31st Birthday Reflection Part 2: Alive at 31

I was pretty absorbed into the thought of death at 19.  I believed it so much so, that for me, it was a certainty.  How many times can one be jumped on by people and not die?  How many times can there be shooting around you, and you not think you'll get hit by a stray bullet.  I was actually sitting on a porch with my cousin and a guy on a bicycle pulled a gun out and started shooting at the porch!  I figured that something evil was really out to get me and would eventually succeed.  My mom couldn't even trust me with money because I got robbed so much!

So, you would think when I found Jesus that this thought process would heal right?  Not really.  See, I gave my life over to God in a Wendy's outside of the Robert Taylor Homes (more like prison buildings).  I'll have to tell you my salvation story another time, because its kinda wild!  Anyways, when I started following God, my worldview about my death hadn't changed, my view on my destination however did. So, I thought that when I die, I'd go to heaven! It was great for a moment.  Dying didn't seem so bad when I would look at death in this light.  Then, I became intrigued by heaven and how things would end.  So I would read the book of revelation EVERYDAY!  I WAS OBSESSED WITH THE BOOK OF REVELATION!  I just wanted to know how things would end! The drama, the battles, the victory, the finality, it was really satisfying for me.  I would then go around and tell people about this book, "Hey, have you read this book?  It's CRAZY!  Are you a Christian?  Yeah?  Well, guess what, WE WIN!!!"

I laugh thinking about myself at the age, just a little boy, voice cracking, tasting something for the first time really feels like hope.  What was funny, was when I turned 20!  I was a sophomore in college at this time and I as REALLY depressed.  Freshman year I put on the usually 35 - 50 lbs going from 185 to 230 in college!  My sophomore year however, I was so depressed at the idea of dying that I stopped eating much, and I had dropped down to 199 (can't wait to see that weight again!).  I remember sitting in my room with all the lights off wondering when it would happen.  I figured it would most likely happen when I would go home.  "It's been good Jesus," I would say.  "Thank you for the bonus time."  

For some crazy reason, I said yes to a missions trip that summer in Los Angeles.  I thought, "Well if I don't die, then I'll go a missions trip and die a martyr!  The book of revelation had some good stuff to say about martyrs..."  It's so funny thinking back about this time of life for me.  Well, I went back home after that college year, and you know what?  I didin't die?  Crazy!!!

I remember turning 20 on the mission field and I kid you not, I distinctly heard God say to me, "Don't you know that I have more plans for you than you can imagine?"  That hit me at the heart.  I've never thought that God might have plans for me, or that His plans could supersede my fatalism.  I was stunned.  I had been living a sham made out of conjecture and fear.  What would life be like without the fear of death looming always?

Today's my birthday...I'm 31 years old.  It means a lot to me, not that I'm older, or that many people could see me as young, but that I'd lived a great deal of my life an EMOTIONAL TERMINAL ILLNESS, and God healed me.  God proved himself to my life the best way for my circumstances, by proving me wrong about my death.  The demise of Tony Gatewood was greatly exaggerated by yours truly, Tony Gatewood.  

Right now my wife is asleep, my daughter tucked away in her room.  I still rock her in my arms even though she's a bit lanky and older.  I wanna keep doing it until I can't.  She'll live out birthdays prayerfully without the same sickness I once had.  I can feel tears in my eyes, is it my 31st birthday, or 12 years of being proved wrong.  I can't really tell right now...

31st Birthday Reflection Part 1: Dead at 19

Sounds pretty dramatic huh?  Well, to be honest I really thought this about myself.  I remember growing up in the projects of Chicago and constantly dealing with fights and fearing being able to just go outside and plan.  My mom a lot of the time had to push me out of the house just to go and get some exercise.  I remember a time when I was about 13 years old when I was playing for my high school baseball team.  I was wearing my baseball jersey back home from a game and I felt really proud.  I took the green line from Ashland and 69th to 55th and MLK drive.  Some of you from Chicago might know what I'm talking about.  There were only three people in the train caboose (can't remember the right word at the moment lol), A middle aged woman, and older male, and myself.  This was probably around the mid-nineties.  The older male comes over to me, sits down, and says these exact words, "When you get off the train, I'm going to rob you and I'm going to kill you."  You have NO idea how terrified I was!  I was a little kid! This asshole was bigger than me, and I figured out a long time ago that I was a pacifist.  I didn't like fighting or confrontations, I wouldn't fight even if there was a large group around me pushing me to fight.  Anyways, tears are streaming down my eyes as this guy starts to have a NORMAL conversation with me!  Are you serious?  He starts to talk to me about baseball, and growing up, asking me how I'm doing, etc.  It is still to this date one of the most wicked experiences I had, and during a formative time for me. 

There was something different for me during this period of life as well.  I was being witnessed to by Korean Americans with the Gospel of Jesus.  I remember going to a bible study and them teaching about prayer.  "When we pray, God hears our request and is willing to answer us" they would tell us.  What a fine time to apply this right?  So as this guy is talking to me, I'm ignoring him and praying to Jesus, asking him to protect me from this man and save me from this harm that going to happen. 

