I’ve been penning this blog for a while. I actually came up with the title months ago during a conversation with one of my close friends. As with all of my other blogs, I started drafting notes on it during my commutes to and from work. I’ve wanted to finish it, but I got busy. I welcome the busy. The main reason I welcome the busy is that in the midst of the busy I was able to stumble upon the purpose that God has placed in me. I feel so full. 
That’s definitely a topic for another blog. I decided to refocus my efforts on this blog, because of a reoccurring topic that seems to be popping up in my life…ACCOUNTABILITY.
This past week, I was invited by one of my former classmates to participate in a health challenge before Thanksgiving Day to eat better and exercise, and to meet my weight loss goals. My classmate is a fitness coach and created a Facebook group for everyone participating in the challenge to encourage one another, share tips, but also to hold each other accountable.
Before that another one of my friends wanted to start a blog about the weight loss journey he is about to embark on. Since he knew that I blog, we’ve had several brief sit-downs to discuss his goals for his blog. I 
offer him advice. I make suggestions. I give him homework assignments, just to keep him on task. From time to time, I’ll send him an email asking him how things are coming. In my emails, I remind him that he needs to stop putting things off. In my last email to him, I told him that his blog and his journey are not only just for him and his well-being, but they’re for his wife, they’re for his daughter, they’re for all the people that care about him (me included), and for those that share in his struggle. Every time I see him, I’m checking on him, asking, “How are you coming?” He gets nervous to see me because he knows I’m going to ask for an update. I’m holding him accountable for something that he said was important to him.
I used to have one friend that knew like 99 % of the stuff that there was to know about me. We’re still friends, but he’s missing a year’s worth of updates. Anyhoo, the friends I have now, I share certain parts of my life with. Each person is responsible for holding me accountable for certain things. Although I know that in ALL of my actions I’m ultimately accountable to God, I have a small circle of people that I consider my accountability circle.
For example, I have a friend that lives a healthy lifestyle. When I’m dieting and exercising, she is the person I need in my ear encouraging me. She is the person I need in my ear when I want some hot chocolate reminding me of my Dunkin Donuts ban. I have another friend that likes to eat, so he wouldn’t be the best person to encourage me and/or hold me accountable to my Dunkin Donuts bans. His response is, “go ahead.”
One of my friends and I have this joke between us when one of us says or does something that contradicts what we said or said we would or wouldn’t do. We say, “But you said.” Hmmm. Helping the other recall what they said is our way of holding them to a commitment they made or a conviction that they once had to something, to someone, or to God. People that help hold us accountable to commitments are called accountability partners. Lucky me, I have an accountability circle.
My friends have become like sponsors in my life. You know how in the movies, they show people battling some sort of addiction and they call their sponsors whenever they feel the desire (for lack of a better word) to have whatever their drug of choice. Their sponsor attempts to talk them down from their current situation, occasionally agreeing to come get them. My life isn’t that bad, but what I will do is pray about it. I take everything first to God in prayer. When I know that my spirit is fine, I can rest easier 
knowing that the rest of me will be fine too. My human nature may sometimes require some additional reassurance or convincing, that’s when I take it to the circle. Most of the time, I take it to them before the damage is done, but occasionally, it is in the aftermath. Regardless of when I go to them, what they give is spiritual guidance, love, and support. Depending on who it is, I may hear a “But you said,” but it is said in fun. I know that everybody that I have chosen to be in my circle and surround myself with loves me and ALWAYS has my best interest at heart.
My son always says that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. I don’t know if I agree with that, but what I do know is that if you set the right moral boundaries and surround yourself with the right group of people, you’re more likely to stick to the boundaries that you set. You might not fare as well if you tried to do it on your own or with the wrong people backing you.
What to look for in an accountability partner:
The person that you look to to hold you responsible for your actions, should be someone you are comfortable with, someone you trust telling your business to, and someone you can be completely honest with. If you can’t be honest, then it will be hard for the person to hold you accountable. 
They won’t know what to believe and what not to believe.
The person you choose should also be willing to be honest with you. They need to “give it to you straight,” and say stuff that might hurt your feelings. You have to know that they are not saying stuff to hurt your feelings. They are saying stuff to protect you, to offer you different perspectives, and to make you think clearly about the consequences and repercussions of your decisions before and after you make them.
I think it’s also important to have someone that sees the same potential in having you as an accountability partner. It has to be an equal exchange. You don’t want any type of relationship that is one sided, where you’re doing more to keep the boat from sinking or the friendship from failing.
You also need to have accountability partners that are on the same journey that you are on. They don’t have to be in the same spot as you, but you need someone that can speak to you on a spiritual level, give you some Word, and pray with and for you. Even if you’re not on a journey, you should still have someone that is. Everybody needs prayer and encouragement.
Lessons learned:
1) Not everyone is meant to be an accountability partner.
2) Everybody is not ready to take responsibility for their behaviors and be held accountable for their actions.
