You’ve been the subject of all my desires and detriment. I read back on the things I wrote about you: how I wanted to move on from you and I, from us. How I wanted to heal from you, how I wanted to choose the Creator over you. That I was done, we were done. I wanted to be released from what we created. This thing is no longer my project to manage. 

Yet the other night I felt like I wanted to try this again. 

I leveled off a text saying that I “love you” after it was all over. I do believe that. I love you even to the core of who I am: a fucking wreck. 

You’re meeting me in a moment where I am walking a line towards my own destruction. Everything is setting me up to fail even though I keep asking the Creator to save me from my demise. I know She knows I’m hurting right now, disillusioned and afraid. She knows that I am Her child full of pain. I hate who I am, hate where I am. Hate where I reside in this world. I want out. I need to get out. 

I’m quitting it all. I’m done. 

But you? I can’t quit you. 

You heard my voice. I sounded “weary”. You were the first person to notice my wretched soul. I’ve been hiding from everyone else in order for them to not see me at what feels like the lowest point in my life. That’s all I needed to release the guard I’ve created for myself to keep me away from you. 

I missed your voice. I needed to hear your voice. You speak to the girl within me who wants to be seen. I told you that I hate to disappoint you. Somehow you validate my existence as a human being. If you want me, then I’m as good as gold. I don’t understand why you still have that type of hold on me. 

Don’t ever release me ever again in your life. 

We talked about the last night when we saw each other. You apologized for what you did. For not seeing me hurt. Like it was your job. I never asked for you to do that. I just operated on hope that you would. You saw it but chose to not do anything. Again, like it’s your job. So I sank into a drunken haze and gave you what I thought you wanted. And snapped out of it once the Creator had enough of me cosplaying as the power and principalities who dragged me to where you were. 

I wanna snap out of this. I want the moments I’ve had in the past where the gusts of the Holy Spirit toss into the ocean to bathe away the sins of trying to make this work. It worked last night. 

God, I was taught to honor your omniscience. You see and know everything. You knew me before I was formed. You knew the results of your hands would be the moon and stars. You know what is best for me because you situate those rewards in their place for me to experience in due time. But if you know all, if you see all, if you made water leaked from rocks and manna fall in times of famine, if you knew to place Esther in the King’s court to stop the massacre of her people, if you knew David was meant to be king even as all other just saw him as a lowly shepherd, if you knew the fate of your son on the cross, then … just, then…

I’m supposed to trust your all-seeingness and all-knowingness at all times. Because the Bible tells me so. But then if I question you about nineteen children being slaughtered inside of their school or Black people being targeted in the bread aisle, then am I out of line?

I’m reading Job. Job didn’t waiver until he got to the point where he could no longer understand. 

I’m at that point with you. I don’t waiver in my love for you but I don’t understand how you work. 

Especially on days like today. You start and stop famines. You feed thousands and loosen devils. You knock down symbols of oppression. You punish crooks and liars. You say that I shouldn’t fear flesh but only power and principalities. But the flesh I’m told you knew of before its creation is walking into safe spaces to slaughter the other creations you commissioned at one time. 

But I should trust that you know and see everything after 19 children are called home to meet you by the hands of someone broken and worn?  You, the mighty power, the Shield, the creator of hedges, the one who enlarges territories, the one who brings justice to evildoers. You. You didn’t stop this. You didn’t pretend to stop this. Because you surely knew of Texas, right? 

I can’t put on blinders to your wonders. Not right now. 

I just ask why you couldn’t perform one at this moment? This isn’t fair. 

Maybe I’m being unfair to you. I’m in a season where I need your signs and wonders. You know my Babylon, you know my Dagon. You know what trips me, what aches me, what hurts me. I need your providence to rain down on me. I still trust you to right my sail. I still believe in your wonder-working power as the true folk would say. Even in the midst of chaos created by me and exacerbated by forces I cannot explain, I still believe that you care enough to help me. 

Omnipotent. That is you. 

