Tonight’s Lesson from Guest Blogger, Sandy Chamblee. Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Today I am commandeering Marquita’s Gratitude Blog. I don’t say that I am guest hosting it because she did not ask me to write it; I told her I wanted to do so. I am grateful that she knows me well enough not to be insulted and loves me well enough to give me this opportunity.
I am grateful for so much in my life that it’s difficult to choose just one or two things. Still– since I got up this morning to get ready for church and, as I sat through church, a couple of things have stuck in my mind for which I should be particularly grateful. I am grateful for the civil rights and diversity and inclusion work that ties me back to my parents and moves me ahead into the future alongside my sister, Marquita (Terry or Tay to me). I also am grateful for the strength, patience and stubbornness that keeps me going on this journey through the many times when I don’t see how I can continue (and keep my calm and sanity) and really want to stop.
For the last few days I have been mentally noting the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech and the March on Washington. Since I have been nursing a sore throat for the last week and have apparently given it to my husband, Al, I found that I had a credible excuse for not taking the subway down to participate in the march. At the same time, I found myself feeling guilty. When I asked my sister, Terry, whether she planned to attend, she said no and reminded me of two points. First, she hates crowds, as do I, and, as she reminded me, after the marchers go home to their lives and cease to focus on and spend their time advancing the goals of civil rights, diversity and inclusion, we spend every working day on those goals. We don’t stop. Our march continues–for her as the Director of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Multicultural Education at George Mason University and for me as the Chief Diversity Partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, a law firm here in DC. And so, based on Terry’s well-founded dispensation, I released my guilt and heaved a grateful sign of relief. It was ok if I didn’t attend the March yesterday.
Over the last few days, I have reflected back 50 years ago, as my father left for the first March on Washington in 1963, refusing to take his three older children who asked to go too. I thought about what courage it took for him to leave his family (my mother and 6 kids) and get on a bus to experience God only knew what. That same courage kept him working toward the advancement of African Americans and other people of color, and Latinos in South Bend, Indiana, when he could have focused only on his comfortable career as a doctor and his avocation as our father. Some of us resented having to share our father with this cause; others of us simply accepted it as his passion and as what he perceived to be the right thing to do. I guess that I have never questioned why my father spent so much time and effort on civil rights, and thus away from us. It was just a reality for me, a reality for which I was very proud and am very grateful. He modeled behavior for me that I did not realize that I was absorbing. And he has given me a strength that I did not know I would need, and for which I am also grateful.
I am also grateful for the career I share with my younger sister, Terry–she is not a lawyer like I am, but we are both diversity and inclusion leaders in our separate realms. Inclusion is a passion and a goal and hopefully a reality that we strive for every day of our lives. I am so grateful that I do not walk this path without her. She is my sounding board and my inspiration. She is the person I can call ranting on my way home from work, railing about some misunderstanding, perceived injustice, or sometimes just the slowness with which things change. She is the one who just lets me rant, tells me to pull over to the side of the road before I run off the road into a ditch (helllooo– we don’t really have ditches on the streets of DC), or just talks me down off the ledge and calms me down. Often, because of her, I continue to work on inclusion for another day. I feel less alone in my quest.
So, the bottom line is that I am grateful for the example of my father and mother (past) and my sister (present). I am grateful for my own strength, courage, patience, stubbornness, and fortitude that come from my family both past and present. And I am grateful for the opportunity to serve beyond my own comfortable circumstances and beyond my own comfort zone. Finally, I am grateful for this chance to express my gratitude.
