PAULA NEAL MOONEY

Did you do to your other man the same things that you did to me? You gave your body to another in the name of fun. I hope you had some baby 'cause it means we're through...(at least that's what I always thought Prince sang till I Googled it just now.) Yeah, those words always hit too close to home for me and my ex-husband when we listened to them, because they applied to both of us. Say you're sorry if you want to but it's all in vain... I hate you...because I love you. But I can't love you...because I hate you. Did you do to your other man the same things that you did to me?   I seriously love me some Prince, and now I see why lyrics to his epic songs like I Hate U still resonate years later in my mind and soul. He was just so freaking honest that he exposed parts of himself that others wouldn't expose. Right now I hate you so bad that I want to make love until you see that it's killing me baby, to be without you...because all I e...

Um...yeah -- Courtesy DaniMorris.com I thought this post was going to be about separating my private Facebook page from my public Facebook page listed above. Like the way ABC reporter Jummy Olabanji has her Facebook page... ...or the way my cousin NBC reporter Tracie Strahan has her public Facebook page, and then a private one for family under her married name. That's all cool and good -- I'm totally down with having separate FB pages for different purposes. But it has turned more into something about how much of ourselves Christians hide behind trying to look perfect. So I just wrote about " Imperfect Christians, drunk blogging, drunk texting... " that I hope really still makes sense in the morning. I believe it will...even more so than some of the stuff I write when I'm a stone cold sober and "perfect" bond-servant of Christ.

It's always a fascinating thing to study the terms people type into Google to find your websites. And the longer I'm online, the more interesting the searches get. It's heady enough to see people sometimes search for you by name -- and downright weird when people start coupling your name with terms you'd never expect, like the time last month or so when I saw someone search for "Paula Mooney boobies" and landed on my site. (You ain't gonna find that, I pray!) But one search that made me smile and meditate on great things to come that I saw today was " about actress Paula Neal Mooney " that someone typed into Google to find this blog: Because I like it...right... I thought to myself: Did they find the video I made for the Dark Girls moviemakers? I threw the bleaching cream away... Oh, I see that was written about on The Urban Daily , so praise God that people are thinking that's a part of the movie. Heck, maybe it di...

It is after midnight and I am still up, so I really want to tell all my readers about the book I devoured today in one day, Warning To Ministers, Their Wives and Mistresses: Avoid the Road to Destruction. My sister bought it for me for Christmas off my Amazon Wish List, and it was an easy and fascinating read at only 68 pages long, being a small yet power-packed book. And with all the people Googling " sex " and " cheating " and " adultery " and " Christian " and " church " and topics surrounding those terms and how they meld -- I'm just bursting at the seams to write about this tonight. I'm already going to pass it on to a woman who knows another woman who is caught up in a dramatic situation like the ones described in the book. Thank God I never experienced the sexual sin in church that these women have, but I could relate to how one's mind, emotions and will can be caught up in a soul tie that the Lord breaks one...

A vision of water pouring out of lips -- " out of your belly will flow living waters... " Things I'm learning during this season... A blessing can be disguised as a curse... Sexual integrity is not just NOT sleeping with nor kissing someone , it involves things like avoiding emotional affairs and changing my thought life and speech and so much more... I don't need to pretend like I'm over this when I'm not totally over it yet... If I tell myself not to think of something or someone, that's like telling myself not to think of a purple elephant. All I'll see are purple elephants. So it's better to just let the thoughts come -- and cast them off to Christ to handle and ask Him to replace them with much healthier and holier and more prosperous vistas... That I love the way Yahweh shows me stuff through my dreams -- and some of the points I remember I immediately type out in my offline dream journal soon after leaving my alpha state of s...

That's how we do it in The Chi... Okay, it's really starting to sink in. After more than six years online, I am finally understanding in my cognitive domain that when I write stuff, people can find it. Bless God that those days I am favored to see -- let's say my top amount of views for my best day thus far -- perhaps maybe 100,000 hits on my writing on some hot topic -- I realize now that those numbers represent actual people and human eyeballs reading me. I know it's an odd disconnect, but whenever I meet someone in real life walking around Ohio who remembers my face and name and tells me, "I read what you wrote..." it surprises me a bit. The first time it happened years ago, it was like an odd out-of-body experience. As artists, we feel the pull to express ourselves and experience the cathartic release that comes along with getting what's burning inside of us out -- half expecting no one to find us. We are not necessarily chasing fame, we...

I swear I have some of the most interesting talks with my girlfriends -- sometimes late at night. Tonight was no exception, as topics like guilt and pride and being used and rejection float around in my head. Guess I should be sleeping and dreaming and looking forward to God talking to me through my "visions on my bed" right now -- but I want to write out what I'm feeling. Send this angst into cyberspace and hope it lands on fertile ground. How I wish I could write the things I really want to write. Seriously, I can, I'm just in that mode of being careful and cautious once again -- wielding this writing gift like the powerful weapon that it is... Late night writers make for late night readers... Anyway, I think I should add love and heartbreak and recovery and a plethora of other things to that title above. Okay, here goes. On being used... Yes, I've had people use me for their own benefit, their own pleasure. There was the silhouette ...

