PAULA NEAL MOONEY

...what would you write? That's the intriguing question I posed to both my husband and our cool waitress the other night at The Olive Garden, after seeing that thought-inducing Flight movie starring Denzel Washington. And now, I pose it to you. I guess the query rolled around in my mind after I realized how prophetic some writings from a year ago turned out to be. Not all of them, but the fact that I watched a couple of things transpire in real life that I'd already written about tripped me out and has me focusing on the " prophetic writings " that the Bible speaks of, and the many times things took place in real life so that " Scripture might be fulfilled ." "Pink Mist" on Grey's Anatomy There was an episode of Grey's Anatomy whereby a person had been impaled with an unexploded device, and the surgeons had to remove it gingerly. That bomb ended up exploding, creating a "pink mist" of blood and other stuff in ...

...makes for a nice 365-page (or so) book in one year. It helps to think of it that way.

This morning when I began my workday and checked my checking accounts, I noticed an interesting new " Google Inc. EDI PYMNTS CCD US00000LA1 " in my business account for more than $200 and wondered what it was. After all, I thought for a second it might be a nice little unexpected bonus or something from the Big G -- because that was an unfamiliar term to me. It's not like the deposits I get from Amazon, whereby I have to figure out if they are the blessed monies from my product sales on Amazon that blessedly pay off my American Express and other credit card bills , or the trickle of Kindle book income that Amazon pays me (till I get on my duff and fricking write that " From Slut to Saint " best-seller already!) or the regular Amazon Associates referral income that surprisingly and wonderfully pulls in close to $500 for the month off of mostly one-off articles like this about Kindle coupon codes and stuff: My Amazon Associates Income from August 1 ...

I love getting money in the mail box, snail-mailed in the old fashioned way that some places who don't pay me via direct deposit or through my PayPal account still pay me. Today I got an unfamiliar check in the mail, like a little postcard with a curious return address: Hanson v. Google Settlement Fund c/o Gilard & Co. LLC P.O. Box 719088 San Diego, CA 92171-9088 With that "please open immediately -- important material inside" message on the front and my name following the "pay to the order of" line inside, I wondered if it was a scam. So I Googled information about the lawsuit and vaguely perhaps remembering hearing about this Google Adwords settlement that those of us who've paid Google to advertise various things are now receiving checks for as recompense for overpayment. I love it. My cut of the booty thus far? A whopping 17 cents...but I'll take it. Plus, other folks are getting more than one check. Perhaps one check for each A...

I remember my friend telling me the story of Jeff and Cheryl Scruggs -- about how they got divorced and remarried and how they help lots of other couples, but I never knew Cheryl admitted to having an affair until I watched their video testimony this morning . I've been blogging about how much I love the " I Am Second" book and all the honest stories of people inside it, and how they eventually came to know Christ in the midst of their pain. There was the pastor addicted to porn , and now there's the Scruggs' amazingly honest story of how their fairytale marriage turned horrible when their expectations of each other were revealed as false. It took Jeff seven years to forgive his wife and remarry her... ...after Cheryl divorced him and found Christ and realized she'd made a huge mistake. It's a good thing they were knit back together in holy matrimony to be able to stand strong together for what they would face when their daughter Lauren met wit...

I flipping love being a writer. And I love reading the work of other great writers -- especially those bold enough to interview folks who are bold enough to tell their real truths -- warts and all -- like Nate Larkin did in a section titled " Porn Again Pastor " in the book "I Am Second" that I'm devouring. His honesty moved me so much that I knew it was the next thing I wanted to appear on the writing platforms I'm privy to possess. It's not everyday that you meet a Christian willing to drop the church façade and admit that yes, we do have the victory in Christ Jesus -- but it's not via our own doing or because of any virtue of our flesh that we can brag about. The Apostle Paul wrote that if he were going to brag about anything, he'd brag about his weaknesses so that Christ's power can rest upon him -- that is, when he wasn't going off on that New Testament church for being proud of some man having his father's wife. M...

