Holiday Promise

Saturday Dec 29th, 2007
7:45am

*yawn* I pull up in the parking lot of a Buckhead plaza and see a few cars. None of them look like my friends’ cars so I find a spot close to the only thing that seemed to be opening soon and smiled.

A sign read Buckhead Spa.

YES! I love spas! This has to be our surprise. Nothing else is showing any signs of opening soon.

I look at myself in my vanity mirror and pick at my hair. I went “blonde” about 2 weeks ago and have been finding that they err…we indeed have more fun.

This has been a great holiday vacation so far. I’ve been out a lot, I got to see all my friends and family. I’ve been eating like a horse. I got everyone everything I wanted without becoming broke. I quit my second job. I got my wish of spending Christmas with Usher. Life was good. I was having fun, yet, I still felt empty.

8:00am rolls around and I see an Explorer zoom around the corner and abrubtly stop inches before the parking space curb.

That HAS to be my friends. I laugh and get out the car.

“SWAAAAAY!” Tee exclaims. She’s the first one out and I realize all my friends rode together because they all live close. I hate living so far away from everyone. I gotta do something about that.

I run to meet her and hug her tight. She’s the one living in NY now and if there was an award for the best physical transformation, it would definitely go to her. She looks GREAT! The rest of the crew begin filing out of the SUV and we all exchange hugs.

Tee gets us together for a quick picture, then pulls out 4 thin strips of paper.

“Okay ya’ll…we’re going to the spa today! I got 4 different packages and in order to be fair, I’m going to let you guys pull.”

One by one, my friends began pulling until there was one strip left. Tee hands it to me and tells us all “Merry Christmas”.

We’re all excited as we read which package we had. Mine read “Aromatherapy massage and mini-facial.” Woo-hoo!

We all thank her as she gives us the appropriate gift cards. We walk in and our wonderful relaxing day starts.

I am in love with massages now. During each of our “down-times” we would all sit in the common areas in our white robes and slippers and chat. I bet it was an earful for the other patrons to hear us talking about “how big is too big” and “the origin of Christmas” (I know…how random is that)

We didn’t finish until 1pm. My pregnant friend Biah was looking a little down when we were walking out. We were all concerned.

“What’s wrong?
Did the massage hurt?
Are you okay?

Turns out, she was just hungry. lol

I was too! We went to Jason’s Deli and chowed down. Anytime the 5 of us get together, it’s a rule that we stay together all day.

We moved our fun from Jason’s deli to Tee’s sister house, where she was staying for the holidays. I felt kinda sorry for her sister, since we basically deboed (sp?) her house until 3 that morning talking. We are such chatty women. It’s sooo much to talk about. Tee is a Northwestern graduate who’s currently at Columbia working on her PhD in education. Biah went to Standford, then Emory for her Masters in Public Health. Trail is a teacher and a marketing and comm. major, and Tiff is at Ga. State studying to get her Counseling degree. We got a lot of stuff to talk about. lol

I ended the night err…morning…sleepily driving back to my house. I had to get up in 4 hours for Church. We were visiting a new Church we heard about from some of the members at our old church. I’ve been so out of it lately. I didn’t even feel like going. But I know my moms would call my behind a billion times if I decided to not go and I still wouldn't get any rest.

Church was cool. It was the first one we visited that I could actually see myself in. My parents liked it too. It kind of reminded us of our old Church. Except the people seemed friendlier. Then I was reminded that our old Church was “friendly” when we first got there too.

The message was AWESOME. I needed to hear it. The title was: GO FORWARD!

How on point is that?!?

2 days before the New Year and I had planned to leave 2007 in the dust!

It’s a new beginning for me. No more Usher. No more night job. No more dealing with fake people at my old Church. Just new beginnings! I was amped!

We all agreed that we’d come back Monday night for New Years Eve service and did just that.

For the first time in 3 months, I felt genuinely fulfilled.
Yeah I still loved Usher and wished we were still together.
Yeah, I had a lot of bills and a little money.
Yeah, we still didn’t have a Church home and leaving 15 years of service in one Church was scary.
Yeah, I STILL haven’t received the promotion I asked for at the beginning of LAST year.
Yeah, I’m still working out my uncertainties about God and religion and our relationship.

But...

At that moment I felt peace. I closed my eyes and felt the promise of 2008.

This is my year. I kept repeating to myself.

I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Hope.

I believed that good things were going to happen to me.

I believed that I would be alright.

I believed that this funk I’m in would disappear.

This year, I was going to make it my business to manifest the “Happy” in Happy New Year.

I slept to my parents house that night with confidence.

The old mattress didn’t even bother me too much. On New Years day, I was with the people who loved the most and I had no regrets.

Tee called me to tell me she was leaving on Friday and wanted us all to get together one more time. I had a suggestion for Thursday night.

“The strip club?” She said surprised, nervous and excited all at the same time. “You know what? I’m down.” She laughed.

Sigh… here I go again. I thought to myself.

Wasn’t I supposed to leave this mess back in ’07?
When will I learn?


To be continued…