Today on CNN’s Reliable Sources, the host Brian Stelter interviewed Farai Chideya (Bmore born) about the upheavals in journalism. She commented that we are in a time of Reckoning, Release and Reform. I like her alliteration, and I added a fourth word, Redemption. This I did as a Christian who believes in the redemptive Power of God. I know that God can redeem things that appear beyond redemption. The agitation stirred by the unrest is releasing boatloads of memories that many brushed off just to keep going. I have them, you have them, we all have them. This moment is exposing experiences; unmasking offenders and redeeming the offended.
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One of my earliest experiences of race involved my beloved grandmother, in Selma, when she gave me one of the worst whippings of my life. I was probably seven or eight and my brother and I were staying with her, granddad and Aunt Dot. One day she took us to a store fabric store. She told us to stay in the car. My brother and I started fighting, I got out of the car and went inside the store to tell her what happened. When we got home, she got a switch from the backyard and whipped me for coming into the store.
Years later I learned that my grandmother had scissors in her pocketbook for protection. I did not know about segregated Selma and the maneuvers black people had to make to get in and out of the stores. I did not know what the white policemen, standing in the store watching the colored customers, signaled. I did not know that the sight of me, a little black girl, wandering around the store made my grandmother’s heart stop.
I know now that I frightened her and in the accepted manner of correction of that time, she made sure that what I did that day I would never do again.
I hope you are sharing your experiences. I am a witness that mine are part of my testimony. Jesus Has Fixed It. Still Fixing It. Will Keep Fixing It as only Jesus Can.