I just wonder why carelessness runs our land. Why violence races through us like blood. I wonder why we’re so quick to shield corporations and the crooks who run them. I wonder why we let sexual violence run rampant inside of our church steeples and greed blot out our eyes from your Son’s grace. I wonder why we think we can kiss the king of the land’s ring and wash Jesus’ feet at the same time. You can’t serve two masters, right? I wonder why we see women’s bodies as political ploys. Women first saw your Son rise from the dead and I know you do all things with intention. I wonder why we tweet thoughts and prayers but move dead with our work. 

 I know you see all and know all. I know you are able to do everything. So you tell me. 

I know that when justice comes, crooks are to be terrified. Justice didn’t come today and the crooks willed it to be so. And the American criminal justice system is as crooked and terrifying as they come. So is Scripture lying to me? Is Proverbs mocking us in the midst of our lifetime? Or our Your people so lost that they can’t find their way back to what You created us to be: whole.

In wholeness, a woman died by gunfire. In her bed, next to her love. In wholeness, Black people mourned. In wholeness, Black people screamed until our lungs collapsed: ‘arrest the cops that killed Breonna Taylor’. In wholeness, we watched White people fall into a catatonic states of fake rage and coerced epiphanies. In wholeness, when it was announced that her killers would not be brought to justice, only Black people felt called to say something.

In wholeness, I’m okay if it remains to be this way. If only we speak, if only we mourn, if only we lash out, if only we engage. It’s wired into our DNA to never disassociate from pain and suffering. We have to respond.

I want to be shocked by injustice. I want to be shocked by Black death. I’m not. I wish I had that privilege. White people do. We don’t. Black pain and Black suffering are as commonplace as the air we breathe. I wish we could be naive to those things. But we have to live with knowing that every time this does happen, we have to will ourselves to be present.

To disappear. What a world it would be like if police misconduct, judicial incompetence and state-sanctioned death disappeared. How present are our bodies laying in the streets?

Buildings with bullets matter more than a body riddled with one. This is where we are.

Where do you want us? Always on our knees asking you “Why?” For what? What’s the benefit? You have the power to answer us and you don’t. We have to decipher through conjecture whether or not the world gives a damn about us. You sent angels before. Who can You send now to show us the way out of this hell? I know you didn’t manufacture this purgatory but at this point, who else is there to call responsible?

I know You are not a God that sees more value in property than people. They did. I know You are not a God who lets criminals escape their punishment. They did. I know You are not a God who allows maleficent leadership reign supreme. They did. I know You are not a God who allows victory for the Pharisee. They did. They did everything against what You, God, call to be just and righteous and yet they win.

They won.

I know Godly justice reigns over earthly justice but as I’ve seen in your Word, when earthly justice isn’t met, God will insert Her power. You wiped out peoples and lands because they failed to express love. We can’t even get a police officer arrested for carrying out acts devoid of such things.

Now a world is devoid of a woman who never got a chance to be her full self and actualize her dreams. You created this world so I ask You: What are You going to do about it?

All good things are subject to corruption but can later be redeemed. That’s the story from Genesis to Revelation, from garden to garden. A lot of death happened and is happening between Adam and the Lion of Judah. I just don’t understand why Black bodies dying at the hands of law enforcement has to be a part of that story.

The Fall caused this? This is an insane story arc to write because someone chose not to be obedient.

The God we serve is fair and just. The God we serve is righteous. The God we serve told the people of Israel to look after the least among them. Giving a damn is standard operating procedure. But yet we continue to fail at following simple directions. God gives us opportunities to get this right and we don’t.

We lament a knee to the back of one’s neck. We lament not learning our lesson from the death of Eric Garner. He couldn’t breathe either. We lament corrupt leadership and systems. Failing systems breed failing behavior. We praise yet caution the sudden interest by White allies and the sudden elevation of White voices. You can’t center allyship. That’s oxymoronic.

