Jentezen Franklin The Boaz family tree...Part I

 

This was me. I thought I'd followed all the rules. After I'd given birth to my second child I realized, it was time for me to spend time...alone with myself. At twenty one I'd been married, by twenty three, I had my daughter and moved back home. I was six months pregnant and not married a full year, when the decision was made to go back home. I was going to be a mother and her father had too many issues for me to deal with him and raise my daughter too. My focus was her and providing a decent life for us. Something he couldn't do. I had no desire to live a life of poverty or allow my child to suffer, I wasn't raised like that. We never knew anything about being poor or maybe we didn't realize we were poor. But I can't relate to living an impoverished lifestyle, even though we resided in Far Rockaway! My house was immaculately clean. We weren't on welfare and NEVER went without! I guess I didn't realize we were working class, but we were, and for my mother to spend three hundred dollars on comforters for her bed or have the living drapes custom made, who would think they were poor? There was no Kool Aid allowed in my house, until the nineties, when we could buy it ourselves. Mommy did Gouz and she was a sale shopper. A woman who knew the art of money was being a finagler! We had Waterford crystal in our house, Beige carpet and glass tables from Fortunoff and even some Haufman Koos Hunni! There was no walking around in her house with no shoes on! NO WAY!

So I wasn't going to raise my daughter in a home where she felt impoverished or disadvantaged.

Which is why I knew my marriage wouldn't work and it was destined to FAIL! It is true, you cannot marry someone who is not on your level. You are wasting your time dating someone who can't understand why you'd spend forty dollars on a shower curtain. Because they shop on the Avenue or Conway. It's just not sensible. When my parents were married, they received fine bone China as one of their wedding gifts. My mother knew about the finer things in life. Where as my father didn't mind the "THRIFT SHOP!" Now there is a recipe for disaster!

It was hard watching my parents fight over money and priorities. My Grandparents had money and most of the people on my mother's side of the family had a lil money! My uncles were Masons and some of my aunts' were Eastern Stars and had pledged sororities and were apart of the elitist organizations. So When I say my family don't do CHEAP or TAWDRY...WE DON"T! I may be the most "HOOD" of my female cousins and I own that! But best believe this "HOOD RAT" has a Bachelor's Degree hanging up in my living room. And I know more about the Jack and Jill clubs, The Boule's, The Girlfriends and Lynx's clubs...Yet I was too dumb to pledge Delta when I should have.

I really made a lot of bad calls in my life and when I decided to become CELIBATE and wait on GOD! I BLEW IT BY PLACING A TIME LIMIT ON THE LORD AND THAT'S JUST ONE THING YOU DON'T DO!