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Can't Walk No More Like This
Lord God, You see what is coming at me in this place where this cross of fatherhood is bruising me, opening up my skintone,
leaning me low and making my muscles feel like jelly. I don't understand how You can hold Yourself up in the heavens and watch
me go thru this pain walk. I hear You Lord God saythat this is a Miracle Walk that You have given me , a place where I am
still being formed and shaped in your hands, and I hear that, have appreciated that I guess, but these pains are still so
real. I still cry these big tears when I am alone. I still yell at myself deep inside of myself where no one can interrupt
me. I still wonder wh ythis life is so strong against me and I just look at all who are around me and I wonder how I am ever
going to make it thru this crazyness. What does it mean when You hold me Lord God? What does it mean that You will handle
my bizness or as it has also been put and properly stated that you will pe4rfect all of my concerns? What does it mean Lord
God when I call on yOur name in my distresses and am looked at like I am crazy and like my brain done shifted under pressure,
what does it look like when I explode and find everyone in the room not wanting to have any dealings with me? Lord God, whatdoes
it mean when the days and the nights bring thoughts of those same people whom I have said that I don't need so close but here
they are so close in my memories and in my thoughts? I don't know what to give to You anymore Lord God because I am hurt bad
whenever I give anything. I don't know what to reject because I have seen horrors in this family life, as well as in the streets.
I hear of the tales of the mwho have that family life going, but I don't know the pains and the pins of their situations.
I just know that this thang called fatherhood is really a cross to bear because I can't get my way to go my way. And I hate
it buckling and bending in front of others. Will they hate me? Will they not respect me when they grow up? How do I reach
for newness and teach them that they need not ever touch anything? How can I teach them to love their mothers and dads and
I don't know how to speak with their parents or my parents at all? This is so crazy Lord God and no one seems to have the
answers. It is truly like we all just have to walk it out and handle the best we can whatever comes our way.
I pray for those fathers who are behind physical, emotional and behavioral walls right now. I pray for those fathers
who are finding seeing their children so hard and so challenging. I pray for those fathers who have felt it necessary
to take their children and just go away. I pray for those fathers who are in the homes with the mothers and the children.
I pray for those fathers who are young and inexperienced. I pray for those fathers who are back again in the homes that they
departed trying to find newness and I pray Lord God for those fathers who are great in age as they watch their children's
children have children and wonder where they fit in at all. Help us Lord God for You are a Father, Eternal Father, for we
need a cipher to share Your wisdoms and Your newness. Bring refreshings to our lives. Peace and Blessing(as-Salām)
How Can I Pray If My Emotions Are Getting In The Way
Ever had that right now this has to be answered and accounted for feeling in your emotional department and still the
request for you to stand for this child or children is pouring in from God's throneroom and also from the loved one who
brings you favor from the Lord's throneroom (He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD. Proverbs
chapter 18, verse 22). It is a very real and tragic situation.
At one hand this terrible pulling and tugging to be right, to be found not guilty this time for the child's steps, to
be exonorated for this child's wrongdoings is all up in my face and all up in your face. Can't you smell the putrid,
stanking, foul, like teeth haven't been brushed in decades breath almost peeling your skin off?
The immediate urgency hits the soul and the spirit of the father as he reasons within himself the very best that his
human containment systems will allow him to for he knows that if this emotional distress is not dealt with right now and
is not able to realize exactly who is in charge up in here then this monster will be back with a crazy vengeance ready to
rip souls and spirits and hearts and minds and bodies open.
My wife spoke to me and told me of a deer that was hit by our daughter while she was driving one day; and the deer
hit the car and split in half. That is what this monster of emotional distress is intent on doing. It has been lifting weights
in the joint and is right back in mental focus to tear you and I up the very next occasion it gets.
It takes a trooper to get through this emotional Vietnam, through this behavioral Kuwait, through this mental Afghanistan.
It takes a trooper to keep on keeping on when the chips are gone from the table and no one is left who wants anything to do
with you. I thank God for His existence in this place, for His reality that is alive in our every motion to become something
other than right now.
Oh, He has it all in perspective even when we are tired and wounded and torn and ripped and cut so deeply that nothing
more matters and here I ask for the prayers to go up, yet many know not how to pray for the repeat offender who is finding
sinning in thug mode at every corner and in every breath. So many will never push a prayer for the one who has hurt their
precious baby and given them emotional, social, physical and behavioral turmoil. That is just out of line. No way no how.