People don't have cell phones during this period of time, well few people.  Beepers is what it has been all about.  So when the lady, the other person on the train pulls out a phone and begins to say out loud on the phone, "Hello, police, there is a man on this train threatening to kill this young boy," my mouth was stuck on astonishment.  What happened next was freaky.  When she did that, the man looked at me, GROWLED at me, and ran off the train, ONE STOP BEFORE MINE!  Thanks be to God! I ran FULL SPRINT back home and to this day, I've never ridden the green line in Chicago again!

Experiences like that happened to me more often than I've wanted to claim, and though there has been Godly intervention all the time, my world began to change.  I had NO CHANCE to survive this world..  I was prey to everyone, and eventually I was going to get it.  I heard a statistic that said "Young black men who live past 19 years old have a high chance to live longer." I thought to myself, "That's definitely not me..."

I'll finish the last part of this later today, wanted to start out with a  little birthday blogging!  Love to hear your thoughts!

"Progressively Backwards" and Hope

Now, I have to tell you a bit about this place.  Iowa City is what I like to call "Progressively Backwards."  I know that when people call a city or a town "backwards" its usually a response to its lack of education, resources, revenue, etc. We look at lesser resourced communities in small towns and make the "backwards" response.  Yet this is not Iowa City.  Iowa City is one of the most educated cities IN THE WORLD!  You think I'm joking?  Our literacy rate is around 98%.  80% of the city are people who hold a bachelor's degree of higher, and that percentage isn't a small one as well.  Iowa City is a part of a state that has long since been touted for its education system.  Recently, Iowa City was named the THIRD LITERARY CITY OF THE WORLD by UNESCO.  Education, resources and revenue are not our problem.  Our problem is the application of that education.  

PROGRESSIVELY BACKWARDS: A society and a homogeneous group of people who awkwardly practice the misapplication of social education about a particular culture they are trying to empathize and/or sympathize with.

We're educated about poverty, about racism, about socioeconomic status (SES).  We're educated about Women's rights, LGBT rights.  However, our application of our knowledge is really, REALLY far off.  My realm is usually focused around race, poverty, and SES, and I see a community that has used its "blocks" of education,  not for building a bridge, but for building a wall.  We learned that poverty can drive folks to aggressive means of support, so we ignore where the problem is.  We tell others how this is a problem, but "I just don't have the time to do it."  Our pursuit of knowledge has created more fear of others than it has increase the empathy AND sympathy for others.  The more education we've recieved, the more we've come to fear others.  Why is this? Because we settle for only looking at people through a snapshot.  Books don't animate, and even animated books only give you one point of view.  Classrooms can only go so far towards educating others.  You also have to come into the experience and let your heart break, and be transformed.  Let yourself become unsettled and cry out, "I CANNOT SIT AND DO NOTHING...not anymore."

 I recently met with a very successful and wealthy individual who after our conversation challenged me by saying (in so many words) that I am the type of leader that can lift up the whole African American community, even the city...  I can tell you, I did not expect this when I planned on meeting him.  Since that time, I've had sort of a mini twilight zone moment.  Feeling like I was in a place, but yet not.  I've had the highest and lowest ranges of emotions.  Somebody just challenged me to be the world changer I'm destined to be, for my city, IOWA CITY!   

My vision for something so grand and on this is level is not just talking about planting a church, or just a non-profit organization, those are in it, but it's not all of it.  Has God placed in me the seeds and the call to planting a whole community, a movement that can transform the very structures of my society or the world?  

What if I said I had the ability to begin in the next 10 years to:

1. Unite all of the black clergy of Iowa City for the mission of serving our people
2. Develop a financial literacy program to serve the community
3. Build relationships between the local banks and local black businesspeople
4. Create a collaborative network for existing organizations who reach out to the Afr. Am. community.
5. Develop and culture exchanging experience between our community and other communities of the African Diaspora, both stateside and overseas.
6. Help African Americans parents have a stronger presence in our public schools.

And that would be the start of it? I'm literary trying to believe something about myself that bigger than anything I've ever done, or have tried to do.  Not on this scale.  I'm looking at the education of my city and saying to it, "its time to take your education and transform it into wisdom..."

I think this is where I'm at.  I'm a African American man, with all of the crazy experiences I have had in my life, living in the projects of Chicago, being witnessed to by Korean Americans, going to a Korean American church, going to college in Iowa City, IA.  Living for a period of life in Atlanta.  Being married in a bi-racial marriage with a bi-racial child.  Ministering to college students for the past 8, going on 9 years. My heart aches, and my lungs burn for the transformation and change that could hold ramifications at the level of transforming a city. But am I the right person.  What limits me from thinking that I can do this, actual limitations, or just the limitations I've set upon myself? Wow...

Education without the applicable experience to harness is still another form of ignorance in my opinion.  If all our city wants is to be educated about others, about Blacks, without the necessary step that moves knowledge towards wisdom, we will continue to move progressive backwards, where our technology will be further ahead, but our ability to love our fellow brother and sister will remain rudimentary.