What a world we live in when a stay-at-home order protects Black people not only from COVID-19 but from police brutality and white woman privilege. We step back outside and it’s business as usual. But yet even as I write that, that business didn’t shut down at all. Black people make up a large percentage of deaths caused by the coronavirus and are main ones arrested and issued summonses by the police for not keeping to that stay-at-home order. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Damned if you exist in your Blackness and damned if you don’t — because it’s never your call. Your treatment is never your call. You get the police called on you. You get a knee to your neck. You get hunted down by pickup trucks and shotguns. You get shot in the dark laying next to your boyfriend. You get accused of crimes you didn’t commit. You get seen as a threat. You get ignored when your labor pains grow because for some reason, Black bodies can take more pain. And you die, three times the rate of white women.

You lose your life because damned if you exist. This is such an evil level of corruption. So when will this world be redeemed? And will Black people actually be around to see it be so?

They were tears of submission. Like … God, I’m done fighting you on this. You win. I’m done trying to figure out the “why?”. I’m done creating imaginary conflict inside the depths of my mind in order to justify this distance. I’m acknowledging what you always conjure up within me when you want me to know that it’s time to move on: a feeling of discomfort. I’m listening. I’m siding with you on this one. I just don’t understand why you’d tell me through our conversations that you’d want me to find a new tribe.

The story of Elijah and Elisha came up in Bible Study. In that space, we spoke about living in two kingdoms — the earthly and heavenly — and how we have access to the heavenly realm through Jesus by way of our conversations through prayer and through Word. We have access to the same power and the might of the prophets. We can put on the armor of God. We, too, are protected by the same forces that kept those who were believed to have the closest proximity to God. What’s there to fear when you have God’s army right with you?

This year has been a lesson about having faith or fear. Fight like Ephesians 6 — the armor of God — or run away and submit to our earthly emotions of fear, doubt and disappointment. I learned that fear that can be an idol and that we serve a God that forbids false idolatry in Her kingdom. We fear being alone, we fear the worst in our lives and in the lives of other people. We fear God’s wrath for past decisions. We fear never being loved.

It’s easy to fear when you forget Who — and that army — you already have. All of what I heard that night was a reminder of what I’ve learned through my personal one-on-one time with the Creator: faith over fear. But the story of Elijah and Elisha struck me most because it reminded of why I went to Bible Study in the first place: learning how to let go and let God move you forward.

Pages: 1 2

After a gang of losses, a win feels so wrong. I keep waiting for the bottom to fall out, for folks to wake up and realize that they’ve been making a mistake. For God to pull the emergency stop button.

I accept all fates. I don’t want to feel any of it though.

So full of joy that I can’t stop talking about it but so in fear that I keep telling myself to “shut up” because if it doesn’t work, then the questions about what happened will be too much to bear.

I’m so angry about wasted time. So much wasted time. I really want to forgive those past experiences that I’ve crossed paths with in my life but now I hate them with every damn fiber of my being.

Pieces of shit situations, not pieces of shit people. Exhibit grace, Ciara. All of it was my fault.

I didn’t see the value in myself. I thought I wasn’t worth anything. So you orbit people who make you feel like you’re something. Even if that something is actually nothing.

This feels so damn hurtful to write but I am so damn angry at myself.

I told someone that I feel so terrible that this was the first time something like this has ever happened in my life. And she told me to “embrace it” because “the past is the past and you now know what you to look for going forward.”

But I keep looking back at the past and break down. It wasn’t supposed to be like that if I just stood up for myself and didn’t accept all of what was happening to me.

I put up with a lot. I lost a lot.

And sometimes I don’t think that I’ll ever have the opportunity to gain it all back.

I live on the east side of Pittsburgh. The visage of Antwon Rose is as commonplace as the economic displacement that currently rocks this side of town. I’m reminded every day of his story, his life, his death, his legacy. Every teenage boy I see walking from Obama Academy or riding on the bus from Lincoln Avenue reminds me of Antwon. They are Antwon. They would all be Black boys running from imagined trouble only to be murdered without cause.

