My Name is Jali

"You don't know my life!"  You can catch me throwing that phrase out at any given moment - laughing on the phone with my cousin, rolling my eyes at my closest friends who THINK they know EVERYTHING about me (okay, maybe they know slightly less than everything, but still...), or even to acquaintances who feel comfortable enough to joke around with me. My friends hate that phrase because it's meaning isn't very clear. They know my family, my likes, my dislikes, what church I go to, how long I've been saved, who I like (or used to like) who I don't like (because of what happened when I used to like them) and just how long it'll take for me to excuse myself in a huff because they've pushed all my buttons. What is it that they don't know? The thing is, the phrase makes perfect sense to me. As much as they know about me, and as much of an open book I am, I know that there are things going on in my every day life - natural and spiritual - tha...

 Hey Blogger Fam!! I've been in this game for a while and I thought I'd show off some of my favorite pieces from way back when... Don't worry I have new stuff coming soon, but a few of you haven't been around from the beginning so take a look! :)  My Name is Jali: The Dam : Well the dam finally broke Two weeks of confusion, irritation, physical and emotional pain, and anxiety finally got to me and the tears ca...   My Name is Jali: The Necessity of Love : For the past few months I have not had it in me to blog. The excuses are endless. My grandpa passed. I started grad school. I'm tired all...   My Name is Jali: Thought Vomits : The thing about me is that I always want to say something but when I open my mouth the right words never come out So every once in awhile I...   My Name is Jali: Turnaround : So I'm sitting in my parents' home in Brooklyn, and I just started to think about how far I've come in the last year. It's not hard ...

Just decided to review my notes from Facebook... this one was pretty interesting...  "I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live." - Psalm 116: 1-2      Somebody just asked me what my favorite book of the Bible was, and I said 2 Samuel, because I always loved King David as a role model. His story was one of the most transparent in the Bible, and we get to see so many sides to him. But something always remained constant... His faith. There was a reason he was a man after God's own heart. So lemme tell yall about King David!      He was a shepherd. He was a musician. He was a king. He was a player and a womanizer. He was a warrior. He played dirty sometimes. He was a servant. He loved the Lord with all his heart.      I always loved the story of King David because no matter how dire ...

Watch this amazing video about the perils of keeping silent when your brother or sister is dying a spiritual death. I love P4CM poets, and I will more than likely be sharing more with you. Don't let your fear of hurting someone's feelings get in the way of your telling them the truth to save them. Let's be real people!

"As the river chooses course, though the river's proud and strong, he will choose the smoothest course. That's why rivers live so long. They're steady, as the steady beating drum.... What I love most about rivers is you can't step in the same river twice. The water's always changing always flowing. But people I guess can't live like that. We all must pay the price. To be safe we lose our chance of ever knowing..." - Pocahontas , Just Around the Riverbend The thing about this song - besides the fact that it's in one of the GREATEST Disney movies in LIFE - is that it so eloquently describes both sides to the same entity. I have always loved water and the concept that it can vary from a faucet drop to an entire body of water. I have always loved the thought of rivers, though. I guess it's because they seem so sleek and elegant. Living in Brooklyn and so close to Manhattan, I have had the privilege of being within traveling distance of the East R...

When I think of loyalty, I automatically think of - and I'm ashamed to admit this - Basketball Wives! If any of you followed the latest season, you know about Jen and Evelyn's friendship falling apart, hence all the discussions about loyalty. In the midst of watching this train wreck of a show (I know what it is, but I can't help myself), I constantly found myself asking the screen what loyalty had to do with have of the issues within that friendship. Apparently, these women felt loyalty meant agreeing with one another on every point, and if they did disagree, they were not to vocalize this or they were deemed to be disloyal. Basically, Jen felt that Evelyn was going to get hurt by marrying another athlete, especially when she had been so hurt by her previous relationship that involved an athlete. Evelyn was upset that Jen shared this opinion with the public (hello, you're on TV!), and thus dissolved their friendship. In fact, she felt that Jen was so disloyal that it w...

Rhythm = music. Rhythm = life. Rhythm = me. I hear things in rhythm. If I need to remember something, I have to break it down into a pattern in my head. I tap my fingers to a slight beat when I'm thinking really hard about something. Even my walk has to be synchronized. How did I get this way? Well I grew up in the grand ole Church of God in Christ (COGIC) where music is a VERY important part of worship. On top of that, I was surrounded by family members who were musicians, including my own father. I had an ear, and talent for playing (piano, clarinet, trumpet), dancing, and singing but I just wasn't disciplined enough to sit down and learn formally. I would be good at it at first, but then get bored and be done with it. That might be changing soon, however (we'll see). The only thing I've technically had training and practice in throughout my life has been singing, and that's mostly because I had no choice but to sing in the choir since I could form words. The th...

