3 Years Since that Car Accident

SAVED ON THE CLIFF SIDE

As I drove along George Washington Parkway on my way to work in Virginia, I heard SCREEEEECH! The blue taxi cab next to me jammed on his brakes, smoke came up from his tires and the car swerved towards me! BAM. He got me! And…BANG. My car hit the stone wall of the parkway and flipped over the wall. Careening down the wooded cliffs like a rocket, towards the Potomac River, thousands of feet below, I thought, “Well this is it. This must be the way I’m going to die.”

The trees and bushes hit the sides of the car as it crashed through the woods.
“I’m ready for heaven” I thought “if it’s ready for me!”

All of a sudden the car stopped. Looking up through my open sun roof towards the road and seeing a man walking along, I yelled, “HELP!” Half a dozen men spilled over the crest of the hill.

They pulled me out through the sun roof, helped me to the top of the hill where I laid back on the stone wall. The shouting crowds were praising God and I joined them.


© 2006 Carroll Ayo Durodola

I Survived

O.K. I survived the hysteria of my website & princessayo e-mails crashing. As you can see from the side margin my e-mail has changed. I had to do something quickly so if anyone wanted to get in touch with me the e-mail wouldn’t bounce. So I got on Google mail and signed up for a new e-mail. I have uiteIbadan@yahoo.com, and cdurodola@msn.com but I wanted something almost as great as cdurodola@princessayo.com . Something exciting. Something unique to me. When it was time to put in my address of choice this wonderful one came to my mind as I asked God what do you want me to be – children’s writer. Now that one was taken and so I know to add some number and I added 100. There it was childrenswriter100@gmail.com. It seems so right and I love it. No one has to wonder how to spell my name, did I really say princess and why is Ayo (pronounced I-yo not spelt with an “I”). Some words in the SnapVine voice blog have to be changed, so bear with me. No matter when I ask the Lord over these last 8 months of travels, what do you want me to do; His answer always involves "write those children's stories".

These changes go along with the movement of the wind the Father seems to have me on. (John 3:8 "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.") God is moving me from one place in my life to another. I’m not exactly sure where, but I know He’s asking me to be ready to leave my comfort zone. (I thought I had! But there must be more). Be ready for the Glory to fall. Get ready for Him to fulfill His promises made to me over the last few years. All this takes adjustments and just when you think you’ve made all the adjustments you can make for one wilderness experience, He stretches you some more, just like a great coach.

Whew! Well, I’ve survived it. As expected. All is well - you can get information about me from this blog and can e-mail and call! Check out the Snap Vine voice blog and the nifty Book Buzzr to preview the book. This is even better because you can be nosey about what’s going on in my life and then switch over to http://tundethelittlenigerianprince.blogspot.com and see what’s going on with the book.

It looks like I’ll be moving again folks. I’m not sure where, but moving looks like it’s in the works. Stay tuned.

I sit here watching Whitney Houston on Oprah and my greatest shock is that she is older. Funny how we are, when we haven’t seen someone for some years. As if we don’t expect that person to grow up like we have.

I see a beauty in her. Do any of you know what it is?

She was an idol to so many of us around the world. American young people probably don’t know how we admired her all the way over in Nigeria, and how she made my afro I had to have, after a perm went bad, O.K. How validated we felt by having Whitney on the cover of magazines. She was younger than me, but close enough for this model wannabe teenager to live vicariously through her.

As I watched Whitney the thought came: We’re scared of our own light. That light is really part of the Lord God Most High. The light of the Lord in us and just like people could not look directly at Moses’ face when he came down from the mountain, so as we go through horrors and have time with God we are scared to look at ourselves. For that short time we’ve spent with Him and the little cleaning up that has taken place, causes a bright light to shine through the cracks.

