By Jacquelyn Simmons
Dear Father,
In Genesis 1:27, we are told that You formed man out of the dust of Your ground and breathed into his nostrils Your breath of life; and man became a living soul. And in Genesis 2:20-22, Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam, there was not found a help meet for him. And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept; and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman and brought her unto man. And Adam said, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man (Genesis 2:20-23).
Father, You knew before placing me gingerly in my dad’s loins and my mother’s womb, my gender, color, characteristics, life span, etc. You also deliberately permitted my birthing to be here in Monroe, LA and partly reared in Denver, Colorado. My “daddy” moved us there two times due to what could have been his deadly lynching by people here in Monroe, which was a custom during that time. I learned that living in both sections of America, if you were born black, you may be treated by some people as a person who is undesirable to associate with on the same level as they feel they are. In the three schools I attended in Denver from Elementary, Jr High and as a High school graduate. Excellence academic performance would not allow you to gain recognition unless you were involved in athletics.
You place me in college preparatory courses and I was among very few African American students enrolled in those classes, which made me very, very, lonely. Just to see what would happen, I applied to become a member of several campus organizations and was denied membership in all of them but the school choir and the football half time performances of the pep squad in which I was very lonely and completely ignored.
The German choir director allowed my sister and me to participate in the choir. However, he told me that my voice had too much vibrato to sing solos. But, he highly depended on my sister and me to carry the tenor section since males refuse to enlist in choirs often. However, he did agree to give me private piano lessons during my tenure there. My sister told me a few months ago after my graduation he permitted her to lead Negro Spirituals during some of their performances. Thank You for those training blessing, which we both eventually used in college and church choirs… (continued next week).
