blast the favored the exciting the loving the inexplainable experience of celebrating my mother's eighty ninth birthday and  what's so amazingly exciting about this whole the last weekend has been of course foremost my mother is here she is alive and well she still lives by  herself my family and i we rally around her and she sees at least one of us for a few hours every day but really she lives a long season a senior building in san francisco the john king senior center and she's been there for for quite a wound now but she she truly is the most amazing woman i've ever known one of the unfortunate pieces those pieces motherhood is that when you're really young you don't really understand how much love how much dedication and how much commitment it takes to be a mother and you don't really understand how important your mother is because you know when you're a kid you just can't know you just there's so many things that you take for granted and god has been kind enough to me to leave me here long enough to realize how just marvelous my mother is and then leave me here long enough to really shower her with love and appreciation for all the things that she's been able to see and do for so far eighty nine years so i'm going to start off the show with a moment of prayer prayer changes things changes things whether you feel like they change in the way you want to or not they pray changes things and you're regardless of what your brain may tell you or what my brain may tell me prayer changes things to come out in the so that i come out in the best position possible and i learned from my mother says so if you want to just close your eyes and i'm going to invite the holy spirit to step in and to do with me as he will and to prepare me to release a show that will touch somebody whether you're a mother or not because anybody can be a mother whether you know it or not male or female you can be a mother mother is a spirit of a particular khana love and it's a spirit of a particular kind of commitment so don't think because you don't bring children in the world you can't be a mother so i'm going to pray for all the mothers in the united states in san francisco in berkeley in the bay area in the united states of america and around the world i pray for mothers mothers who are here mothers who have the help of husbands our partners to raise their children mothers who have the help of loved ones mothers who do it on their own without help mothers who don't have anybody to really lean on mothers who have no choice but to trust in god mothers who have to rely on god's everlasting favor and god's everlasting mercy and gaz everlasting grace and kindness for their role as mother so lord jesus father god i come with a heart as open as it can possibly be and as grateful as i can possibly be and i can say is thank you thank you thank you thank you for my mother thank you for all the years of commitment that had she's endured good in that she's shown up and shown out through you and she's blast our attire family with love with dedication with commitment with service with courage with cooking with so many with irony with cleaning she single handedly took on our family when my father passed away in one thousand nine hundred seventy two and she's managed to keep our family together she's managed to raise my sister's kids her own three children then my sister's three daughters and she's been instrumental in the help with raising her grandchildren and now her great grandchildren and so i come to you father guys say thank you from the bottom of my heart for my mother thank you for her commitment to love to life thank you for her commitment to be in a woman of have my standard a woman of virtue a woman who got up early in the morning before the sun came up and took care of us before we were even away did things to help us throughout the day like cooking cleaning and iron and so and for myself my brother my father my sister and then her grandchildren father god thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the adults that she has mothered many of them they lost their mothers when they were young or many of them are adults and still have their mothers but she extended her heart and her love to minnie many adults so many adults and so many children we will never have an accurate count of the number of people who call my mother mama never no matter if we start accountant last year to in years away we will not have an accurate count of all the people that my mother has been a mother to of all the people that my mother has been a grandmother to other people who call my mother friend and so today i say from the bottom on heart thank you with everything in me for my mother a mother who got up early and worked in her home and then went out and worked on her job and then came home and continued working in and here at ninety eighty nine she steal at work we still have to make her sit down and take it easy because she tires out and  whole family i know i'm speaking from a whole family if not for the love of my mother where would we have all landed where would we have all been so i say thank you father god for my mother thank you lord that you have graced her that you're light you show you shined love on her and you kept her and you held on to her through dangers seen and unseen and through heartbreak and heartache and and she's always been able to find the sunshine and always been able to find the the good and human beings and always been able to have a kind word to say about everybody so i thank you for the love that guides her father god not a spirit of anger or hurt or or any of those of resentments she doesn't walk in any of those spirits and i say thank you for their father god and i i pray that my mother's love will make a difference in this world for ever it's made a difference till now and i pray that it will continue to make a difference in this world i send you this per through your son jesus my faith teaches me that my for prayer will not come back void my prayer will last throughout eternity in my mother's love to will last throughout eternity a man you know i've i've just been i've just been on a natural high for the weeks coming towards my mother's birthday and my mother's birthday was august the ninety than throughout it was last sunday so throughout the whole weekend we took her out on saturdays and hung out with her all day and she had a good time and just laugh and talk in and we had a really beautiful dinner myself my dorter my niece her mom my mother one of my mother's many god daughters we hung out all day and just had a beautiful time and the next day on sunday we went to her church where she's been a mother at st paul the shipwrecked church for over twenty five years probably more like thirty years now she's been a mother on the board of st paul the shipwrecked catholic church in san francisco and the amazing thing about my mother's tenure as mother there is when she became a mother it was in the early eighty's and you know there in the church