Some of us may have noticed that Whitney isn’t finished being cleaned up. I cried like many of us who have prayed for her and are seeing the Hand of God do what we asked. That she might not go the way of other drug addicts. But we hear with the wise ears of 50+ years God has given us, that this chil’ ain’t there yet. And still we see The Light shining through her cracks. The same is shining through all of us.
Praise Him!

On 9/14/09 I met Yoda. Her real name will be kept anonymous because she wants it that way. Yes, Yoda, like in Star Wars. I was sitting in Panera Bread and she came in with her stuff, just like me and plopped it down on a table in front of me. She was like we are when we come into a different space; looking around, fiddling, trying to get her spirit to come into the place with her body.

Finally she settled down and got her lunch, covered it and oddly enough brought out paperwork, pencil cases, highlighters and got to work…Who was this person? Someone just like me, her manner, not her look – protecting herself, careful, watchful. I smiled at her and she smiled back – especially after I noticed two senior citizen Caucasian women starring at her set up. I don’t know what it was about, but they weren’t being friendly. Was it her long graying dreadlocks?

After quite some time I went and got lunch. As I sat down, pushed my laptop away and concentrated on my lunch, Yoda said, “What are you studying over there?” All of a sudden, out-of-the-blue, without a please ma’am or thank you, with no hello (as a Nigerian would say). Used to the blunt manner of Americans and without missing a beat, I answered “I’m a writer”.

And that was the beginning of our intense, amazing, magical, conversation.I got a lot from her and it tickles me what she said she got from me and how she kept pulling out paper to write it down.
• That’s what you need to blog, she would say – a stranger at a party giving me $100; strangers who were pastor and his wife, letting me live with them in Georgia; Gloria feeding and taking care of me and then taking me to Virginia Beach;
• You need to blog! And I know I do. Some guy she read about, sad about his high powered job, quit and started writing and then started blogging, only his mother and wife as readers, but eventually had 7,000 followers. I told her about Stanice Anderson who wrote e-mails to people for 2 years and Walk Worthy gave her a contract to turn that into a book.
• God wants me not to look down on anyone. Everyone is loved by him, whether they are New Age or Buddhist or anything else. And God talks to everyone.
• Why don’t we like our names? Why do we have so many problems with these given names from parents or husbands? She wants to be called Yoda. I don’t know what I should be known as.
• People are acting like her and I and many of the friends I have and opting out of the ‘normal’ 9-5 work, for a salary the regular way, for pension and health insurance. Someone has studied this and put it together in a course about living your life thriving, letting go. What these courses miss is the spirit, the Holy Spirit, the supernatural, the magic… that which cannot be explained. Her and I began to talk and complained about the coldness of the air in the restaurant. As we talked it got warmer. When it was time to go, the cold air blew in again. This, cannot be taught in college. This is the supernatural that can only come from the Father.
• Yoda found a wonderful place in busy New York called Zen, run by a woman who charges $50. Can you believe it? And all she asks is that you leave her property nice and she has plenty of rules so you know what she’s talking about.
• Yoda also found communes of the kind I was thinking would be good for me. She said you write to them and tell them what you can do to contribute to the commune and you need to live there for 3 months or whatever. That’s what I was thinking about and as I was telling her that, I realized and said that God really wanted me to go through this time without relying on anyone but Him. He would put me in the home he had ordained and it would be obvious and other doors would be closed except the ‘door’ to the place He wanted me.

We talked about stepping out on faith and what was the reason that so many of us are doing that and that many of us are over 45, and could be thinking retirement plans. I talked about being in my third widow’s home, after stepping out in faith from my job in March 2008. Yoda asked, looking under the restaurant table, are you walking on the ground or on air. “You really are walking by faith.”

The importance of the walk I’m on is to see that I’m not writing to bring people to me so that I can eat, I am writing because God asked me to do it, so that I could show people Him.

It’s not about me. It’s about Him.

Yoda asked what is happening that we are all choosing this way. I said I thought it was because things are coming to an end. That was disingenuous. I know very well that things are coming to an end. Time is drawing to a close. The Bible has shown us and we can see it. I said things are getting wrapped up and cleaned up. So we have to shed all weights and things that encumber us.

