People often ask me when am I gonna slow down. You know what I tell 'em? I'm just gettin' started. - Tina Turner

I never said, "Well, I don't have this and I don't have that." I said, "I don't have this yet, but I'm going to get it." The way I was thinking, I was choreographing my own life, figuring out which steps to take and, more importantly, picking the right time to take them.

A church house, gin house,
A school house, outhouse
On highway number nineteen,
The people keep the city clean.

I had witnessed the circle of life and death in nature, where plants and animals came and went in their own time. And I had heard about deaths in our community, young and old people, dying in all sorts of circumstances. But this time it was very personal. After Margaret died, there was a lot of talk about God's will. Our community was deeply Baptist, after all, and that was a natural response to the sudden tragedy that killed her and a few other young people, including my half sister Evelyn (my mother's child from a previous relationship). Thinking about the mysteries of life and death, I didn’t have a problem with the concept of an underlying universal force. But the idea of a bearded old white man in space, monitoring activities here on Earth, felt unrelatable and just plain unreal. I couldn't verbalize my own vision of God then, as the vocabulary hadn't come to me yet. But from the youngest age I can recall, I knew I could experience "Godliness" in Mother Nature. Something told me I had a piece of God in my heart, even if the traditional beliefs of my family and the way they practiced religion weren't right for me. I wished they practiced what they preached and lived more positive lives.