at many like three rows the first three pew is on the left hand of the church were awful of mothers well of all those mothers my mother is the only one still living now some of the mothers that are on the mother's board now well all of the mothers that are on the mother's board now they came on the mother's board after my mother so the oldest living member of the mother's board st paul or the st paul the shipwrecked catholic church where father paul is the priest over there she's still there and she is not able to get to church and serve like she used to she's to serve you know communion on sunday she served with taking care things that the church she always a committed taipei or she was able to travel with the church to different retreats and different things that the church di and in fact you know when when the church started haven't their picnics i was the first one of the first co chairs of the first family picnic and my mother's in the mother's board of the church at the time and my mother and mother lena bless our high seas rested with the lord now all those women serve to take care of our church they helped younger women in the church they were grandmother and grandmother to all the younger women in the church some of those women like my mother pay the tuition for children to go to school as st paul of the shipwrecked church or st paul the shipwrecks school because the like me we were young mothers and we were struggling and we didn't have the money to afford to ishan my mother and several other mothers paid for children's tuitions so that they could attend school with st paul the shipwrecked catholic school now that's a pretty pretty pretty big sacrifice you know and i know a lot of mothers who are in the position to pay for children's tuitions at school unknown many of them who thought that they couldn't afford to ition s group they drove a brand new mercedes benz they wore the the you know the all the stylus the biggest designers clothes and they were mean coats and they lived in fine houses but they didn't see themselves as somebody who could pay tuition for somebody to go to school or that in see themselves as as having enough to do something like that and you know i think about those mothers and how little they had but how much they did with the little they had i'm really grateful that my mother was able to be a mother at a time that this nation didn't know anything about major drug addictions and major substance abuse because in a lot of ways their ability to be a mother was and hampered by the things that hamper motherhood today with massive drug abuse and massive drug addiction and the massive distribution of guns to mother a child today up against in a measly like drug abuse and alcoholism and violence and pornography  and in tragic violent neighborhoods to mother today up against those in a mieses is very very hard and so you know to mothers today i want you to know that you can do it you really can if you're able to hook up with some older women who know how to pray and who know how to show up and in a spirit of respect and accountability they will teach you what to do in june i think it was in june mr dick gregory was on the show and one and he said many things that that really has allowed me to to use to to build a stronger foundation in my life one of the most amazing things he said and i'm so grateful for is that the most powerful entity in the united states of america is a black woman in the black church and i'm so glad he said that because i don't think that black women still today in spite of how far we come we really don't know who we are we really don't understand that the power and the love and the might that we walk in is set up against us to make sure that we don't make it but we make it anyway and you know you probably got that e mail about the strong black woman is there and that's certainly true because we have served ourselves as a red carpet laid out in front of many people that had no business walking on us from day one we have allowed people to travel in first class in our lives when they should have even been in the baggage claim let lone in first class or even worse drive in the plane you know we've we lived our lives and ways that has not served us well in many areas and the beauty of being a black woman alive today is we can look back and see where we fallen short with the work it took to learn about who we are who got season us versus who this world has convinced us we are racism sexism class all those isms have served to separate first woman from woman but especially black woman from who she is and while the strong black woman maybe dad she maybe gone now to never return the loving black woman has yet to really really really step on out there and show the world what love looks like and so today i understand that my mother's  survival through all the pain and agony that she had to work through and that she had to go through being born in the twenty's in louisiana and growing up in texas at a time when she had a here little white kids say things like gal shap get why we gotta take that nigger wrong you know saying those kinds of things and her having to hear that having to stomach that and having to keep living anyway and not picking up somebody and choking on a you know that wasn't easy you know black women stepped off those ships from africa like black men with nothing on but chains around their ankles and around their wrists not even close so you can imagine what you'd feel like today if you had that experience but in spite of that in spite of that black women fed their children with their milk out of their breast and then came home and fair their own children out of their breast with their milk so i had the asli god didn't create no he didn't create creating a little bit ease when he created african women and then african american women he did not create a little bit ease but what he did create was a very very very very powerful perience for the world to look at and for the world to have respect and admiration for the one requirement that i have as a black woman is to first love myself and if i don't know as i don't do that and i don't know what that means i'm responsible for learning and for me it's been a really really long hard road you know i come from a family of women who i mean and both sides of my family's my mother's son and my father's side who married their elementary school who if they went to school or high school sweethearts who stayed married for thirty forty fifty sixty years and then who on at a time they died often went to the other side well that life that i watched people live when i was growing up had major impressions on me i went into marriage with the view that i was gonna be with the person i was married to for avar until one of us died and i unfortunately didn't know as much about the men that i married not because of this but because of me i didn't know as much about myself at the time so that i can make a more sound choice in reference to marriage well