I pray that we haven’t forgotten about him. We still utter his name inside of our house of God but do you? I say that not to assume or shame but as a reminder that for all the united-body-in-Christ talk that took place in the aftermath of the verdict, the Earth still reigns with racism and oppression that murders our children without warning. A terror we feel called to fight beyond just one Sunday when the news overwhelms us all to think about Antwon’s life. So as I sat in on the pew last Saturday and witnessed Antwon’s face on a screen inside of my church, I knew that our lament never ceased but I wondered if we were alone in our grief.

Lamentations is God’s people as their most brutally honest selves: crying, complaining, overwrought, overwhelmed, wrecked yet hopeful. When Black bodies die at the hands of law enforcement, we cry and complain and crumble under the wreckage created by hatred and oppression but yet have hope that one day, we will return home to a place of comfort, peace and love: humanity at its purest form. We’ve never seen it but we know it exists and we’re going to fight for it.

We’re always in a state of “why us?!” but in agreeance that both calamities and good things come from the same source. We are afflicted and downcast but mindful and full of hope. Grief may be brought but compassion can and will be shown. Rejected and abandoned but yet heard and told not to fear. This dichotomy of God’s wrath and love mirror or pain and hope in a moment where nothing seems to change. We know the light exists, we just need to find it.

But it’s also a state of confusion. “Why should the living complain when punished for their sins?” In this moment, confusion carries over the land. Why would an officer would shoot an unarmed child? Why couldn’t a jury of our peers see what we failed to ignore? How is a man walking free for murder but our sons and daughters are locked up for less? And murdered for nothing? We still feel cast off, left on our own. Altars abandoned, cities abandoned, people abandoned. And it’s all our fault because existing in this Black body brings consequences that no other group of people can experience.

It’s beyond unfair. It’s gutless. it’s happening. But yet through it all, we dream to see Zion restored. We fight to see a place where our children are loved and cared for and safe from harm. A place where we raised leaders and not lead-wearers. A place where city on the hill shines brighter than the badges that threatened to take our children away.

The third book in Lamentations is about Jesus. It’s about hope, redemption, compassion and faithfulness. It’s about mocking enemies yet the justice that shall prevail.

Even through this season, justice will prevail in a way that our humanly justice system could never impart on the world. Until then, let’s lament and be hopeful. We’re still in exile but one day, that will change.

Someone told me recently that I should throw away the suicide note I wrote on Christmas Day 2018. I wrote it on the back of a picture of my Dad so that’s somewhat of a hard sell.

A friend came over to my apartment last week to help me clean because I was too debilitated to move. When she came across the picture, I begged to the high heavens that she wouldn’t ask meabout it. She didn’t. It was just a picture of my Dad she saw, not the cry for help.

Most know the sugarcoated story of that night in December. When my phone sat in silence all day, watching episodes of the Golden Girls, falling asleep between Blanche’s euphemisms and Dorothy’s attitude. My apartment didn’t have heat. Our furnace broke weeks prior. And even though others offered to house me, I refused. I accepted the cold as penance. I just quit a job off of emotional impulse. There had to be retribution for that. Hence layers of clothing and tears that warmed my face.

I sat in my room and cried like I wished I did when I found out that my Dad died. I didn’t cry when that happened. Biggest regret in the world. That and leaving him to die in the hospital by himself. I remember him saying that he didn’t want me to see him like that. I should have ignored him for once. I never could.

God made me a punk. I wasn’t going to go through with it. But the note exists. That was a first. Like I said, I still have it. The last time I tried to kill myself was years ago. I sank into a bathtub. I don’t keep the note because I think it’ll come in handy one day but rather because it’s an example of the bottom. You can’t get any low than that.

I did.

So low that even in full transparency, I still can’t talk about it. In my mind, what happened corroborates every negative thought or idea anyone has of me. That validation of my trashiness. Justification as to why you don’t deal with me anymore. So much that I don’t want forgiveness. You’re right to feel what you think about me. I won’t even argue against it. You’re right.

