God’s Word is sharp and powerful, and our Lord leads us in daily obedience then molds our decision-making to be conformed to His will as revealed in His Word.
We have all gleaned life-changing lessons from Bible characters whose lives can be so similar to ours. And God desires to use our personal stories to encourage, convict, and transform others as they observe us responding to the unfolding will of God, as revealed in His Word. This is my story of God’s grace.
My life began during a racially turbulent time. I remember the prejudices of the 1950s and 60s. I lived through the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the riots, and the distinguishing labels of black (“darker hue”) and white (“lighter hue”)—not to mention a number of other less fortunate terms.
I was born in Kissimmee, Florida. My mother was a migrant worker. She and I lived with a man who was a father figure in my life. We moved between New York and Florida, years before Disney started buying up land to make it a playground. To us, Florida was a segregated workplace. We lived there in the winter and went back to upstate New York for the summer months. The North and the South were different in those days; New York was more integrated, although the prejudices were still there. The New York school that I attended almost had two separate student bodies; one was about 90% of the lighter hue during the winter, but in the summer and fall the migrants came back north and created that second group.