3) You should always surround yourself with people that force you to do better and be better.
Love, peace and blessings!
other members and visitors of the church. The pastor jokingly always tells the congregation to keep one foot in the pew. Lucky for me, I’ve got long legs and good reach, so I can shake hands and hug people across the aisle. lol.
Okay, so back to my new found peace, I had been living in my happy place (contentment in my life where I am and what I’m doing) for the last year or so, but joining a church has my happy place feeling like it’s on steroids. I have never felt peace like this. Things that I used to worry about before, no longer keep me up at night. Stuff that is beyond my control is just that and I’m okay with it. Thoughts about not being married or in a relationship used to consume me. I used to be 
distracted by the time on the clock. I’m not checking the clock because I know that whatever happens in my life is going to happen on God’s time. I’m enjoying my life how it is. I’m not holding onto past hurts or beating myself up over decisions I’ve made. I am living my life with an attitude of gratitude, not just for God’s coverage over my life, His unconditional love, or the people He has placed in my life, but for all the things I’ve been through that tested me. I’m grateful for my testimony and the voice that God gave me to share it.
I’m not going to sit here and say that I don’t get frustrated sometimes, because there are things that I prayed for that I didn’t get. There are prayers that I prayed that I don’t think God answered. My walk has taught me that He heard my prayers and He may have answered them, but just not in the way I wanted or expected. Sometimes those unanswered prayers or delayed responses are God’s way of protecting us. I’ve learned to appreciate and be thankful for some unanswered prayers. I’ve learned that where I thought I was getting a “no,” that it might not necessarily have been a “no,” it might have actually been a “not right now.” God made me, so he knows me better than I know myself. He knows what’s in my heart. He knows what I want. He knows what I need and what I don’t need. Instead of interfering with his plan and making my life more complicated, I’m going to sit back and relax. I 
know that God’s got me and He’s going to work it out, when he’s ready and when he thinks I’m ready.
perspectives and life experiences. They are part of my circle because I value their opinions and I trust their advice. None of my female friends are married, but two of my male friends are. People seem to freak out when they find out a single woman has male friends that are married. Other women may pose a threat, but I don’t. They are part of my circle, because I am not interested in them in any way, shape, or form. They are safe to me because they are married and I don’t have to worry about them. Being single, I get tired of dudes hitting on me all the time and to have friends that I don’t have to worry about that with is important to me.
Then I lost two of my best guy friends to marriage. I’m not mad though. I want the best for all of the people in my life. I’m willing to sacrifice a friendship for my friends’ happiness. It doesn’t mean that I love them any less, it just means that I have to wish them well and love them from a distance. After that, I went back to being Nickki, party of one. I then became like Whitney Houston in the Greatest Love of All, “And so I learned to depend on me.”
Occasionally, I refer to my circle of trust as my advisory council, because I take my issues to them for their advice, perspective, and their two cents. Their two cents is very valuable. When making a decision, I know what they tell me to say or do is just advice and that ultimately the final decision is mine because the consequences of that decision will fall on me. Once or twice, I have gone against the advice of the advisory council thinking that all of them are wrong and I was right. My thinking was that anyone can tell you what to do and even how to do it, but they can’t feel what you feel or know what is truly in your heart. Sometimes I wish I would have listened to them more than I have, because it would have saved me a lot of headache and heartache, but you live and you learn.
More often than not, my final words weren’t always the nicest, especially if it came in a letter, email, or a text message. I was out to say something hurtful. I saw myself picking up my feet and putting them in my mouth, as the saying goes. Sometimes, I was feeling EXTRA and I slipped a hand in there too. It’s funny how sometimes we can see ourselves doing something we know is wrong, but we do it anyway, like ordering a hot chocolate and some munchkins from Dunkin Donuts. Oh, sorry. Where was I? lol. Oh yeah, I’m so glad I’m not that person anymore.
in my spirit. If I don’t have peace in my spirit that’s when I feel like something may require a little more than a blog. When something keeps me up at night or causes me to lose focus on other things, that’s when I need to do more to address it, but from a calm, positive place. When the conversation happens, I need to remind myself that I don’t like when people come at me with negativity, so I don’ t need to bring negativity to anyone else. That’s not productive.
Whew! I’ve made it a practice to keep my phone and/or my iPod handy, because whenever I’m feeling some type of way about something, I pull something out and I start jotting down notes for a new blog. I think my future blog count is now up to 47.
Being my son’s mom is the most important job that I have. Walking away for me wasn’t an option or even a possibility. I will never understand how some parents walk away and act as though they don’t have kids. They make the choice not to be part of this wonderful gift, that didn’t ask to come here.
