I began writing this now blog entry in response to a video my friend posted on social media, the source of the quote below. As you'll notice, this turns from a note to a friend to a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude. May these words provide healing, comfort, confirmation, or peace. May you see your brokenness in mine. May you see truths of humanity reflected back to you. And may you begin to extend yourself (more) grace.
Monday, January 8, 2022
“Whatever I gaze upon will occupy my heart.”
Kyoungwee Lee
My dear Ky, I’ve been living this out in my own way as of late, too! I recently created a new morning routine (written in plain sight of my bed on my mirror so I gaze upon it every morning) since my old one was no longer relevant. I’m even more intentional about how I start my day. Now I start my day with gospel music or listening to Bible study.
It can even be me passively listening to it and because our subconscious mind is so incredibly strong and powerful, I’m getting so much benefit from it! There are times when I’m not paying attention (my conscious mind wasn’t engaged) and words jump out at me simply because our subconscious mind is always listening and always fully engaged. And it turns out that’s just science! That’s neuroplasticity at work!!! By simply LISTENING to what and who we want to become, we will eventually become it. Not bc I said so (I’m not God!) but bc we’re fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Science has shown that on a CELLULAR LEVEL, our cells change. OUR CELLS?! They literally morph into and change to align with our belief system. Here we are thinking we don’t have the power to heal ourselves. But we have access to all of who God is and healer is but one of them! GOD USES SCIENCE TO HEAL US!!! I can’t believe I didn’t make that connection sooner. We can’t out-create our Almighty Creator. But He made it so that even with the LITTLE we know about our bodies AKA science, he created a way to infuse in us a SIMPLE AND EASY way to access his healing power. My God, what a revelation! He amazes me.
Here I am, still in bed and I thought to check out your video. If you weren’t obedient and didn’t post this video (which I know you didn’t love doing!), if I didn’t follow the prompt of my intuition (which ain’t nothing but the HS anyway), and if I didn’t watch this video in full, and if I didn’t push past the discomfort of listening to the winds roar, then I would’ve missed my own message. I hate playing the “what if” games but sometimes it’s gotta be played! What if we all walked through life KNOWING that whenever we *feel* uncomfortable in some way, goodness, truth, revelation- growth in some critically impactful way no matter how big or small!- is waiting to meet us if we make it past the discomfort. My God. There’s a major difference between pushing through discomfort (here it was noise), and pushing past abuse and trauma. They’re damn near incomparable! Lord, may you give voice to the discomfort and call us to feel, observe and listen. May you continue to use the small discomforts to grow us. And may you give us wisdom and discernment to know the difference between discomfort and the microaggressions/ micro-offenses that will undoubtedly continue and grow to become trauma or abuse. In a world so chaotic and busy that would deceive us into believing that we’re not worthy of rest, give us the discernment to know the difference.
Let us hear loudly and clearly from you when it’s time to rest and when it’s time to press on. Let us learn to trust ourselves. Let us learn to discern your voice from our inner judgy and doubting voice. May we learn to practice trust. Let us learn to act on the voice that we think is yours. Grow our confidence in this, God. Practice never made perfect bc you alone are perfect. In our humanity, practice makes good. Practice makes better. Practice makes progress. Progress is always better than the (nonexistent) perfection. May we all know and identify the Good when we hear it.
Help us to practice hearing and listening to your voice so we can be more like you. So we can live and experience what you call us to. Give us renewed faith. Even when we act on what we thought was your voice, give us renewed faith to try again bc we know your ways are higher than ours and whatever you got want. Help us be more like you be simply hearing from you so you know what to do. So we know how to behave. So we know how to move in the world. Help us to be more like you to discern your still, quiet voice from the sometimes quiet, sometimes ragingly loud limiting beliefs that were planted and took root in our subconscious minds as children.
We didn’t have the power to control it then but I thank you God that you have given us the gift of power. That you’ve given us the gift of neuroplasticity so we can unlearn everything that is unhealthy or unlike you and be intentional to replace it with you. With your words that heal, deliver, sanctify, purify, and make us clean.
Thank you that even though in this world I do not see an abundant sea of Black faces, that we all serve one. Jesus! Thank you for making me fully and completely and beautifully in your image. Thank you that I, too, have hair like yours— “Hair like wool and feet like bronze” that draws me even closer to you.
Thank you for being the only example I ever needed. Forgive me for seeking examples of who you are in people who don’t look like you.
Thank you for truth. Thank you for being unchanging and everlasting. Thank you for breath and for breath work that communicates my prayers to you when I can’t find the words because there are none. Thank you for the gift of silence, of stillness, of obedience and wisdom and discernment. Thank you for community who bring out the best parts of me- of you!!!- and who love me and remind me I’m worthy of you even with all the bitterness and brokenness that remains.