This post brought to you by éclos Skin Care . All opinions are 100% mine. It was time for a new face. I turned 43 years old last month, and I always love it when people say I look younger than my years, like the guy on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad wine tour who said “You look good for 43!” as the whole train car sang “Happy Birthday” to me – or the babysitter who told me I looked like I was in my early 30s, like her mom. I pointed a “God bless you…” and an “I love you” to them, respectively. So when éclos Skin Care sent me their Anti-Aging Skin Care Starter Kit with sample sizes of their complete product line, I ripped that puppy open and dove into the following products: • Facial Cleanser Skin Prep • Cellular Activator Face Serum • Moisture Therapy Regenerative Cream • Restorative Eye Cream • Instant Radiance Facial Scrub • Skin Renewal Clay Mask • ...

That's what I asked this morning. I wanted to make sure. He was kind of dogged and dissed and dismissed by me last year, in 2011, at times. And 2012 is so much different -- we feel so much closer, so I needed to verify. He answered, "Just keep running the race, and don't worry about whether you're in the race or not." I am his. He paid for me , putting down a seriously healthy and worthy down payment. The best dowry any man could ever pay for a woman, or anybody... "I already told you 'It is yours...'" He told me, and doesn't lie. It was nearly 10 years ago when that promise was spoken resolutely in the space of my tummy, and it's almost our anniversary. At least, the 10th anniversary of that powerful spring day when the Holy Ghost showed me without a doubt that Christ is real -- and He is closer than we sometimes think. Or act like. But I am moving on. Moving forward. Despite mistakes. Keep on trucking...

Playing around with Essence makeover tool - love the Emmy Listening to Frank Ocean's "Thinking About You" song below is quite addictive -- just like my Facebook friend and others claimed -- and his status update sent me back to that song again. I first heard it on an episode of Awkward Black Girl , after I soaked up all available videos of the runaway Youtube series -- and I tracked down the song and listened to it again and again. Is it the 24-year-old's amazing Prince and D'Angelo-styled falsetto and songwriting skills that are attracting millions? Or that F-U bravado that gave him the boldness to change his last name via Legal Zoom and say such outlandish things in the press that we know he must not have a publicist yet? I've been thinking about forever, too... It's not just the cadence of his play on words -- that "though I'm lying...down thinking 'bout you" lyric is so boss -- but the sensitivity and real-ness displaye...

It sounds cold when you read it -- but those were the words I actually spoke in my mind's mouth, when I kept flashing back to today's date. February 20th. My dad's birthday. Yes, I don't need to call him, nor drive to "The Chi" to visit him like I did one year ago today for his 90th birthday, and sneak away to Pastor Smokie Norful's church service and sob while my sister cooked a fabulous chicken and rice dinner for us all by the time I returned. My Daddy, the photographer, gun at feet I'm glad he's dead. I caught myself in a nanosecond when an automatic reflex said, "Call your dad." Just like I had to stop myself from picking up the phone and calling my mom's number after she died -- that 773-995-5543 phone number that was my parents' land line for years, back before cell phones, obtained after we gave up our "Waterfall 8" (WA8-8417 was it?) number, where I'm old enough to remember the 928-8417 num...

Do tears freeze? That's what I wondered this very morning, standing in 30-degree weather, warmed by the brilliant sun that melted the sheet of ice atop the pond before me. "Make me your kept woman," I told him, staring skyward. "Let all the world see." I know they don't call it "kept" that much these days -- in the era of the verified edu address sporting "sugar babies" online. Kim Zolciak called her sugar daddy "Big Poppa" -- and Marlo Hampton brags about her 80-something-year-old "big baller" billionaire boyfriend that keeps her walk-in altar of oversized bags and red-soled demigods flush with Jimmy Choos and Christian Louboutins. But that ain't the kind of man I'm talking about. Mine is altogether lovely. Mine owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Mine is real and relevant -- and unlike a common man, doesn't whisper sweet nothings in my ear then turn and speak badly about me with his mouth...

