Growing up money was something that wasn’t always there at times. Having to deal with three boys plus my stepdad, my mom had a lot on her plate so at times my brothers and I wanted to make it easier for her. She would always say “No, I’m fine just focus on school and stuff I’ll take care of everything else.” We always knew everything wasn’t fine, but my mom wanted to keep things away from us because she didn’t want us to worry about the things she was worried about. She didn’t want us to worry about bills, being kicked out, or transportation. She wanted us to focus on our dreams, goals, and not put them to the side because of the events that were happening around us. Now it’s easy to drop everything and worry about taking care of your family back home. But, it’s hard to go out there in the world and make something out of yourself so you can be able to take care of yourself as well as your family. I think it’s hard because while you are out there trying to make something out of yourself, your family may still be struggling but you feel like there isn’t anything that you can do to help since you are trying to find a way for yourself first before you find a way for them. So, then you stop what you’re doing and get a job close to home so you can give all that money to your family and not have anything left for yourself. Sometimes making the hard choice is exactly what your family needs from you. They need for you to go out there and better yourself and once you have made it out you can come back and show them how you did it. Because staying home to help the family isn’t bad at all, but how much help will you be if you are doing the same things they are doing to survive? This is why you must be different, you must find a way, and you must be willing to choose the hard choice over the easy one because that is how you break generational curses. And that is how you free your family from this survival game that we are all a part of. Because at the end of the day that’s all it is just a big game of survival that we are all playing. But instead of surviving, how about we start thriving. I’m sure then we could help our family help themselves in so many ways.

When you have a purpose in this world you tend to walk around nervous. Because most of the time you know what it is that you are suppose to do but it takes courage to actually do those things.

The question today is what are you doing to change your environment? What are you doing to influence yourself or other people? You see, something that I have learned is that many of us are influenced by trends started by many people. For example, Allen Iverson started the trend of Cornrows for many young people. Michael Jackson had everyone around the world trying to lean forward without falling. Taylor Swift had most of us singing in the mirror to a heartbreak song in the early 2000s and Mariah Carey had everyone singing “ALL I Want For Christmas Is You.” Now, I know you are probably thinking “Well the reason these people probably had an influence is that they are famous.” But, what if it’s because they aimed at our emotions and love of things such as; dance, style, and music. You see everyone can do it. Everyone can have an influence or change their environment just by doing something simple. It could be just smiling at someone who may be having a rough day. It could be offering someone assistance, picking up a pencil for someone who dropped it, telling a joke to someone to make them laugh, and so much more. You see, it’s all about starting a trend that benefits everyone overall. One trend that I think changed the environment is TikTok. Now I don’t watch TicTok much, but what I have noticed is that many people are using it. Many people are using TicTok to do many things such as; singing, making people laugh, inspiring, educating, etc. One reason that it has such an influence is because of the change that it has brought to our environment. It allows for us to relate to people who come from different walks of life topics, etc. So, what are you doing to influence yourself or other people? What are you doing to change your environment? Because everyone can do it you just have to be willing to give it a try.

The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. Once the sun is gone the moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It’s a constant routine of daylight ending and moonlight starting, and vice-versa. You see, if we look closely at the weather there is a lesson to be learned from it. For instance, even during our sunniest of days, we still experience some darkest moments. And when the sun sets we experience darkness, but there is always light at the end of it.

Imagine all of the sins that you have committed, placed into one big garden. Now, imagine some of these sins staying as small as a rose but some of them growing to be as big as a tree. The ones staying small are the ones you nurture the least, but the ones growing big are the ones you nurture the most. Now imagine another garden, but this one is full of goals and dreams. This garden doesn’t grow at all, and all of your goals and dreams stay the size of a seed. So because of the lack of nurture, you didn’t put into your goals and dreams, your sins grew larger which ended up destroying your entire garden. You nurtured sins of judgment towards people but didn’t nurture those goals to help them. You nurtured sins of lying and cheating but didn’t nurture goals of honesty and loyalty. You nurtured sins for hatred but didn’t nurture goals for love. You see we walk around and expect our garden to grow when all we are doing is poisoning it by nurturing the garden of sins that keeps it from growing. As the saying goes “We ask for the bag from God but as soon as we receive it, we forget why we asked for it in the first place”. So, why do we ask for the sunlight, the water, and the dirt for our garden if we are only going to pour them into things that prevent our garden from growing?