So what we face here dear friends is a drought of family which is needed to lift up the needs of these fathers who became
fathers by various means. Whether we snuck in the back door and the evidence showed up or whether we committed a passionate
act with another and it showed up, the journey of fatherhood has become the manhood testiing ground for so many among us.
Who shall pray for these fathers besides these fathers?
It seems a courageous effort to minister to another that prayer needs to be a foundation in the home when blame has been
placed on prayer for grandma's death and for papa's attitude, for niece's grown behavior at formative years and for
juniors turn to the gang life for confidence in himself and in his worth.
"I will never leave you nor forsake you", says the LORD.
Even right now? Even right here? Can't You see what I am? Can't You tell what I am made of? I am no father. I am
no head of household! God, I am not right for this job, get me out of it! I can't handle my unfinished stuff and theirs
too. What kind of gravy train operation are You running here? Are You getting a good laugh? Where am I going to ever find
enough money to make it rain on my family? How will I ever be able to pull in all that they need and still maintain all that
I need and got going? This is a rat race and I am chasing the cheese? God, I done came to You time and again and when I reached
for You I was smacked up and left on the outside of the house and everybody knew why before I even opened my mouth and what
can You do for me?
Malcolm X was not the only one who has asked God what God can ever do for him? Martin Luther King Jr. was not the only
man who asked God for the strength to see peace when there was only visible hatred and gang warfare. Harriet Tubman was not
the only woman who reached for justice when slavery and bondage spread almost as quickly as hip hop. Victory is among us,
right in between our eyes and before our hearts. Our hearts are welted, bruised, torn, ripped, shattered and it's all because
we have put our trust in God's court. God's court has homefiled advantage in our lives all of the time, fathers!
The game is rigged. Satan cannot win. There is no way for satan to get the victory and go home with the W because God
is Almighty, because God is Most High. Satan might be high but my God is the Most High. No other compares to Him and His majesty.
Jehovah is the nuber one stunna, the King who brings pleasure and riches forevermore.
Will you store in your soul the treasure of Jesus Christ? No matter what the price, fathers? Will you lay it down for
the kingdom of God to be advanced through you and your doings? No masterpieces are just finished in 24 hours or in 5
years or in 50 years. This walk takes a lifetime. You are yoking up with the Folk Nation and with the Bloods and with the
Vice Lords and with the Crips and with all sorts of organizations that promote family because you need that in your life.
Lil' Wayne is the representatiive of the young men who grew up without a dad, without a father, and journeyed into the
streets and found the love of a father in Baby. It is all around us, it is in the air right now. Not the marijuana clouds,
no, no, the frangrance of us calling for a Savior who will never leave us and never abandon us and never walk out on us and
never blast off on us and here we are exhibiting traits that we can only have gotten from one of our two parents.
We either got how we are from mother or father. If you are like me then there has been some inbetweens and I speak to
you right now from the inbetween place. I am logistically a step father, but I cannot tell waht that means so much because
my father has made some decisions in my life that have moved him out of my reach physically. TO love a child requires the
complete and total breaking, shattering, burning, folding, molding of a Father able to teach the concepts and qualities andprinciples
of fatherhood.
Who qualifies for such a job, such a workload, as this God who knows it takes Eternity to father another, and has
thus provided our path into eternity by the sacrifice of HIs only begotten Son.
I began this speaking of the pulling between my emotional and your emotional wrasslings and GOd's call on us as fathers
versus the callings for fatherhood from the spouses whom sometimes merely serve as a reminder that God's love and fathering
has brought us from a thugging place. We have become so used to getting it how we live, taking enough for ourselves and everything
else is bankable, making our seed super strong and now we face the settling of the contents of this package that we are. We
were created by God the Eternal Father, fathers, fearfully and wonderfully made(Proverbs 12:1-3, Proverbs 8:34-36)
1 Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,
but he who hates correction is stupid.
2 A good man obtains favor from the LORD,
but the LORD condemns a crafty man.
3 A man cannot be established through wickedness,
but the righteous cannot be uprooted.
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34 Blessed is the man who listens to me,
watching daily at my doors,
waiting at my doorway.
35 For whoever finds me finds life
and receives favor from the LORD.
36 But whoever fails to find me harms himself;
all who hate me love death."
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In Jesus Christ is freedom from sin. Sin is separation from God the Eternal Father.
The Bible says that when we are separated from family by our waywardness, by our own reachings, that we are prodigals.
I thank God that He turns not even away from prodigals because where would I be. It is quite difficult to explain to
even myself how God the Eternal Father has fathered me because I have needed a father for a long time, not an earthly
one because my earthly father needs exactly what I need every day of my life.
