Ten years later: Aaliyah

I looooved Aaliyah back in the day! I bumped her music, sang to her songs on my homemade mic, and made sure to learn every dance from her video. Aaliyah made it cute to be a tomboy and showed us that raunchy lyrics, being half naked, and dancing like a stripper didn't make you sexy. She did this while always seeming very down to earth and genuine.

8/23/11: The day I experienced an earthquake

I was at work in Philadelphia at the Crisis Response Center when the earthquake struck. I was sitting down in my chair, in a room of five people, when I felt the back of the chair slightly jolt me forward. "Hm....ok did the person in the room behind me hit the wall?" I thought. Something seemed weird about that. I looked around and no one else seemed frazzled. So I ignored it. Then I felt the ground tremor. "Maybe a patient fell on the floor and shook the unit. But it continued. Finally someone said "do you feel that?" Then it dawned on me...this was an earthquake. And for a split second, a thought of how things could end at that very moment.

It's now a day later and although I can now chuckle about the biggest east coast earthquake in decades and at all the jokes being thrown at us by west coasters, I have a newfound appreciation of things. For that one minute, the ground that we walk on and usually consider  stable, actually moved. We had absolutely no control. I saw videos of people running, but in reality, where could we run? I think about all of those who lived through serious earthquakes and those whose lives were lost at the hands of an earthquake. Just to imagine how much devastation can occur within the span of a few seconds....especially on our side of the coast where are infrastructure, security measures, and natural disaster preparation is poor. And to think....how absolutely terrifying such an experience must have been for those in Japan.

God reminded me yesterday of a few things.

1) Your whole life can be changed in the blink of an eye. Remember what you were doing when the earthquake struck. Imagine if that was your last moment or if all that you had was destroyed just like that. Never get too comfortable that you forget how precious this thing called life is.

2) He has the ultimate control. God controls EVERYTHING. At his command, he can cause the ground to shake and open, the seas to rise and take over the land,  and the winds to blow. As powerful as we as humans think we are, we are nothing compared to Him.

3) Never take the little things for granted. The ground we walk on, the air we breath, the views of the ocean, the birds in the trees.....everything is a wonder. And we should learn to appreciate every single little thing that we have.

So with that, I say thank you God for not allowing this East coast earthquake of 2011 to be something of devastation. But also, I thank you for the lessons learned from it.


Love,


B

Bronzegoddess01 is preaching!! Knee Jerk Reaction

 Bronzegoddess01 is one of my favorite youtubers because she is so real and gives some of the best advice about life (plus she has gorgeous locs!). Please please PLEASE, check out this video! She talks about something that we all struggle with: making knee jerk reactions.

Hair OTW: Naptural85

This week's hair inspiration comes from Naptural85.

Par for the course: Preparing for marriage

I want to get married one day. That is a fact. However, I know that without leaning on the Lord and seeking his direction, that a) won't happen or b) will happen but land  me in an unhappy marriage.

I don't know about you, but I don't want either situation.

I found my winning combination!!!

One of my goals for this year was to figure out what my winning hair combo is. Over the course of the year, I've played around with things a bit here and there but I quickly realized certain attributes that my hair needs to thrive; particularly a little bit of protein and no silicones. After trying to hammer it down for years, I've finally found  the answer. My hair has never felt the way it has felt most recently. It is soft and fluffy, smooth & almost satin-like to the touch , and not as frizzy. There is not the littlest feeling of crunchiness and there is more sheen. It maintains moisture for days on end and it has elasticity. And none of these factors are do to artificial coating of silicones or any other ingredients. It is JUST where I have wanted it to be and I'm in love:-)  In this video, I summarize what I've been doing and products that I've been using. 

Moving back in again....

What's going on, you ask? Well, as some of you all may know, I moved to onsugar last year to provide a better experience for you all and a better blogging experience for me. And while it's been ok, I've been having some problems with it. Many of my posts won't post to facebook (not sure if this is a blog or FB issue), and since the subscribing experience isn't as easy via onsugar, many people don't see them. People have also expressed the preferred ease that blogger allows for following blogs. Blogger offers the ability to follow via email, google reader, and a slew of other methods. And as for me, it enables me to blog and post pictures on the go, and provides a relatively simple interface.Furthermore, it has autosave so I don't have to worry about all of my long typed posts disappearing as they often do on onsugar. Soooo....here we are, hopefully to never move again. For the next few days, I'll be reuploading some of my posts from onsugar, so as not to bombard your FB feeds with all 100+ of them at once. For now,  take a look around, catch up on some readings, subscribe, and enjoy!