Read No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) for Free Online Page B

Costanza from Seinfeld.
    He was still sensitive about
his hair loss, so I refrained from stroking his head. Instead, I rested a hand
on his shoulder, touching in agreement.
    “Father, we come before You
today thanking You for Your grace. Thanking You for the blessing of health in
Christ. I speak healing into my wife’s foot. I thank You for sustaining her,
strengthening her to be a great wife and mother and assistant principal. I pray
that we would both be obedient to the plans You have for us. Finally, God, as You
have done so many times before, I pray that You will bring us to an
understanding about how to raise the precious children You have given us, Zoe
and Seth. Give us wisdom to know how much of the world’s system to expose them
to. Like Christ told the disciples, we want them to be wise as serpents, but
innocent as doves. Teach us the balance. Teach us…”
    That’s about all I heard
before I dozed off on my husband’s prayer.
     
     
    I figured I’d give my father
a few days to calm down before I went over there after work to have a certain
discussion. “Daddy, you cannot take it upon yourself to teach Seth how to be a
black man.”
    “Stelson sure can’t do it,
and you can’t either. So who does that leave?”
    My father took another bite
of his syrup sandwich and chewed it as though it were a T-bone steak. His face
thin, eyes sunken, skin dry. It was hard to tell whether old age, poor eating
habits, or sorrow was eating away at my father.
    Sidetracked by his meal, I
asked, “Why aren’t you eating the frozen dinners I brought you last week?”
    “I don’t want no freezer
food. Too many preservatives. This here,” he held the slices of bread in the
air, “is good, fresh eatin’. Back when I was growing up in Ellerson, Momma used
to pack these for our lunches every day, and other kids was jealous because we
actually had two slices, and something in between ‘em.”
    To increase my aggravation,
he stuffed a super-sized bite into his mouth, almost causing himself to gag.
    Lord, how did my mother
put up with this ornery man for almost fifty years? I loved my daddy, but he was a bonafide
grouch who had gotten even worse since Momma passed away. Now there was no one
to counter his negative spiels or tell him to turn off CNN because he was
getting too riled up about all the bad news reports.
    Get back to the business,
LaShondra . “Like I was
saying. Stelson and I would really appreciate it if you would let us decide
when and how much to tell Seth about growing up African American. Can you
respect that?”
    He poked out his bottom lip.
“Well tell me this, then. What exactly do you and Stelson plan on tellin’ Seth
about being a black man in America?”
    I still wasn’t completely
sold on Stelson’s plan enough to articulate it well. And I realized that I
didn’t owe my father an explanation. But the sincerity in his deeply set eyes
reminded me that if my brother, Jonathan, didn’t settle down soon, Seth might
be the only grandson my father would ever meet. “We’re going to raise Seth to
have more faith in God than fear of man.”
    Daddy pushed his back against
the chair. “So, y’all gonna let him live in fantasy-land, basically, where he
won’t know anything about his history, how white people destroyed his
ancestors? You gonna make him think he’s white?”
    “Seth is half-white as
much as he is half-black,” I reminded my father. “Do you want him to hate half
of himself?”
    My father tapped his index
finger on the kitchen table. “It’s not hate . It’s education . He
needs to understand why every time he looks up, there’s a black man being
arrested on TV. Media manipulation.” My father’s voice rose. “He needs to know
why there’s hardly any black kids in the books he reads. Oppression and
discrimination. If he knows what’s really going on, he won’t internalize all
the hidden messages.” By this point, spittle was collecting in the corners of
my father’s mouth as