Della Reese

I saw Della Reese tonight at the Orpheum downtown. I had to write something about it before I went to bed. She was a very spiritual lady who's mother was also very spiritual. Both have a strong relationship with Jesus and believe in everyday miracles. Usually I roll my eyeballs when someone starts talking like an evangelical but Della was hillarious. She won me over with her wit. She is the definition of a wise old black mamma but she kept reminding us that at 72 she is still sexy and lookin' good.
She talked about so many things. She had an aneurism when she was singing live on the Johnny Carson show. She told us how the doctors were confusing her with medical language, so she prayed, "Father I don't understand the language that these people are speaking just tell me what I should do". She said this guy walking down the hall popped his head in the door and said, "something told me to come in and say hi to you." She thought he was a fan. He then went on and said, "I'm an expert in the procedure your about to have and I thought I should explain what's happening". He used the word 'language' and Della said, "That's my prayer, I prayed and he's here." She told another similar story about how her mother would pray for bread and then a knock on the door, and in would come bread. It was really sweet to hear these stories.
She spoke about different people and she said, "You know how sometimes you just meet people and there's no learning what you like and what they like, you just know. Those are people you knew in another lifetime, you have that connection. I thought that was an interesting statment and true somehow. Every once in awhile that does happen.
At the end they had questions from the audience and someone says, "What do you do when you feel life has passed you by. Della responded, "Your breathing, aren't ya?"
She said we train ourselves to be a certain way. Her example was,"If you meet a 3yr old girl and you say, "Aren't you pretty", she will say, "Yes, I am". Now by the time she's 5 we've trainned her not to say that because that's conceited. Now we wonder why 15yr old girls are asking themselves, "Am I pretty?" Well, it's because we've trained them to be that way. I totally believe that we train ourselves to act and behave in certain ways.
She said the same thing about faith, you have to train yourself to have it. God said, "All we need is a mustard seed and it can grow!"
Last point she made that I really liked was that church should be fun, and I agreed!
Della was a great speaker and she had strong wit. She told us about all her mistakes growing up, and I liked that.