 I spent an inordinate amount of time this weekend once again reading about the life of Kathryn Kuhlman. I first heard about her from Joyce Meyer, when Meyer would talk about how much the popular Kuhlman influenced her own successful ministry. I guess I’d been warned about Kuhlman’s fancy gowns and flare for the dramatic, but not until I watched some of her videos , especially the old ones, did I realize how theater-like she really was. From Slut to Saint... Yeah, if you Google " Kathryn Kuhlman ," you'll find just as much dirt about her as you will testimonies of the many healings that God allowed to flash forth in her ministry. As for the dirt, that happened when she met a handsome man named Burroughs Waltrip, who was married with two boys at the time. He may have told Kathryn that his wife left him -- that's reportedly what he told other people -- so he ended up divorced and married to Kathryn. However, she never had peace about ...

Can you see the Mac in my eyes? Sometimes in life God gets us alone with Him to really take a hard and hurtful look at ourselves -- the ugly parts, not the pretty stuff we portray to the world at large. Yeah, I'm there for a little bit. And one interesting question asked in the book that's helping me and others is something like: Have you tried to make amends with everyone you've wronged? Well, no, I had to answer honestly. First off, trying to find all those people that I've ever hurt in my lifetime would be like that guy who has HIV trying to track down that one girlfriend he can't find yet. And honestly, I have no desire to look up some of my exes to apologize for any ways I've hurt them. Getting pride out of the way... My knee-jerk reaction is to think of the ways that people have hurt me over my lifetime. But that's not the focus here today. I need to take my part in all the ways that I've bulldozed over people's feeli...

Me in Vegas all the way on the right the first time I went there in 1994 -- let's see...I was 25 years old, the year I met my husband Chris First off, my gentle reader, can I just tell you how much I love my new MacBook Air and how it makes my work life so much simpler and easier and more productive? Okay, enough said -- now on to the topic at hand. How do other writers handle it when their readers flirt with them? Every once and a good while people will read what I've written somewhere online, and hunt me down on Facebook and send me a friend request. I -- just like this sister that writes for The Washington Post that friend requested me not too long ago -- accept a lot of my friend requests from readers, so grateful am I that they took the time to Google me and give me kind and encouraging words about writing. But then... ...the writing compliments are sometimes followed by comments that, yes, feed my baser sides of vanity and insecurity -- but also make me...

That's the question I asked myself this morning, after coming out of the freezing cold having biked for 7 or 8 miles in the snow like a crazy person. But the snow in my hair and frigid wetness on my face and muddy clothes felt fine -- because again, I'm right where I need to be at this time and space and place in my life. " Remember from where you have fallen ," came the lesson today whilst I was seeking Him , loving the way Jesus complimented that wayward church first before telling them their faults and warning them to do right before worse stuff happens: Look how far you have fallen!  Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don't repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches. So that had me reminiscing about when I first got saved, or any times that I was closer to God than I had been lately. Not that I want to turn into some judge-y Ms. Super Saint, but I did think of some times when I spent mor...

I made it past the 17 days that put my mind on that Prince song , and now that it's late into the night of the Central Time Zone that I occupy at this moment, I can't help but think of it being the 21st day. Yes, some experts claim it takes 21 days to replace one habit with a new one, hopefully a better one. Should I move to Chicago or California? I asked myself last night. Well, in between fleeting thoughts of despair I am able to see the brightness of my heart turning back toward home and my husband and this wondrous and wonderful life I've been given. "Don't go to your sterbs," they say. Oh dear God what if you are my sterb? And therein lies the rub. It's not all peaches and roses...it's more like wine and help me Jesus, but He is doing the job. I finally converted to Mac land... ...and left that Apple Store beaming and guarded with my new MacBook Air 13-inch under my arm, so these new habits are good ones. The chief change will be...

I know this fog will lift. It's already lifting as I type this on my iPad 2 due to my laptop's hard drive threatening imminent failure. Yes, Black Friday may actually find me at the store with the big, tempting apple with a bite taken out of it on Michigan Avenue, so prominent and famously recognized it doesn't need a name. Or more likely online finally adding one of those Macs to my shopping cart and actually checking out. Less mad at God, feeling His long-term love... I admit I was mad at the Lord for a good minute there. I know, the nerve of me, right? But I asked Him for signs and dreams and felt like I got the go-ahead. I said don't let me make mistakes with my writing like I did before. I know I acted foul in other areas but it just felt good to "conversate," as people say in that made up of a word way. Anyway, when that project became public in the last manner that I EVER expected it to, I knew God orchestrated it that way, and I wonder...

I love the song by Prince called "17 Days," and couldn't help but think of it today. I'm off to buy Seeking Him: Experiencing the Joy of Personal Revival -- a great book that I'm sure God will use to change my life and those lives around me for the better. I'm surprised Prince didn't send the copyright police for this video yet:

Admittedly, it's been good spending time with Him that I hadn't been doing consistently. Only when I've stopped more and turned to Christ Jesus in crisis-mode is when I realized He was really waiting right there for me all along. Today I learned that as He is in heaven, so am I right now. God help me...help us all... So this morning as I climbed higher and higher, looking down to avoid snakes that weren't there -- I looked up and thought of that song, "I go to the Rock..." Looks like it's based on Psalm 61 : Lead me to the rock    that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge,    a strong tower against the enemy. And it reminded me of all those times Jesus would just break away from the pressing crowd and climb higher and higher up a mountain to talk with God the Father. Sometimes He'd spend the night up there. "Weren't You worried about bugs?" I asked Him this morning, able to talk to Him like a friend about t...