I need an Eternal Father to do what fathers do. We think that we know exactly what fathers do because our hard knocks have
come from the street university or because we have not been phased by the imprinting of law enforcement(not just police, but
authority figures in every part of life) and we just know that thugging it out or pimping it out or drugging it out or sexing
it out is the way that will lead us to our destiny. I stand here right now to say that any feeling that way is exactly right.
Your path is designed to lead you right to God's throne in surrender. I don't know how fathers, but I am living that right
now.
I find God's name all up in my mouth, hitting the back walls of my sin, dropping this body of sin like its hot, twerking
this sin until all He has left in His hands is my pure life which praises Him in every puff puff pass. For every hurting place
within us, within you moreso than I may God that Eternal Father give you peace even in this nightmare called life.
blessings, Prophet Israel-Shannon Saunders
Taking My Breath Away
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| Psa 104:29 |
Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return
to their dust. | |
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Fatherhood is brokenness. Fatherhood is disgust and torn spirits. Fatherhood is strong crying behind closed doors in we
can help it and if not right in the center of those crowds.
I have found that my tears are thrown out as anger clouds. Torrential torrents and storms beating down the block until
my soul is again calm. At times it take a long while before this calmness comes by. To say that a father is a torn one
would likely bring questions of who I heard that from or who was my pastor and all that rythym and blues, but God is
able to take broken pieces of a man he has called a father and bring together in just the right order a masterpiece.
I am that torn father. I might as well accept that the demands of being a father indeed tears and rips and bites and claws
at me. I have heard sickle cell called the biting disease and I am going to here stretch out that definition to include the
journey and destination called fatherhood. It takes a real Storm Trooper(Jesus Christ, the Messiah) to make fatherhood
a mission worth taking. It is often a classifed mission. God called me to be a father when I couldn't hardly see how to take
care of myself. Maybe for some of us fatherhood is that lesson that our parents couldn't teach us about life and love and
lust and employment and provision. I have heard many and have taken many drinks from that fountain that held that fatherhood was
a punishment for the wrongdoings of the young man, for his grownness, his inability to control his pleasure tool. And
I readily submit that it has been largely because of the diligent hustling of the media and the family that this has been
so named and followed in this life. To attract a mate a male must complete a process of which adulthood motives are blossomed
forth from still child encased bodies. Puberty sets on fire the tongue more than is even named in James chapter 3, verses
6 & 8:
| Jam 3:6 |
And the tongue [is] a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue
among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.
|
 Jam 3:8 |
But the tongue can no man tame; [it is] an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. |
Our hearts are filled with the mentionings of strength from several sources. One of those sources is in fact fatherhood.
If a man becomes a father he must be respected. Many of us are in fact fathes and are not broadcasting the information because
of the weight of that bruise. God's love and God's strength are for us right here. God's power and God's compassion are for
us right here. I ask God into my despairs that come knocking for a one nighter. I call God into my marriage bed because what
has followed me there are the pntings of this fleshly monster that lives upo my skin's surface. A father is a calling that
it takes a great and powerul and wise exapmle to fulfill. Yet many of us are not ready to see God as our Father, let alone
a Father that lives forever and ever. It is enough for us to see our natural fathers on the streets of our respective cities
and give them any kind of indication that we are proud of them for just being there when they were there. We see the quarrels
with moms, and we see the reachings for daughters when daughters were too young to know and we see the tears we cried that
no one saw and we see dimly the promise, the vow, that if God ever let us live that long that we would not be as daddy was.
But here we stand grown up men that are fighting with memories that just won't settle in our minds and in our spirits and
in our ouls. We still see the pictures of God's forsaking because daddy walked out on all of us and daddy yeeled and dadddy
cursed and daddy hit and daddy never came back to live with us no more and daddy hasn't been heard from in 18 or 19 years.