Something New

Today, I have something new to say. Usually, I'm trying to think of what should be on my blog. Today, for sure this should be on - my website and e-mails associated with it are DOWN!!!

WHAT!? Should I not be hysterical? Are you all out there used to this? I'm not. It's got me all in a tizzy. That e-mail was connected to my Outlook. I like my Outlook. Oh well, let's see how I get through this and how it empowers my life:)

Love ya' all.

People Will Call You Crazy!

If you follow God, people will think you’re crazy. I don’t know how many of you out there are listening, but God is talking. All the time. Not only through flowers, trees, a child’s smile, the soft wind, but He is talking to you into your spirit, or with an audible voice you can hear. If you get still enough, you will hear Him talking. He has something to say about everything in your life. From what shoes you have on, to what you’re about to say now, to who you marry.

I heard God tell me to quit my job in March 2008, when jobs were hard to find. People thought I was crazy. That is humans’ greatest fear, I now believe – that people will think they are crazy. God told me not to job hunt but to write children’s stories. I did. People thought I was crazy. No money fell from heaven, God led me to no great money making venture and so I gave up my apartment, as the money dwindled. Then I gave up my car to the bank. I moved in with my younger sister and lived off of her. People thought I was crazy.

Now I am writing. I’m in my fourth friends’ home living off her. People are sure I’m crazy. God has spoken to me and I am obeying. Sometimes I try to run back to my comfort zone of a job and a pay check, longing for my own place and the ability to take care of myself. Even freelance jobs haven’t worked, or I do them and there’s no money to pay me.

Anyone else having this experience? Are you job-hunting frantically when all God has asked you to do is write and trust Him? People will think you’re crazy. Maybe you’re determined that people won’t think you’re stupid or a member of a cult.I’m researching this phenomenon:) – listening to God, following His instructions and people thinking you’re crazy.

My mother married a Nigerian she had only met three times. People thought she was crazy but she was convinced this was God’s will for her. I’ve watched her over the 53 years of their marriage, never waver from that, even through separations & rifts and joys & sickness. Whatever befell her in the marriage she stayed with, “God told me to marry this man”. People probably still think she’s crazy.

Then I looked in the Word. Jesus’ family openly called him crazy, so much so that it was recorded in the gospels. God asked Him to leave His glory in Heaven and come to Earth (imagine one day we’ll understand this). He could have been called crazy by some, especially Lucifer who had lost his glory and knew how horrible it was to be without it.I haven’t read about Jesus having any job or income generating work, once his ministry started. People must have called him crazy. We are told about his disciples’ jobs, (and even Paul being a tent maker) so I’m sure if Jesus had a job he was actively doing during his ministry, we would have been told. His ministry was his job, as is my writing. He had income or provision. We know that because he had a treasurer, Judas Iscariot. So how did He have an income or provision? His Father was providing for Him and for His disciples. It was really when Mary, his mother, heard he wasn’t eating (or that he and his disciples were too busy with the ministry to eat) that she gathered the family to go get Jesus and bring him home.

He was called crazy and even demon-possessed or under the Devil’s instruction. But He went on. The end result didn’t look good, as mine doesn’t. He kept going on to Jerusalem and there he knew he would die. Jesus wasn’t respected, as we can see the response to Him being the Messiah and God was, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” not “Oh, that makes sense, isn’t this the wonderful boy from Nazereth?”

Interesting that one of the Gospels records that it was when Jesus had resolutely set his face to go all the way to the end – to Jerusalem, did his family rise up with “enough-is-enough” indignation and set out to bring him home. You’ve felt it before. You saw what God could do; you resolutely set your face like flint to do what He said and now here comes your best friend with doubts and your family with indignation.

