Things Aren’t Always How They Appear

Ask God to Show You the Reality.

I recently traveled to Dallas to be with my fiancé and his family.  The four-hour drive gave me the opportunity to reflect.  I remember the days when I was young in St. Louis, Missouri.  My dad and mom would plan trips to travel south, to Houston or Lake Charles to visit family.  I remember my mom would spend the evening frying chicken and putting it in brown paper bags for travel.  That chicken and the Wonder Bread was the staple for road trips in our family.  Yum, the smell of that fried chicken makes my mouth water, even today.  The bag would be greasy and by the time we were on the road and able to eat the chicken, it would be cold.  It didn’t matter at all.  Cold chicken out of a brown paper bag on a road trip is just as good as freshly made, hot chicken.    We would pack up the car and leave very early in the morning, around two or three o’clock.  My dad didn’t want anyone to know we weren’t at home, so we would leave  while everyone on the block was asleep.  

It was inevitable while traveling the 12 hours or so to Houston that one of us kids would need to go to the bathroom.  We’d ask our dad to stop at a gas station so we could go to the restroom.  He would always so “No”.  After constant please he would eventually pull over on the side of the road, day or night, and tell us to go into the field to relieve ourselves.  I would be terrified and upset that instead of stopping at a gas station he would have us go in the fields.  Anything could bite us in those fields I’d tell myself.  Well it was years later when I was in my thirties that the Holy Spirit revealed to me the truth.  It wasn’t that my dad didn’t want us to stop at a nice rest area or gas station to go to the restroom, it was that it wasn’t safe.  Going from the Midwest to the South in the 60’s and 70’s, blacks couldn’t just walk into a place to go to a nice clean restroom.  We would probably have had to go to a Black Only restroom, and my dad did his best to attempt to shield us from the harsh realities of segregation and prejudice.  So the reality was, my dad wasn’t being mean, as I thought, he was actually protecting us.  He was protecting us from hate, from the realities of the dangerous south, from the idea that we would be treated differently from others just because of the color of our skin.  

The next time you feel as though you’re being mistreated, feel like someone just doesn’t care, or can’t understand why a person is acting the way they’re acting, ask God to show you the reality.  It just may not be what it appears to be.  

Thanks Daddy!