I have forgiven my son’s father for not being in our son’s life. I even understand why his role in our son’s life was as small it was, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior. Although I understand it, I don’t accept it. Just because you know that your child is being taken care of doesn’t excuse you from your responsibility as their parent. No one makes a child alone and no one should have to take care of him or her alone. It was never about the money. For me, it was more important for him to have a relationship with his father than to be supported by him. Since he didn’t want to make the effort to see him, eventually, I filed for child support. He wasn’t going to dodge his responsibility completely.
my mom and I were willing to put my son’s needs first. When my son first started visiting his father, his father wouldn’t come around. Regardless of his level of involvement or lack thereof, my son’s great grandmother always claimed him and accepted him as one of her grandbabies. She was instrumental in getting my son’s father to start coming around and actually being there when we brought my son to visit. I never understood why he went through all that trouble. I was never one of those crazy babymommas trying to use my kid to get to his father. I didn’t want him then and I don’t want him now. As my son’s mother, I had to put my feelings aside and go above and beyond to do what was best for my son.
his great grandmother’s funeral. The conversation then turned to his sister. He hasn’t seen her in 3 years, but when she came up for his graduation; those two were fighting as if they saw each other all the time.
My son saw his father a week after his 1st birthday, a week after his 2nd birthday, and maybe one other time when he was little, that my son didn’t count. What he did count was when he came up for his 5th grade graduation. My son told me that he wanted his father to come to his graduation because he wanted to show the other kids that he did have a father. As his mom, I had to make it happen. His father showed up and he was over the moon. It’s funny because although he didn’t see him that often, the few times that he did see him, he acted as if they saw each other all the time.
played games on his phone during our son’s entire graduation ceremony. I was so annoyed.
because I know that their relationship bothered my son growing up. I was even optimistic, but he was never willing to put in the work. Although it bothered me when he was younger, the relationship between my son and his father is no longer my concern. My son is an adult and if he chooses to have a relationship with his father, that is totally up to him. I don’t have to be a part of it, because that relationship is no longer any of my business and not my responsibility. I do know that since my son knows how it feels to not have a dad in his life, that if and when he has kids that he will use his own experiences to make him the best dad he can be so that no kid of his will ever have to feel what he has felt growing up.
Blood is thicker than water, or at least it is supposed to be, but sometimes I think that the liquid that connects me and some of my cousins is Kool Aid. There is some of my family that I’m really close with and others, not so much.
family. I pick who I claim. I pick with whom I associate. I pick with whom I spend time. I pick who I pour into. I pick how much I interact with them and how much and what I tolerate from them. I pick the people in my life that I turn to when I’m going through life’s highs and lows. They are the people that are there for me consistently without hesitation. They do it expecting nothing in return, knowing that if the shoe was on the other foot, that I would be right there to help in whatever capacity I can.
As a child, I was always taught to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. As an adult, I’m learning that sometimes, you have to distance yourself from some people and love them from a distance. There are several branches of my family tree that I have distanced myself from because interacting with them is unhealthy. My relationship 
with them has never been great and it seems to have diminished over the years. Even though they are family, being around them bothers me because I have to pretend to be happy to see them when I’m really not.
I’ve been called the mean girl in the family and sometimes a pitbull in a skirt, because I can be mean sometime, I’m moody, and I’m always off doing my own thing. My close cousins know that I participate if and when I feel like it. I do stuff if and when I feel like it. They know me and love me. They get how I am and they accept that about me. They also know, that I am not a cousin or family of convenience. I’m all or nothing. Some of my family has NEVER supported my branch of the family in anything. For that reason, I don’t support them or attend their events. Others might continue to send them invitations, optimistic that they’ll change, but I’m done. I’ve moved on.
things they say or do or don’t do, and I have become the voice of reason, me, the baby. I always tell them “It’s not worth it. They are not worth it. You care, but they don’t. If they cared, they would behave differently.”
Lessons Learned:
Today would have been my dad’s 76th birthday. On the 28th of this month, he will have been gone for 11 years. I miss him. He died from lung cancer. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in February of 2003, by May of 2003, he was gone.
going to look into having someone come and stay with my dad during the day, since she and I, both worked. A couple of days prior, my mom had gotten my dad a wheel chair because it was getting harder and harder for him to move around. It took a lot of his strength.
take him at least 2 hours to get up the road.
about my family and hospitals. When our loved ones are there, we have a way of taking them over. My mom’s siblings, my dad’s siblings, and my cousins were all at the hospital. Everyone was in tears. I remember being in the room and thinking to myself, I have never seen my uncles cry and to see them cry, I knew things were bad.
will never know the man that my father was. He will never know where I get my moodiness. He will never see where I get my creativity. He will never be threatened by my dad to take care of me, his girl. I think about how any future kids that I have will never know how great their granddaddy was. It’s hard to be around his side of the family. Many times, I feel like I don’t belong. Although we are very close, I feel like my 
connection to them is gone and that I’m intruding on their family time. When my dad died, my uncle told me that I still had a dad, assuring me that if I needed anything that he would be there for me and he has been, but in all honesty, it’s not the same.
Sending kisses to heaven. 
LESSONS OF LOVE FROM MY FATHER 