Thank you for being the Potter, and I the clay. Thank you for recreating me and making me new again but filling the broken parts of me with your words that restore and beautify. Thank you for making me kintsugi before I knew what it was and who you were. Thank you that truth doesn’t require our participation and that we can be redeemed. Thank you for women who hold me up when I’m broken and thank you for using them to restore and beautify me.
Thank you that in community I am made beautiful because you meet my needs in all ways at all times.
Thank you for using others to work in my life who remind me that even in brokenness, as in life, nothing is wasted. That each crack lets the light in. That each broken crack is filled with something more precious than gold.
Thank you that I now recognize the power of my own brokenness, of my own story. Give me the courage and strength to share my story of brokenness and of beauty.
When I feel fear, remind me of the faith my sisterfriend Lakia had. Faith in you that is so powerful. Thank you for reminders that faith of a mustard seed can and does move mountains! Thank you for holding on and being able to look back to the past when we need it because it always helps to grow. Thank you that I can read Lark’s text messages from 8 years ago. Thank you that even in my friend’s death you would give me more life by her words of faith.
In the month before Lakia died, she texted me to tell me she fell in the shower on the same side of her body she just had a chest tube removed from a week prior. And if my sisterfriend can experience that and still give you all glory and all praise because of who you are and how you moved in her life- how you didn’t do anything TO her but that you did it FOR her. Thank you for a sisterfriend so brave that even 8 years after her death, she lived her life in such a mighty, powerful way that it would renew mine with faith, boldness, and courage all these years later.
Thank you for giving me a living example of how to live. One that I supported and loved and nurtured. Thank you thank I would have a sisterfriend who would change so many people by simply being herself. By simply being who you created her to be. Thank you that we can live life so beautifully and wonderfully that, like Betty White, after even 99 years on this Earth, people would say it wasn’t enough. My sisterfriend Lark didn’t made it to 40 but she lived a full, complete, mature life that lacked nothing because she lived it with you.
Thank you for memory. For grief. For loss. For knowing that even though she is gone in body her spirit lives on and rejoices with you for an eternity. Thank you for peace that surpasses all understanding. For those who experience loss, reveal to them goodness. Reveal to them faith. Restore them and make them new again in a way that only you can fill. Because after all, you are the Creator. You are the Potter and we are simply your clay.
Thank you for a new year. Thank you that each moment of every day is a chance to get it righteous. A chance to see the truth. “Seek and ye shall find.” Not seek tomorrow or next year. Let us seek you now. Let us seek truth and do it afraid of what it will unearth for us but let us seek it anyway because we’re so damn tired of being tired. Show us your findings when we seek you. Whatever they are or aren’t, reveal to us what we need when we need it. Not on our time which is always wrong, but in your Divinity.
Thank you for words. For language. For thoughts and beliefs that can be changed with little effort like me playing music in the background to hear and know and understand and cling to in a new, profound way that “with God there are no limits”.
Thank you for creating us so intricately that I have seen for my own eyes the inside of a young boy’s lungs. Thank you for that even in his accidental death that his family would be able to donate his organs to give 7 or more people—children— a chance at life.
Thank you for hearing, for listening, and above all the willingness to learn so that when we see and hear we choose light and truth and not ignorance. Thank you for the gift of connection. Thank you that sometimes when people say “no”, I push past their ignorance to the “yes” I know you’re calling me to.
Thank you for the hurts and challenges and abuse and trauma and mistreatment that has allowed me to grow.
Thank you that although my life may feel at times that I’ve only known hurt that you remind me that ain’t nothing but a lie. Thank you for good days far, far outnumbering the bad. Thank you that what we focus on grows and thank you that I choose to focus on you and your ways so that I know my hard times were the cracks in the pottery that is my life and for knowing that no pot can be made whole from dust. Because we are made of dust and to dust we shall return but we are not dust. Thank you for wholeness. Thank you for brokenness. Thank you for restoration.
Thank you for Ky who showed me in love, kindness, compassion and with humor that (to my surprise!) we can deceive ourselves. But I thank you for self-forgiveness and for others who reveal to us things about ourselves we didn’t even know! Thank you that there is no stronghold and no deceit in me. Show me or have others who I trust and who know you show me so I can be made mightier, greater, and more beautiful when I cast it and demand it gone.
Thank you that it truly does all work together for your good. My “good” wasn’t even good now that I know what goodness you have in store for me! Thank you for revelation. For healing. For hardships.
Thank you for all of that which is growing me into the woman of integrity and being a siren of truth-telling.
Thank you for rejection! Thank you that people have rejected me from the very beginning.
Thank you for my parents doing their best to raise me. Thank you that I know right from wrong so, like my mom prayed, I’d take the best parts of my parents and discard the rest. And oh what a way to live when their best is you and I have the ability to replace their brokenness with your words!
