I wonder this often. Well, kinda. I write The Truth. Capital T truth because God’s word is “the way, the truth, and the light.” And if you’ve read my blog befo’, you know I integrate The Word into just about every post.
I don’t know when I became her. Her is me. I don’t know when I became this person. I didn’t want to be this person. You know the one– whose soul is on fire for God.
But that’s only because I grew up in a Pentecostal church and as a kid loooved attending my grandmother’s Apostolic church where er’body was “catching the holy ghost” and hooting and hollering.
But the truth is that those who love God, love God. Not in a loud and boisterous and bible thumping kinda way, but in a quiet, deep but loud knowing kinda way.
My love of God shapes my life. No. God shapes my life. His Love of me and me knowing and learning Him and me loving Him back have shaped my life. And as with all good things, we share what we love because we want others to love it, too. Because I can share a recipe for curry chicken or chicken shawarma or mango vodka then best believe I can share about a God so big who loved so hard and it’s only because of Him that my life has changed and transformed and who I was 7 years ago and even a year ago isn’t who I am now.
So, who’s reading my blog? I’m not entirely sure! I’ve been posting regularly for about a year and without marketing and posting my blog only a hand full of times on social media, over 10,000 have read it. 10,000?! As in a thousaaaand times teeeeeeen?!
And I’m just like… Who are you? Where are you even coming from? How’d you find me?
The truth is also simple, though: I am now who I once needed.
I remember years ago scouring the internet looking for blogs and articles to help me. And I found nothing. And then I tried again. On page 10 and 20 of Google searches. And still, nothing.
I didn’t post or share my blog because I first needed to practice being courageous. To say the things I need to say without worrying who’s eyes are reading what I’m saying. It also became a practice of learning to write when there’s no “right” way. Unlike academic writing that’s boring and rote and painful for creatives, my blog taught me how to be myself. To become myself! It trained me from the lows of academic writing (time and place or whatever) to the highs of creative, well informed, academic writing. Marrying all of who I am– a registered nurse, a researcher, a lover of words. This blog is my heart on the screen! It’s my deepest prayers, darkest valleys, greatest hopes. It’s sharing my deep longings that yet remain to be fulfilled. This past year has been a practice run of can I really do it? Can I say the things? And how?? How do I say them?
I’ve had blogs before. Some were for fun. Like the anonymous blog I started after I graduated college and transitioned into my first big girl job. You know, the job my brother had to bribe me to get because I wasn’t too keen on working? (HA!) And then there was another anonymous blog when I was dating and that blog name was so cute, too– DatinginDCity because, well, I lived in DC at the time. I was big proud of that one, and it made light of all the (terrible) dates I’d gone on. But wait, there’s more! And then there was the other anonymous blog of me teaching at a “failing” public high school. The ish I saw there was simply mind blowing. I should’ve known something was afoot when they hired me a few short weeks before the school year started and when during the interview the director asked, “Are you familiar with the MS-13?” I was not. Yeah, well, it turns out that issa Latin American gang that had a strong presence in the school. There’s a lotta things I’ve done in life but I assure you teaching/ disciplining/ babysitting gang members I never thought would make the list.
Oh. Sh!t! PAUSE. TIME OUT! Outta all these blogs that I’ve had, Extend Yourself Grace is the first one that isn’t anonymous?! Well goooooooollygoo!
So I imagine who’s reading my blog is… Well, me! All versions of me– past, present, and future.
Why? Because I write for me but I daggon sure write for you, too. So you know that there’s “nothing new under the sun”. Side note: did you know that’s not just something old people say, but that’s from the bible?! I know, right?!
When I was disempowered– consumed by the world’s raggedy views of me– before I became empowered by who I actually am– who God created me to be, how my 102 year old grandmother sees me and talks about me with such tenderness, kindness, and gentleness. How my clients see me. Even how “strangers” speak so highly about me.
I imagine that the people reading my blog are me. Because I write for me and I write for you, too.
You’re disempowered and you’re empowered. You’re becoming empowered. You’re journeying from where you are to where you want to be. You need guidance and grace and wisdom from someone who’s been there and done that holding your hand along the way.
You eat meals in secret that satiate you and then go home to eat meals with family like you’re “supposed to”. You doubt and question and wonder and seek… And you find!
I write this blog because long before I was empowered, I was disempowered. If I let the people in my life tell it, I couldn’t be different. I couldn’t become who I was made to be. But that still small voice in me got louder and the spiritual nudges deeper, pushing me ever so gently and deeply outside of my “comfort zone” (side note: that’s a misnomer because it ain’t comfy there, it’s simply familiar!) and I knew that if I could just tryyyy, that I’d transform my life. After all, worse case scenario, I’d try to become different and nothing would change and then I’d stay the same.
And I was right, and the raggedy naysayers were big wrong. And I hope and trust that they, too, find the courage to surrender criticism and exchange it for courage.
I’m writing for people who know God and for those who’ve never met Him personally. I write for those who want to transform and don’t know how. I write for those you need to know that despite what the raggedy folks in your life say, other people need you to know that that deep, still, small, quiet voice that perhaps you haven’t paid much attention to or you’ve been taught to ignore, I write to encourage you that that voice is your guiding light, your north star. It’s the God in you.
After all, “Be still and know that I am God.” And how do we come to know God? And ourselves? By coming to stillness. By quieting the chaos and noise and marketing from billion dollar companies that compete for our sacred attention. We know God when we are still and we hear the small but audible voice when we practice stillness. I write for those who struggle to hear that still voice but who yearn to know all the glory, peace, joy, satisfaction, and authenticity that come with it.
I write for you to know that who you are right now, in this moment, even if you didn’t make not nan change, is already good. Yes, already! I write for you to know that who you are right now is beautiful, bold, courageous. I write so you know that you can be whatever you wanna be and that there’s nothing in this world you can”t be or do. Like our homie Nelson Mandela said,
It always seems impossible until it’s done.
A Prayer for Empowerment and Transformation
God, thank You that with You, nothing is impossible! Thank you that in You, we are made to be new creatures. Thank You for transformation and healing. Thank You for Your great Love. A love that protects, heals, and renews. Thank You for community so we know in the deepest parts of us that if someone else can do it, we can do it, too! Thank You that even if we haven’t seen something done before, if we’ve seen it in our mind’s eye, in our heads, that is our God-given vision and we know that it can be done. Thank You for what was, what isn’t, and all that will be. And so it is. Amen!