This has been a hard week, one that I can say I have cried every day of so far. I have attended two funerals within the last 24 hours, and it is has been a physically and emotionally draining process. On top of that, I have been in the process of working things out with my family due to breakdowns in communication which caused a lot of emotions to run high and feelings to be hurt. On the one hand, I'm glad that a lot of things were able to be laid out on the table, but on the other hand, I feel like I just tipped over a vat of energy. What does this have to do with renewal? Well, the person who passed away and required two separate funerals was my jurisdictional bishop. As a result of his death, we now have to look to new leadership. And some of the communication mishaps in my family were my own fault because I failed to inform them on the changes in my life and personality. Granted, I wasn't really aware of the depth of these changes, but, nonetheless. The thing with enterin...

Okay. This may be the worst one for me to write, because I HATE change! I like my comfort zone. I want everybody in my life to get along (like I once believed they did, since they would pretend for my sake), and I do NOT like having to alter my own perceptions to fit a change that I did not bring about myself. I'm a control freak. I like to know what's happening next. I can be flexible, as long as I have some warning and time to brace myself. I have faith that all things will work together for my good, as long as I obey God and try my best to always do the right thing. My problem is that I want to know WHEN the good part is going to come, what form it will come in, and the signs I need to look out for as I wait for the good stuff to come. When I look back in hindsight, I realize that all of the changes that have happened previously were merely just steps in the shift my life was taking to prepare me for the things to come. For example: When I was a junior in college, I dec...

Today's theme is "faith." I couldn't wait for it!! There is so much to talk about, especially my own. I mean I can talk about salvation - I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He died on the cross to save me from my sins and that he rose again, I have accepted him into my heart and now that I am a believer I will have eternal life when I die - but I have tons of blog posts about that. How about faith in people? I have learned some VERY hard lessons on trusting people who weren't trustworthy. I have been lied to, lied on, betrayed, thrown under the bus, many things because I trusted the wrong person. But I haven't lost faith in humanity. I haven't lost faith that God created us all in His image and that there is still a part of all of us who want to do right by others. A lot of people seem to be ignoring that more and more these days, but I believe that it is still there. So how do you maintain your faith in humanity? By tapping into yours. When you th...

When I think of the word "physical" I think of a lot of things: a trip to the doctor, beauty, and lust. That last one might have been my downfall had I given in to it but thank God He kept me from making some big mistakes! All of the thoughts that came to my mind about the word "physical" had to do with the body. I believe that many of the mistakes people tend to make are because their bodies responded before their brains or their spirits. When you buy into the mentality that "keeping it real" is the same as acting on the first impulse you experience, you forgo an education on learning patience, discipline, and, quite frankly, the skill to make good decisions. When a person feels angry or disrespected or betrayed, that feeling becomes tangible and prompts your body to do something about it.Have you ever heard someone say they "blacked out" while they beat somebody down or cursed somebody out or slashed somebody's tires? That simply means th...

When I think of the word "connection," I automatically think of people and relationships. I am a believer that once you come into contact with someone, even if just for a second, you are connected to them within that time and space. If it's from the person you pass on the street every day on your way to work, or to your lifelong best friend, you have established some sort of a connection. I wouldn't dare begin to try to describe all of my relationships - that would fill up a book series. But I always think about the connections between the people I have met and find it so interesting. If you don't live in the city of New York, you may not understand the significance of reuniting with people you've been to elementary school with as you matriculate through school. Well, when New York city has hundreds of elementary, junior high, and high schools, it's very easy to believe that you will graduate each stage and never see these people again. What I found ou...

"Asians are smarter than everyone else." "All men cheat." "Women can't drive." We've all heard certain stereotypes in our lives, right? These things that seem to define us and others "informing" us of people who are from other cultures and ethnicities. Of course, we know logically that stereotypes don't apply to everyone, but we can't seem to help but accept them, right? When the only Vietnamese girl in a predominantly Black high school is the valedictorian at graduation, you can't help but shrug your shoulders as if to say "what did you expect?" Or when you agree to have an "open relationship" because you know that he won't be faithful to you, then he's not necessarily cheating on you, right? How about when you cut somebody off on a busy highway and feel a crazy sense of triumph because if your chauvinist best friend had been in the car he would have had to eat his words? Okay, okay I'm getting...