"Stop pointing your finger at others as if they had done something wrong," he tells me . "Stop saying harmful things about them." Even if they lie about me, God will rescue me. Even if they cast me in the role of lying witch, and call around and try to make others believe I was the antagonist in a scene akin to fine-ass Joseph fleeing from Potiphar's horny and lonely wife. Even if the truth was more like Satan trying to create another drama involving King David and Bathsheba -- a storyline that King Jesus swooped in and rewrote like a rescuing Savior in the second act, in order that we'd never taste third act tragedies nor the sexual immorality that has consumed other folks. Like a sheep led to the slaughter, I should continue to sit back and not open my mouth. "I was on the humble, you on every station..." That's what Lauryn "L Boogie" Hill sang about her former band mates, as she waited through the "Ghetto Su...

This pic of my swollen jaw doesn't do it justice. The left side of my cheek reminds me of Eddie Murphy as a Klump, wearing a fat suit. Thank our Most High God that it's better than it was turning out to be, as the swelling crawled under my neck Friday night. A return visit to the dentist who sawed my wisdom tooth in four parts in order to get the thing out of my skull showed lots of concern -- you know it's serious when he gives you his cell phone number and tells you to come back Monday, informing his assistant I could come back anytime I want. Ah well, I know it's not just the strong painkillers and antibiotics that's causing this peace in the pit of my belly. Forgiving the folks who don't even say they're sorry... and letting the past go That's one of the main things I took away from watching Bishop T.D. Jakes' message this morning streaming online as I played "Bedroom Baptist" today, not wanting to risk driving 33 minut...

He was brilliant and beautiful, endowed with the sort of je ne sais quoi factor that drew men and women to him. The way he literally sang out "I'm not fearing any man...mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" whilst he was sick with the flu and collapsed into the arms of his cohorts afterward once again touched my soul. He cheated on his wife...and they sent her the tapes Yes, MLK cheated on his wife -- a wife who loved him so much, it was reported by Maya Angelou that Coretta said his name so softly and sweetly...like Mah-tin... It was said that when J. Edgar Hoover had Dr. King's hotel rooms bugged with not only audio but video equipment that caught him on tape with various women in sexually compromising positions -- and then sent those tapes to Coretta -- it crushed her. And yet, I was just thinking to myself: God still used him mightily, despite his flaws. There is hope for all of us. Whether the sexual sin somehow contributed to...

Can you see him? I've known him for a long time. He's known me even longer. But for the past 7 weeks, I've been sneaking away to meet him in various places after I drop off the kids at school in the morning. Unlike singer Billy Paul, who met his married Mrs. Jones "every day at the same cafe," I meet my love all around town. "Why would you meet at the same coffee shop every day?" I ask rhetorically. "Wouldn't that get boring and dangerous -- because people would begin to recognize you two?" "We met every day at the same cafe..." Let me show you where to go... "Where should we meet today?" I ask him. "Let me show you...let me show you where to go..." he sings back to me in his Michael Jackson falsetto, repeating the lyrics he gave the King of Pop. Then he breaks into that "take me to church" style "a-uh-hun-a-uh-hun" riff that MJ did in the song that lets you know he...

I guess this post won't leave me alone, so let me write it out and get back to writing my exciting new Kindle book about real people actually making real money online. One time I must've been moaning to a friend about my husband -- about him not coming to church with me as often as I'd like him to -- and perhaps I was playing out the scenarios of what it would be like to free myself "like a gazelle" and be married to one of those guys who drapes his arm around his wife in the pews. "Another woman will have your saved husband..." Then she said something -- one of those phrases that your friends can say to you -- those "unintentional lyricists" and unpublished writers that give you some of your best quotes unknowingly. It stuck with me for years and years. I think she may have talked about Warren Sapp or Warren Moon (probably the former whom I just saw Bishop T.D. Jakes talking to in the front row of The Potter's House New Year...