Now we are standing on the posts and looking to make that way for the very ones daddy left and here comes daddy. What shall
we do? Greet him in the name of the Lord and forgivehim for his failings. Yeah, it hurts real bad even to writethat to you,
but believethatI gotta go through this too. Right now is the call to be morethan the example because the example left a bad
pathway to follow. Always we were told to walk in the light and to avoid dark and strange alleys, but daddy is in us and coming
alive and those same or similar pathways and dark alleys are what we are traveling. Sleeping on the streets, grinding to get
that grain, hustling to flow one more day, moving to groove without getting caught by all the rules, shaking to shed the bread
that a moment of passion has afforded u. No matter how we became fathers, we have a calling to pursue and fulfill. This fatherhood
again is a destinaton and a journey. We walk it evryday of our lives. No stopovers. No put down the packs and lerave them
for someone else to oick up. A stepfather is a father who has been recruited through the put down packs of the father. A great
many terrors have become mine since this calling and election has been sent down from heaven above for it is hard to see the
difference between love and lust in this place called fatherhod. Many in this situation have been brought to feel as if they
were unappreciated. I know that God's great love and mecy are upon my fatherhood journey and as such I have seen a great many
blessings come from trying to pursue a relationship with my children of God's granting. It is difficult to manuever i n this
place called fatherhood though because the notion always exists that no matter how hard the fight ot be apart the reality
deep down is that I came here as a solitary wanderer.
| Mark 1:35 |
And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary
place, and there prayed. |
I was placed here by God true enough, but I was on a different journey before now.
Households will likely be enflamed by these words yet God's word is true and that is whatI have been leaning on and
shall even now in this place lean on and rely upon for my instructing and my comforting and my guidings in this journey called
faatherhood.
Blessings in your journeys in this place called faterhood whether born or just bred God determines a father a father. God
shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philipians chapter 4, verse 13)
| Philippians 1:19 |
For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply
of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, |
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Father(noun)- person, thing or idea intended to bring fruit from the often tough soil of a child by dependance upon a
higher authority, namely, the Magnificent Creator, who is his Father first.
I spill before you this definition of a father because the person is not fully complete right now. I say that thefather
is a thing becaus somethings are still in the molding stages of development and a father must be molded exclusiely from the
very hands of the Father who imparts pure wisdoms and everlasting love into the child. Thirdly, I call the father an idea
because so many, maybe even the entire portion of us who are fathers in some manner or who are planning to become one hold
that never could they fully imagine the rights of that title after their names.
Fathers are not always strong enough inside of themselves to find the way. Yes, t hat sounds so terrible because that
is t he sole preposition of the father in so many of our minds. The father has all the answers. Iwrite this as I struggle
to tie together the strngs of my memory that hold my father as vital to my life. Never intending disrespect towards him, yet
trying to reach insdie of me for some tool, some earnest expression that will let my father know that I need him even in the
painful times. I find pain in my own life because so many times I haveto move away from beng a father. It at times becomes
to much to bear and carry on my shoulders. At times I become worn out and that is in my soul as well as in my physical body.
Anger comes rolling in like the surf at the water's edge. Frustration comes leaping in like the deer that plummets acrosssthe
road taking its chances withits life. As a father will we die for our young child, as a father will we hold no other higher
than we do our seed? So many tears do come very often and even more often than these words can ever contain because fathers
are persons who shatter, things that tornado and ideas that leap into our life paths at times so unexpectedly.
I draw to your attention the story of one young father I have come to know mmostly in my prayer time, in our letter ministry
and in our brief meetings at functions. I know not the situation, yet I proceed for the purpose of finding a gem of God my
Father's wisdom in what I do carry with me.
Father # 1 lived a life that was aching for life aches each of us. He met a young woman, feelings and inteests were exchanged,
conversations were birthed, relationships of casual friendships were formed, stronger bonds were present and in the midst
of what some may call madness as others call majesty a child was born. Life has become more greatly complicated in this couple's
life to some, become a revelation from God the Father who aids the fatherless and has become a continual battleground for
who is more important in this child's life. The young man found aching, frustration, loyalty and pressure more real than ever
before and now sits awaiting instructions for moving forward for the best possible sacrifice of himself. Is he thinking about
the child? How could he not be? It is his child. Is he aching fo the environment he knows is present for his child? Of course,
he is. Is he wondering and crying and praying and vowing to make a space for the child to know that his love is there? I have
no doubt of that. The young man faces a future in our minds. Yesterday has to release him in orderthat his today may provide
fdor his tomorrow. That means forgiveness has to be very real and very forhcoming andvery prevalent in order that his life
might not be extinguished again. Our lives are extinguished as fathers not only because of the material tuggings and pulling
and stealings that occur with our natural, can feel thein our hqands things. No! That is not the only cause for alarm, for
sorrow, for excitement and for God, please give me th strength and the wisdom I need to make it through this crazy sexy cool
dry land. These images in my database, God, are basing me in to that place of brokenness.
"I don't know, God, how to be a father because this is not the path I ever intended to walk."
"God, I cannot BE this idea that You are suggesting I am moving from becoming."
"God, I am not in any way fully prepared to accept the responsibilities of what a father is and therefore I know that
I cannot ever possibly right now accept the title of father . That thing is not my thing, God!"
