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An open letter from another angry, black woman.

To my church folk--former, current, and future: you owe black people an apology. If you only knew how many times I sat in church, hoping you would speak out against the oppression of black people. How much it hurt when week after week, there was nothing but silence from the pulpit. Or worse, silence from my friends.  Many of you felt (and maybe continue to feel) threatened by the Black Lives Matters movement and had no trouble voicing your negative sentiments to me, a hurting member of the black community. Some of you hosted problematic, white guest speakers to come and speak to the church about “racial reconciliation”--exhorting black folks to “lay down our offenses for the sake of the gospel” without giving any mention of repentance of the centuries of church-sanctioned violence against black Americans. Many of you weaponized your white fragility by storming out of meetings where racial injustice in the church was being discussed to shift the attention from people of color onto your
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A BRUTALLY HONEST POST ABOUT DOUBT

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Ok so this is going to be a post about DOUBT. I feel like maybe a lot of Christians struggle with doubt but because we want to appear holy and righteous before our peers we don't talk about it because we want people to think that we have our sh*t together? Just me? Anyways. I have been in such a funny season with the Lord, you guys. As I've mentioned before, 2016 was kind of a topsy turvy year for me for many reasons but the election really caused me to question a lot of things about the Church, which has subsequently led me to have more questions than ever about God. Let me give some examples. How is it that a loving God can allow so much brokenness to exist? I know, I know, we live in a world fractured by the original sin of Adam...but seriously...why are there people who are getting blown to pieces in Syria while I am sitting in my warm, comfortable bed typing on my Apple computer? Or why is it that I can ask God for a new job and then God provides me with the best job e
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the 2016 election, the church, and facebook.

This is not going to be a post about Donald Trump or my feelings about him. Honestly, if you know me, you already know my thoughts about him and there are probably hundreds if not thousands of articles that you could read if you want to learn about other peoples thoughts on Mr. Trump. What I am hoping to do is to articulate what it is that caused my deep sadness and disappointment, not only in America, but also in the church. These are just my honest, unadulterated thoughts. I am not trying to attack anyone. I am not trying to attack the church. If you don't care to read on then I suggest you don't :) In the days, weeks, and months following the election, I had a lot of time to really attempt to process why it was that I felt so low. I'm talking post-break up, low.  Initially, it was having to come to terms with the fact that people that I knew and loved voted for Donald Trump. Then it sort of evolved into disappointment that people did so for moral reasons. Then it beca
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The Journey.

September is here and it is still incredibly difficult for me to wrap my mind around that. The days just seem to be fly I think back to where I was six months ago and it's astonishing how much life can change. At the time of my last post, I was heartbroken, depressed, and significantly dissatisfied with life as it was. I felt like I was sinking into this deep hole and there wasn't anything that could keep me from falling deeper and deeper. So I started reading books. You are a Badass. Milk & Honey. Passion Meets Wisdom. And slowly, but surely, God used these words to pull me out of the depths and show me that my life was not in fact over and I didn't have to continue living this way. I started changing the way I was thinking (poverty mindset) and realized that there was nothing heroic about remaining in misery. So I quit my job and got a job with a dream of a company (more on that later). I started filling my weekends with people and places that I loved and that brough
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what do I even title this?

I have so many thoughts that I am trying to process right now. I wish they were pretty and coherent and articulate but they aren’t. They are jumbled and messy and sad…but they are honest. I could probably write a whole series on my feelings haha…but I just can’t bring myself to do that right now. I think there is so much in our human nature that wants to be optimistic even in the face of overwhelming reasons not to be. Is that a good thing? I don’t know. Like, I know it’s a good thing, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth it when you get hit with disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. Sometimes it feels like the disappointments hurt more when preceded by pure, unadulterated hope. I think that any time you go into a new relationship, there is a level of hope that is necessary to take off, right? The belief that maybe THIS could be it. This could be the last first date or whatever. I know that for me, there was never any point at which I felt certain that TH
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It's ok to not be ok.

I’m not alright, I’m broken inside {broken insiiiiiiiide} If you grew up listening to positive, encouraging, K-LOVE, you likely recognized those words from a Sanctus Real song (and if you don’t, worry not, you aren’t really missing anything). While sometimes I’d like to think that I’ve evolved into this authentic, cool Christian who is obviously too cool for mainstream Christian music, sometimes the Lord chooses to humble you by making you cry with a cheesy Stephen Curtis Chapman ballad circa 1999! I can’t explain it, it just happens sometimes. At any rate, this song has been speaking so deeply to my heart, because it has been a rough season for me lately. I think that a lot of times as Christians, we equate living the “good Christian life” with having everything look good on the outside for people. For me personally, I think that my life probably looks pretty awesome from the outside, and for a while, I was okay with people thinking that it was an accurate portrayal of how I’m
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Two weeks left.

The countdown, which has unofficially been on since I moved to Chicago in August of 2012, is officially on. I have one week left of pharmacy school. Two before graduation. I still can't believe it. To be quite honest, it doesn't feel like I thought it would feel. Don't get me wrong, pharmacy school has been the most difficult thing I have ever done and moving to Chicago sort of compounded that difficulty. But it has also been one of the best things that I have ever done and I know that I will never be the same. At approximately this time 4 years ago, a couple that I had never met, approached me at an event and told me 2 things: 1) That I carried the joy of the Lord and 2) That the season of life I was entering would be stretching and that I should take heart because when you stretch something, it never goes back to how it was before, and that the same would be true of me. I am so thankful for reminders that God still uses supernatural means to speak to his kids. It&
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