Episode 032—What is the Color of Love?
There are some huge issues in the world today. To address some of those I sat down with my long-time friend, Sheila Ruffin. Sheila is a world-wide missionary and prayer warrior who has been instrumental in teaching me deeper things of the Spirit of God.
She’s also a mom, grandma and pastor’s wife. Sheila is the type of woman that oozes the presence of God. When she walks in the room, people pay attention. It’s almost like she’s escorting God into the room or He’s escorting her!
This is a special podcast in that it is longer than usual. We actually cut some to fit it into a podcast. It’s not on my usual topic of weight loss, but friends, racial issues and tensions in the world today are going to affect us in different ways.
Understanding what’s going on in the world is so important right now. Loving our brothers and sisters is also important as is following what God wants us to do during this time to be peacemakers is of primary importance.
When I weighed 430 pounds, when I walked into a room full of people, especially a church, I would look around to see if I was the biggest one in the room. If I was, I would sit in the back where I hoped, despite my size, no one would see me, or I could blend into the wallpaper. There was a shame element to it.
Sheila is not overweight, but she has the same experience only it was happening because her skin was darker than the majority of people where she lives in our town of around 100,000. She added that she also felt an element of shame for being different from others, for growing up knowing she couldn’t go to certain bathrooms, eat a certain restaurants or stay in certain hotels when they traveled to see relatives in Illinois.
She added, “When we walk into a room, we are looking to see who else of color is in the room or to see if I’m the only one and if so, there could be something going on here I’m not aware of. For us that is just normal. I’m either the only one or one of a few. I’m used to that, but some don’t like the discomfort of being the only one. Black people feel safe among our people. I can be myself. When I go where I am the only one, I don’t know if I can be myself.”
Over time God has encouraged her to be herself, but before that she said it felt like she was almost dying because she wasn’t being herself because, “I tend to be loud when I worship. But I was tamping that down.” Then she read 2 Samuel 6.
In that chapter David comes into Jerusalem with those carrying the ark of the Lord. He is “dancing before the Lord with all His might” (verse 14). His wife, Michal berates him for what he did and calls him a “vulgar fellow.” David’s response in verses 21-22 is, “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this.”
After that, something happened in me. The presence of God said, “Sheila get over it.” I got up and ran all over that place. Then, during a time of prayer, a friend of hers, who happened to be white, told her, “The Lord says, ‘He made you that way and He likes it.’”
At one point when she was headed into some countries of the world where fear reigns rampant for Christians, Sheila knew she had a spirit of fear within her that needed to be dealt with. What she thought might just be things in her immediate biological family, she began to realize went back generations.
“It’s a spirit of fear I have dealt with all my life,” she explained. “It’s the spirit of fear that has been put on the black community. It goes back to times when they’d lynch people across the street from the black community and leave ten men hanging there for all to see. It’s things like that that bring terror and fear. We’ve lived in fear for hundreds of years. We’ve heard these stories from our grandmothers or experienced them all our lives.”
She added that she had to forgive the court system and others all down through the generations. “The fear had roots in the hangings, in the terror at night when you didn’t know if they would come for you for no reason at all.”
She added, “I know as a Christian I need to forgive, even if you never say you are sorry. Even if the government never changes, I have to forgive. I have to be willing to give up that rage, no matter how scary it is. There has to be repentance on both sides. There has to be a recognition that there might be a problem here.”
The issues our nation is facing today won’t be solved by humanistic or political endeavors. They will only be solved by loving people, getting to know people who are different from us. “We need relationship,” Sheila emphasized. “If you don’t know any black people, if you haven’t talked to any, then you believe anything you hear and anything you see.”
In the final analysis only one thing will turn this country around and that is reliance of God. “We need to pray and fast and we need to do it together until heaven answers,” she added.
This podcast ends with powerful prayers spoken to God between two women who want to see and understand the color of love.
To follow Sheila on Facebook go to: Sheila A. Kitchen Ruffin (https://www.facebook.com/sheilaakitchen.ruffin)
To follow Teresa on Facebook go to: Teresa Shields Parker (https://www.facebook.com/TeresaShieldsParker)
To find Christian weight loss resources, go to: https://www.teresashieldsparker.com/
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