as a result of me not knowing anything about me me not learning anything about me and me not cultivating what i learned i am a woman today who's been married three times now somebody might say golly what's wrong with her well i have a commitment to marriage and have a good thing but i learnt through blame and my husband's that really the importance of me learning how to love myself was vile i did not know how an even though i had all these beautiful expressions of love coming behind me or in front of me so that i could look out and i could see how a woman should walk a woman should talk a woman should carry herself how she should love and how she should care for her husband or no children i had many experiences i did not know how to translate that into my life i did not know that my inability to love myself was going to hinder me and even worse it was going to hinder my daughters and my son and if i had not done something quick about me it has the ability to hinder my grandchildren and so because i didn't want that and i didn't need that and i certainly didn't want them to suffer for my inability to love myself made a commitment i made a commitment to be a different woman now i made a commitment to be a different woman one because i wanted to but to because i had beautiful examples of women behind me my mother my grandmother my aunts my mother's first cousins who were all more like sisters to her odd these women were virtuous women there were women who rose up early and worked in their homes women then who went out in the fields you know they were paraphrasing from the bible not real feels although you know there were women in my family who were certainly born in this nation when a black woman had to work in feels  but they worked outside of the home my mother worked at the texas laundry in beaumont texas before she came to san francisco and this is a little piece of history the cleaners that she worked at the family that there was a house next door to the cleaners all by the family of perry come all will perry como whenever he came to town my mother said that the cleaners couldn't get any work done because all the people were looking out the that there was a time in in this country when he was one of the most talented singers around and saying you know with a very beautiful voice well my mother worked at the cleaners that was next door teary until they closed down and she retired from working as a waitress doing bus girl work and more staff or tear it down with a cable car turns in st francis go it's now a meg donal's but it used to be more skaf a tyria and she worked there till she retired well she ended up raising my sister's three dorter after retiring from that job and this is this is this is love at work must sister had some struggles and so my mother decided to raise her children well my mother was working full time raising now these three daughters and here's love at work my father said look you cannot raise those girls and go to work every day so you're going to have to come off that job or u k raise these girls and that's love my father had a commitment that was big enough to my mother and to family i don't know many fathers whose daughters and sons children fell into trouble or fell in the hard times and foster care raise those kids or some other family member raise those kids but my father told my mother look you can raise these girls but you have to come off that job so my mother retired and raised my sister's girls and then went back to work at the john she just she just had a ball of energy and she was committed and she was healthy and well and and so she worked and i remember people when she may seventy five she still going to work every day still happy she may seventy five and people were saying dad you know how do you do it miss pizzeria how do you know keep going you know you're all lady now and you still seventy five and so now at eighty nine she's not going to work every day and you know life has costs and changes for her she doesn't get around as much but we've increased our circle of love around her we have wrapped ourselves around her in a way like i said that she sees somebody every day she gets phone calls all through the day from all of us myself my brother my  daughter's my nieces her family in texas in los angeles they call up somebody calls or she's on the phone all the time you know people checking in on her people loving her people caring about  her on last weekend so we went to church that's where i started off we went to church and then my church the thirty seventh street baptist church where the bishop dr w c mclin this the path or thirty seventh and market in the city of oakland there was a musical at my church the gospel specials which my gas has to take is a proud member of take a cooper and she they had their musical and they dedicated  my mother and sister margie son who's in the hospital were praying for our son as well dedicated the musical to my mother in those people shower so much love on my mother that my mother was lit up like a christmas tree she still lit up as a week later she still lit up i can still hear the excitement under a voice and she so that was the best birthday i ever head and so you know where my family is is really really really blessed my father passed away when he was fifty years old he may fifty on october twenty second and act over twenty six he closed his eyes the last time and mom mother single handedly managed to create all the love and spiritual guidance and the wisdom and the commitment and the food and the laughter and the care and the concern and the dedication to my family that that needed for us to not just keep moving forward but to move forward in a mighty way you know we we have our struggles like off families you know we thought down and we get up and we fall down and we get up and every time we fall down we learn something while we're down so that when we get up we understand that fallen down a stand down is the problem falling down is not staying down is the problem and we've been blessed in ways that act i can't begin to tell you sometimes i don't talk a whole lot because i don't want people to get you know bill i can brag and although you know the bible tells me if you have good things in your life what god has done for you share how the spirit works in your lives share where the lord has brought you from so that people who are suffering and people who are struggling will know that whatever you're going through is just a snapshot it's one moment in time it is not the eternity so you know i owe everything that i am to god's love to that god's grace god's mercy and to the love of my mother all everything to my mother and so i want to thank all of you for allowing me to have a t v show today and to be able to dedicate the whole show to my mother because god knew god knew that the best thing he could do for me was give me to a woman who would raise me with love and care and commitment and service and so that's all the time we have today so hug your