So I accepted my exile. Isaiah and Hosea reading me for filth. We told you, Sis. You were told but you didn’t listen. Look where you are.

Gutted, out of it. Without any energy to give. I don’t have it for myself. I used to burn myself out to appear as if I was okay. Burning a wick that doesn’t exist. And I crashed. Hard.

I’ve been absent. By choice. I’ve been distant. By choice. I haven’t been in church or around God’s people. By choice. I put myself here. I took the wrong exit by choice. I got lost in the trees, mesmerized by its beauty and planted myself. My roots are growing fast. By choice. God didn’t put my here, at least I don’t think. Actually, since I haven’t desired God for weeks, I can’t discern what God is doing right now.

I do know that writing is my therapy, my way of speaking to God. Of accepting the things that I can’t change. If I don’t write it, I’m not acknowledging my behavior. God knows me but do I? I know myself enough to know that I hate the person that I am right now. I’m the worst iteration of myself even as I am surrounded by who and what would make me the best version of me. I’m fighting progression. I’m languishing in complacency. I’m that crippled man sitting next to Bethesda. I’m watching everyone jump in front of me.

But yet as I sit here unable to move, I still hope that Jesus can see me. But faith without works is dead. I have to ask Jesus first.

I read in 2 Corinthians that God works through our weaknesses. I guess that’s why I’m releasing the bullshit I’ve caused — the hurt and harm I’ve done to myself and others — into the universe. So something can be done with it. Because I’m carrying it with me and it’s heavy. And the weight I’ve carried killed me. Cardiac arrest full of shame, guilt, bad decisions, loss, pride, anger, conceitedness, denial.

I’ve alienated people and they’ve returned the favor. So I’m in my wilderness. Pruning the trees of my own sin. Crying out enough for God to hear me but no one else. The trees are falling but no one is around to hear it. Because I don’t want them to be.

I love distance. I love being alone. I thought about my past dalliances as an alcoholic, drinking to numb every emotion I no longer wanted to feel. I started that trend when my Dad was in the hospital. I knew to find a bar not that far from where he laid up, tied to every machine imaginable. I numbed myself to the sounds of U Street’s Blackness and the Whiteness of downtown Bethesda. Reconciliation at its best.

But you can hide. Here I can’t. Crazy enough I drank the most when I first moved here. I didn’t have people watching me like they do now. The conviction I feel getting caught buying a bottle of anything is enough for me to not start drinking. I haven’t drank since December. Thought about it. The only thing holding me back is the thought of having to justify the behavior. Even though I swear to you that I don’t care.

That caring part is the Holy Spirit, perhaps. It’s what pushes me to write this. Because even though I want to be alone in my own wilderness, to tend to its animals that threaten to eat me, to survive off of its nutrients even if they are poisonous and can kill me, to move swift enough to be shot and killed by violence I can’t see, to become feral, to be that wolf, to continue as a scavenger, I reach out to be found. To find that road, that familiar stranger that always finds me and urges me to go home.

Truth is, I don’t know what home is anymore. Or if I even have one to go back to. I’ve been in silence for months, not sure if anything will welcome me like they did in the past.

There’s that moment in the wilderness when the Devil will test me. Part of me is ready to fail. Part of me knows I will fail. I’m jumping off the ledge hoping to be caught by angels. I’m turning rocks to bread instead of believing that all I need is God’s nourishment. As I write this, I realize that I haven’t jumped off of that cliff or buttered those rocks. I reached out to people I never have before because even as I walk the peaks and valleys of this wilderness, I pushed myself to operate on faith alone. To lean not on my own understanding. For once.

There could be a man in this bed but it’s empty. I fall asleep to Saturday Night Live. There could be bottles all over the place but there are none. There are two liquor stores within five blocks of me and wine across the street. Options are present but I can’t do it. That conviction didn’t exist when I operated from a space of being alone. But in a weird twist, as I force my own self into a space of loneliness, I can’t do what I used to do. Maybe I do see the road from here.