"God, I am not You. I dread waking up and motivating myself and I can tell You for a truth that my walk is not perfect."
"I don't even have a steady employment stream in my life and so how can this thing ever be possible which You have
called possible as my destiny in this world? I am not ready to be that person, God! "
How is a father ever to be a father fully perfected? How does the pain not matter anymore? How does the scars not matter
anymore?
I got all these loads of spiritual dung that I am just now trying to learn to toss up to You Lord God, Father God, to
take the burden off of me acording to Your Word and I am here in this place outside of the family You put me in as solitary
people are redeemed from the curse of the Law.
Old school teachings say that if the by takes a swing at me then I am obliged to ake a swing back at him. Old school
teaching says that if the boy steals from me then I am to be recompensed for his theft.
But now this new school teaching comes to collide with all I just learned from the old school heads and the new school
teaching says that Jesus Christ is the payer of all my debt to sin. New school teaching says that Jesus tells us, commands
us, to love our enemies. New school teaching says that Jesus commands us to take up our crosses (our sufferings, our frustrations,
our anxieties) and to follow Him.
I am strongly confused , but to become unfused it seems that I must refuse myself to the very things that are supposed
to be freeing to me, the very things that are promised as saviors to me, the very things that are listed in my soul as hope
to me.
And Father God, here I am. I don't knowwhat to do with myself. I don't know where to turn myself.
I don't even know how to move, why You brought me here, why I trust in You, why I love You, why I keep accepting You
picking me up, why I keep slapping You in the face, why I keep spitting in Your face, why I keep cursing You out, why I keep
taking to myself what I think is better for me to relieve this stresss syndrome(sin drome) that I have pressuring every part
of my life.
If I turn to You my trust in You only goes so far because I have trusted in others and have been burned.
I hear You say that You are all I got, but I can't even see that God. My life and all it took to get here right now at
this time at this place is not telling me that I got here solely on Your strength and Your mercy and Your clout.
I got a name that I have made for myself and that name is my access key to be who I am.
So what You saying God.
You calling Yourself my father, my Heavenly Father, but fathers spend time with they sons and daughters, fathers make
sacrifices for they sons and daughters, fathers don't let nothing stand in the way of them telling they chillun of the joy
of thurr love for them.
And God if You are my Father, my Heavenly Father, then why are these things pouring out of me so often and why am I shaken
all up so often and why do I have to walk around with this hood on like nobody betta touch me or say anything to me. A father
gives out tough love is what the going saying and practice is today.
How you know I need tough love?
How do You know that tough love will bring me back to Your arms?
How am I ever going to wake up and stop thinking about myself and start trying to build something with this mother of this
child you gave me?
God, I don't know how to move anywhere.
Got these pains blocking my sight/what is a father anyway right/can't You see my pain in this plight/still asked to climb
so much more than a mere flight/can't wait to take flight/if You will ever have my life/wrassling for Your sight/finding in
loveonly spite/if You can make it right/to be a father and a man is dividing me/unwinding me/maybe just so You can see/that
all fall short of Your glory/said Christ died on a tree/was it for You or was it for me/pride rides in my spiritual jeep/swinging
episodes with Lust and them in the back seat/of my spiritual jeep/so I creep/trying to find in turmoil sleep/coming at me
is darkness while I sleep/nightmares and visions that scare while I sleep/so I can't get to sleep/take this pain away from
me/give me the ability to see/that Your life is all I need/walking it out to end selfishness and greed/until I am finally
understanding I am by Christ's sacrifice freed/thinking and beliefing that it is up to me to sacrificially bleed/I ache to
seed/I ache to retrieve/past days that pass ways to make joy recede/asking for joy to in me breed/and addictions rise up in
sheer decrees/Father, strengthen me/fo there is grief in me/for this is the plea in me/I need Thee
This is written very haphazardly. I know not the pain crisis of how a father may be you, dear one, but I do know that
I myself feel right now the pain and the anguish and the calling for a purified joy to my own in this fatherhood arena.
I want to wear my hood as a father victoriously. I strive to find joy in my steps in every part of my life, yet I fall
short many,many,many times. Iget overly excited by the title and I lose sight of the Abled and Ready Writer who has finished
my faith in His timing.
May God's favors, blessings and stores of mercy be yours an my own as these next new days are shown. blessings from a
hurting and waiting for new life father in the fight to keep sight of God's light,
Prophet Israel-Shannon Saunders
11/28/07 7:22pm
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