Another Bible "crazy" was young David? What did he do to deserve being called “crazy”? He was sent to give his brother’s lunch and thought he could beat up the great warrior giant, Goliath. He was called nosey by his brother.

Here’s the thing about being called by God to do something and family call you crazy - they also accuse you. If I am listening to the devil or am crazy, shouldn’t you be praying for me about that rather than being angry with me? David’s brother should have been worried about him but they were angry with him.

If they are calling you crazy, but you know God has appointed you to do a job for Him, keep going. You're in good company. Probably when you completely die to self and the flesh and no longer care what they think, they, like Mary, Jesus' mother, they will come to your cross and watch.

What a man!

What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man!

Daddy would say “Everything in mercy given” and that’s how we have to take this.

Dad lived a great full life. From his fathers’ farms around the town of Egbe, Nigeria, West Africa to the Christian Mission School, to having his father crowned king when Dad was a teenager, to finishing high school at Titcombe College, becoming a headmaster, journeying to America…he had already lived a lively life, but then he experienced America with her grandeur, opportunity and racism. He learned to barber his own hair when a barber shop in Greenville, Illinois refused to cut a negro’s hair. But it turned to his good as things do for those who are called by God, as his white classmates who admired him, marched down to the barber shop to protest. The barber changed his views that day when he saw all those white kids coming at him, but by the time Dad’s friends returned to take him back to the barber shop, he had already learned to cut his own hair using a two-mirror system. He often marveled in years to come at how much money he had saved over the years, cutting his own hair, and then his son’s hair, and he even did his grandson’s hair.

His exciting life was destined to continue as he met the enthralling, Lillian Winbush, my mother. (O.K. I’m going to brag on my mother for a minute because looking up this word in the Thesaurus, as she had taught me to do, to make sure it was right, there she was! Beguiling, action-packed, riveting, absorbing, engrossing, enchanting, alluring, gripping, fascinating.) Life would never be the same again and there would never be a dull moment. Their marriage produced us four – excitement all by itself. Then he went back home with all of us, to his beloved Nigeria and received a roaring welcome from his people of the town of Egbe; the journey of being a doctor in Nigeria began. He became a well-known and an often requested surgeon, studied to be an oncologist and used native herbs to research cures for cancer; being noticed internationally and getting a World Health Organization grant, brought him to the US again. (we all got to come and stay two years. And that was fun). Now at the top of his game as a doctor, scholar and researcher, with a PhD in medicine and with his research being studied around the world, all that was left, was for him to be head of something. So he was appointed the Director of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Research and Training (PIMRAT) at the University College Hospital (UCH), University of Ibadan, Nigeria. So badly did dad not want to be on show and the head of anything, that he would write on his letterhead, where it said Director of PIMRAT, Acting Director.

How could someone with this much work to do have time to be a missionary for the Lord, but he and my mother did it. Our home was often like Grand Central Station as university students walked in and out for bible studies, counseling and some of mother’s fresh baked cookies. University staff came for bible studies – one night for ladies, another for men, a third for everybody; bible study, bible study, bible study. Then he was the chairman of the UCH chapel. No real church building, just the nurses assembly hall, but he ran it like the Chairman of the Board he was. Mother, just like a church’s first lady, ran the Sunday School, sometimes 300 kids strong.

Daddy was not the type of Christian to go door to door to tell people about Christ; he instead walked with the Lord very closely and people learned about his Savior by watching his life. Whenever asked he would tell it all and loved leading another person to salvation. I can only imagine the throng that greeted him up there. That gentle man could be pushy at times and I’ve seen him push through a crowd to get something he or his family needed, so when he got to heaven, last week, he probably pushed through the crowd in heaven, because the only person he wanted to see was his Jesus.

It has been our great joy to share our dad & husband with all of you, here and in Nigeria. We hope you enjoyed him, because we did.

God bless you. If we don’t meet you again down here, may we see you in Heaven.

MY REMARKS AT DADDY’S FUNERAL ON BEHALF OF THE FAMILY