I wear my hair very short making my very gray hair stand out even more and I just celebrated another earth day making now a total of 51 years on this earth, so as I stood in front of the mirror examining and re-examining as we will do from time to time I thought about getting a wig. Yep a wig minus any gray and then in a flash Spirit whispered in my ear, “Why would you do that."

"What," I asked?

"Hide your Elders Crown," she whispered back.

I sat with Spirit for a moment and she showed why it is a crown of glory. She said it means you have seen a few things and scenes from my past flicked before my eyes, some good and some not so good, but as I re-played these scenes in my mind a lesson was revealed, some I thought that I’d missed. Spirit said, “See glory comes from learning and each one of those grays has been earned. We ran through scenes with my children, me helping them to learn and them helping me, she said, "see with each new life that you helped to create and nurture gave birth to another ray of glory sparkling in your head of gray."

We went through times when I was really down, facing a low point in my life and in a flash she showed how I had survived, becoming a strong black women, able to stand on my own. She said, “Strength over obstacles placed in your way causes you to grow as you soar high above these obstacles landing on the other side ready to face the next challenge and because of this challenge better able to handle the next, another part of that grown being woven in time."

"The Crown of The Elders is always earned," she whispered in my ear, this crown is passed on to you from the ancestors that have gone before you, much like the baton is being passed from one runner to the next. If you hide this Crown of Glory how will you be recognized by the runner waiting on you to pass this on to them, how will the ancestors recognized you as the one the baton has been passed on to with out your crown of glory," she asked?

I looked again at that lady in the mirror and I though how happy I had been on my fifth birthday, how thankful I was to be able to celebrate half a century on this earth and I thought about all the love that surrounds me. I thought all the places I have been both physical and only in my mind and this time I didn’t see an older lady with gray hair, I saw an elder wearing her Crown of Glory.