A Pecan Pickling Glazed Sugary Journey: Dreaming and Imagining All Kinds of Things

By Patricia Ferguson

Poverty still exists.

A Pecan Pickling Glazed Sugary Journey is a reminder that places with lean incomes-supported by an ethic of love and benevolence served over hot biscuits, pork chops, sweet potatoes, hand spun molasses, and a tall glass of iced tea-tend to disrupt the norm.

As a little girl, my reality was growing up i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Oct 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685569907

Patricia Ferguson

PATRICIA FERGUSON has a rich history advocating for the poor and serving on local, state, and national boards. She is a servant leader with over thirty years of extraordinary public service in rural distressed communities of color. Patricia was the first female and African American female elected to serve on her county board in nearly three hundred years. She is an author, coach, and advocate for rural economic development, Founder of PDF & Associates and PDF Ministries, INC.

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A

Pecan

Pickling

Glazed

Sugary

Journey

Patricia Ferguson

A Pecan Pickling Glazed Sugary Journey

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2022 by Patricia Ferguson

Scripture quotations marked (CEV) taken from Contemporary English Version Copyright © 1995 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (BSB) taken from The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible, BSB Copyright © 2016 by Bible Hub.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked as (GNT) are taken from the Good News Translation-Second Edition © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are from the New Living Translation Bible. Copyright© Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769.

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Trilogy Christian Publishing/ TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-68556-989-1

e-ISBN: 978-1-68556-990-7

Dedication

Paul and Ethel Rankins —two amazing grandparents (sharecroppers) who raised me to love and honor and protect; to love God and care about the plight of those who are poor.

Maggie Witherspoon—(teen mom) my mother, my role model, my mentor who taught me that you can be born in poverty and lack but it does not define your end.

Daniel, Nikki, and Joshua—extraordinary kids who taught me to BALANCE LIFE—fight for causes bigger than I could have ever imagined while at the same time, being reminded that mothering and caring are synonymous and that to be committed to a cause must be done so within the context of a mother’s love first and then comes the community.

Steven—my incredible husband (friend) who ALWAYS believed in me and taught me what it means to be committed to a cause with passion that does not waiver, even in the fiercest of opposition.

Danielle and Nicholas—(my two grands) who re-inspired the completion of this work understanding that it is the generations that must continue to fight for the least among all of us, those with shallow voices and no political might.

To my family—for your love and support (throughout the years) and for being a model of caring for those who without your compassion, would never believe in hope.

And to my community and advocates for the rights of the poor, this is a reminder, the poor are worth fighting for. Keep driving awareness. Understanding takes the long route home but its arrival is indisputable. Continue in faith. Renew your commitment. Finish the journey!

Introducing Patricia Ferguson

Places with lean incomes—supported by an ethic of love and benevolence served over hot biscuits, pork chops, sweet potatoes, hand spun molasses, and a tall glass of iced tea—tend to disrupt the norm.

As a little girl growing up in a rural, disadvantaged community of color, struggling through years of persistent poverty, was my reality. Prerequisites needed for success were abstract notions of living beyond the fields and the hard work of tenant farming. They were fragments of impossibilities awakened by cotton bolls all prickly and sharp. The daughter of a single teen mom raised by grandparents with a fourth and sixth grade education, was the backdrop to my upbringing. The tendencies that bound them to the land did not translate the same for everyone. The gift of vision was from a teen mom determined to leave poverty and follow a dream. My arising out of a state of poverty and into an awakening of sorts was because of her… my mother.

Educational pursuits were scanty at best. There were no book clubs or park days that meandered into a slice of pizza, a sweet drink, and a fruit snack. And then there were the unspoken cultural norms that guided the community’s transactions with each other. Issues of race, and culture and value and perspective, were unaccounted for in conversation and in representation.

Years later, up north was my home and learning and access to resources became even more important. The tenacity of a mother transformed my life. From cotton fields and tenant farming grew a passion for the poor. Just a handful years later and a little more, I became the first African American female to be elected to my county board of commissioners and the first to chair the board in nearly three hundred years of history. The accolades, attributes, assignments on boards, committees, and commissions across the nation and beyond, would have been an unspoken possibility; whimsical predictability of outrageous consideration for a little girl like me.

We didn’t own a lot of things but what we did value, was our intellect and a curiosity for learning. Learning was serious business. My home was not aligned with Gucci or Prada, or extra for books ordered for payment out of season, but it was shelved with curiosity, common courtesy, and respect for life and an endearment for family, friends, and faith.

What I’ve found to be true is that brilliance lives everywhere you find people. The poor’s lack of education and opportunity does not dismiss their raw talent and gifts that long to be awakened. Writings ages old declares the uniqueness of everyone. Such a declaration was not a deposition by duress, but by the creator God Himself when He spoke destiny and designed purpose free of intolerance and partiality and bound it to love and truth. Places with lean incomes supported by an ethic of love and caring over hot biscuits, pork chops, sweet potatoes, hand spun molasses, and a tall glass of iced tea, tend to disrupt the norm.

There remains still, too much to understand about poverty. Since days on the farm as a little girl who grew up in poverty, the complexity of the dynamic, now in a digital social media driven age, is even more complex. My trek back there as a native daughter and to be elected to serve in the same community I grew up in, and at the same time, be an ongoing witness to customs that should have long passed, is overwhelming. Poverty’s persistence is not from a single progeny (ethnic group) but countless numbers of human systems in a technologically driven world that’s highly connected and energized.

Probability theorist would suggest that my rise from persistent poverty and survival from an unrelenting list of dysfunctional cultural norms was an anomaly of some kind. However, the truth of the matter is congruent with the worth of everyone… potential is borderless… boundless and it exists everywhere. A belief that genius is a byproduct of the rich, constructs a viewpoint that’s exclusionary. Prohibitions in the past, justified future compensation from the same acts. So let it be with the poor. Disallowing the poor the courtesy of consideration today; they will be granted the authority to emerge tomorrow.

My journey to create this work has been a beautiful thing. Life for me is to better understand my calling and to more deeply consider the why and how of things. With each stage, be reminded that things that are, may not be as they appear. That the same God who fashioned and planned my future, constructed a plan for each life as well. And the difference between the living—those prevailing in such a beautiful world as this, and those of us existing—travailing in such a world as this, is purpose. Ongoing failure to extract the brilliance each living being harnesses, is a defeat no family can survive, no community can endure, and no nation can afford.

—Patricia

Patricia Ferguson is an extraordinarily passionate public servant, community leader, renowned speaker,