I Talked with my Mother, Moses Talked with God

The mist was in her eyes when she looked at me as we exited the court building. “You can’t keep doing this, not to you not to me. I can’t take this. I can’t, I am tired of it,” she said. I turned and looked down. I didn’t want to see her cry. I was happy to get out of there and get back to freedom. No matter the trouble my mother never left my side. She played the duel parent most of the time.

Her voice normally soft and comforting was stern as she continued, “This type of life won’t get you anywhere. It hasn’t gotten no one in our family nowhere. Who else will your sisters look up to? I need you to be an example, a positive example for them.”

I tried not to look at her, but I did, and her eyes hazed with water, struck my heart.

“I asked you to let me see you finish high school. Is that too much for you to do — to do what’s right and finish high school, is that too much!?”

I said, “No, that’s not too much.” But I had a problem, like Moses, when he said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh…?” I thought, who am I that I should tell my mother, I am not in school anymore? I was expelled from Eastern Senior High and she didn’t know. I was told by Eastern High, that I wasn’t fit for regular school.  I didn’t tell my mother that, so I had to try to fix it myself. I reached out to Eastern High, and asked them if I could return, but they said “no”. They offered night school as an option. I asked could I go to my neighborhood school, and they agreed only if the neighborhood school agreed. I worked on the alternative, and Ballou Senior High agreed to allow me to enroll for the next school year, but with two conditions; “I get into no trouble, what – so – ever and I join R.O.T.C.”

I went to my mother, and under self-control, I told her I had something to say and that I needed her to believe me. I said, “I messed up, I was put out of Eastern, but I am gonna finish high school, I promise; but I have to go to Ballou to do it — and I need you to sign for me. I will do what’s right and graduate.”

I couldn’t shame my mother. The least I could do was get out of high school for the woman who rubbed me with Vicks Vapor when I couldn’t breathe. She held my hand when I was a toddler and kept a roof over my head. As a teenager it was different, I was on auto pilot everyday to the streets, but now I had to retreat and slow down that type of activity. ROTC was like kryptonite to me and some of my friends, but it helped and was a humbling experience that introduced me to military order.

I told my mother I would graduate and I promised her that. In order for me to do that I shut myself down — and it was extreme. When I was informed about the parties, I said “no”, when I was briefed about the women, I said “no thank you”, and when I was told about the drug shipments coming in, I was invisible.

My reading level measured a few fingers on one hand and I was in the 11th grade – go figure. In my isolation I started practicing to read. I picked up the Bible, and not only did my reading improve but a whole universe of kingdoms and writers opened up and I couldn’t get enough. Like the story of the conversation between God and Moses. When God first spoke to Moses, this story was the gateway to me understanding the power of history.   It’s written that “Moses saw that the bush was on fire and it did not burn up.” It continues that when God saw he had gone over to look, He called his name. And God introduced Himself as the “God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

Moses is the #1 author of all time, the most read of all the authors in the world. And he writes, that God said, “…I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” And what Moses writes next blows my mind. He asks God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He questions the Most High, about going to Pharaoh and I thought that was amazing for so many reasons. Who is this Pharaoh I thought, that Moses feels hesitant to go before him.

For perspective, here is a little something from Pharaoh. He writes thus, “Hekamaatre, the son of Re, lord of crowns, like Horus of the horizon, Ramses, given life, like Re eternally. The king of Upper and Lower Egypt, lord of the two lands, Hekamaatre, son of Re, lord of crowns, Ramses, given life like Re has said: I was wise in my heart… It is a written text and not an oral tradition, and the living count in order to know the day and the month to add the one to the other and know the span of their life.” These writings were translated from what the ancient Greeks call sacred writings. The Egyptian Empire was a great nation more than two thousand years before Moses was born. So, it is in this context that God’s conversation with Moses is so amazing.

Moses says to God, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” When I read that, I thought, that’s me “never been eloquent, slow speech and tongue.” And if Moses can end up being the # 1 author of all time, then not only could I get out of High School, but I could do much more.  Then Moses just flat out says to God, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”

So, as I began to change, it was with the help of the book many call the Bible, and the stories that lie within, that almost single handedly took my interest from the streets to a Ballou Senior High graduate. And it all started by the mist that formed to a tear from my mother’s eyes.