loved him so! It has been so long since I 've seen him and wonder how he is Would we know each other? Thank you so much for remembering him with me~ Isn't it ironic how much care Shawn took of us to guide us away from crime all while stuggling himself in the way he did. God is truly Amazing!
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