Thank you for praying parents and grandparents and great grandparents and for all of my ancestors who prayed that with each generation, we would become stronger, smarter, wiser, wealthier. Thank you that although we agree casting out the bad parts, that our families would know that we’re not casting them out, too.
Thank you for discernment to separate who a person is from what a person does.
Thank you for clarity. Thank you for tears that wash away hurt with each drop as they pour down my cheeks. Thank you that you’ll replace what was lost and stolen from us. From me. Thank you in advance that all that was stolen from my ancestors would be paid in full, with interest, to me. Not only because I’m due to inherit what was theirs, but because you can trust me with this harvest. Because I’ve worked long and hard learning how to care for little so I can care for much.
Thank you for each and every thing that I will face this year. I can thank you now in advance because I’ve done hard things. I’ve overcome all the hard things that have come my way so I know I can continue forward. Thank your for knowing that because everything has worked out for my good in the past, that I know AND TRUST that will be true in the future. Not because of who I am because I’m ever-changing. I know and trust in that now because you’ve never changed. Because you’re the same yesterday, today, tomorrow and forevermore.
Thank you for my struggles with time and thank you for learning about how precious and just how very delicate life is because of the loses I’ve experienced. Thank you that we get to choose how to live and whatever choice we make, we have the power and authority to change our mind.
Thank you for Tamia who taught me that sometimes there aren’t good choices or bad choices, but that we just need to commit and make a choice. Thank you that I now know in a new way that regardless of the choice I made I always reserve the right to change my mind. That when I start to walk down one path and it’s too thorny or too rocky and my arms aren’t strong enough to lift myself over the steepness of the rocks that I can bang a uey (a U turn for my non-Bostonians ) and go down another path that’s better suited for me.
Thank you that I won’t be ashamed when I pivot.
Thank you that bringing voice to shame kills it dead on sight and with sound! Thank you for who I am. Thank you that that parts of my that scared me the most about myself I’ve since uncovered and, to my surprise, those are the things I love about myself the most now!
Thank you for my willingness to be in full alignment in mind, body, and spirit has led me to you.
Thank you for my integrity of character which remains unchanged in all circumstances. Thank you that I am not ashamed to give voice to the vulnerable and the hurting because by giving voice for them, I’m simply giving voice to the parts of me no one else gave voice to when I was a child and didn’t have the words or the capacity to speak for myself but I knew I was uncomfortable with.
Thank you that I know the truth, love the truth and that I speak the truth. The truth and the Truth. Thank you for setting me apart since elementary school because those parts that hurt most are where the parts odd others who need help. Thank you for renewing my mind, my body and my spirit in your word. Thank you that for over an hour I can write my prayer of thanks and know that I’m not even close to done! I’ve just barely scratched the surface!
Thank you for the wealth that is due to me so I can invest in others the way I wished and prayed and hoped and wanted others to invest in me but they couldn’t because they were broken. They were broken AND didn’t know then that you are the Potter and the Creator and master of kintsugi and that you can make them whole and even better and more beautiful than before.
Thank you that what people say about me isn’t true. Thank you that I now know the thoughts I have about myself aren’t true. Thank you that I always knew, even as a baby and before I had hardly any words that I could challenge and examine everything, including my thoughts, behaviors and feelings.
Lord, bless my parents who I KNOW gotta be weary and tired because I forced them to feel and grow and stretch and acknowledge and address things in ways they didn’t want to grow or change or even acknowledge but they did because I question and challenge (always did, always will, too!).
Thank you for them even when they got it “wrong”. But if nothing is wasted, it means it really was never wrong! It means it simply wasn’t what we wanted.
Thank you for forgiveness because it has nothing to do with other people but everything to do with us. Thank you that even with distance- time, physical, spiritual- that we can’t relive the past but we can surrender it and leave it with you because forgiving ourselves and others even when- especially when?- they didn’t even ask for it. Thank you that forgiveness is self-healing.
Thank you that we don’t need to disrupt the lives of our loved ones who we no longer do life with and yet we still have the power, through forgiveness, to heal. That whether they committed a big oopsie or we did, that we can forgive ourselves or them for not doing better because we didn’t know better. Because we did the best we could with what we had at the time.
I thank you that even though it didn’t ask work out as we planned, that we can still bless those who curse(d) us because my life is too short to be vengeful so Imma just listen to you when you had said “vengeance is mine”. May we publicly bless those who curse us.
May we feel fear I know my sisterfriend felt when she decided to spend her last few months free of cancer treatments to enjoy her newborn son. Thank you for miracles! Thank you for the miracle of life and of healthy babies. Thank you for Lark. For her faith so loud and bold she sometimes had to keep it quiet from some because not everyone we know and love want us to be happy if they can’t be happy because they choose to be unhappy. Or unhealed. Or miserable.
