Tag: reflection

this brain.

March 11th, 2025

The depression I feel at this moment is heavy. I just left work. I said that I wasn’t feeling well. In truth, that wasn’t a lie. I’m not well today. My body is tired, my head is weary. I’m sitting here listening to an audiobook about the mental health of Black folks, reminded by each word that what I suffer with doesn’t make anything wrong with me. I’m just sad. I woke up yesterday feeling the same way. I also felt a pain in my side, a sore throat and a fatigue I couldn’t shake. I called out of work then, feeling bad because if I could have made it throughout the day. I also felt like a quitter. Felt weak. I can’t handle all of what I feel to simply be responsible.

But this brain. This brain.

I woke up this morning feeling the same way. Sat in the dark for twenty minutes, pushing myself to the limits before I would be late. I threw on whatever clothes I could find already strewn across my floor, never looking in the mirror to see if anything looked disheveled or out-of-place. I dragged a lifeless body up my steps. My bus to work was unusually late but I was grateful: it gave me some extra minutes to be alone before I’d have to put on a face for the world.

When I got to work, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I just felt like wasted space. They asked me if I was feeling well and I said no. I don’t feel well. This sickness I feel is multi-dimensional. My supervisor gave me the option to go home if I still wasn’t feeling okay so I took it. Now I’m sitting on this couch writing this because for some reason I feel called to lay all of what I feel at the foot of the cross.

God and I don’t talk as much as we used to. I’m not around Her people that much either. The isolation I felt all this weekend and throughout today is a result of me clamoring to hide. Some might say that the enemy is doing a number on me. I try not to give those malevolent entities too much credit but maybe they’re right. I don’t feel connected. Sometimes I get that ping, this reminder of who I am and Whose I am but other than that, all I hear is my own voice and my own flesh. To feel good is all body, no soul or mind. I want attention but not the good kind. I’m using men as mirrors to reflect my own depravity back at me.

I just want to be okay. I just want to get through a day without feeling like I’m pulling shrapnel out of my skin. I want alone to no longer equate to loneliness. I got so angry at how uneventful my weekend was that I shifted my entire thoughts about certain people. That’s so unfair. So then I levy it all onto myself. Called myself repugnant and repulsive. I’ve been trying to not beat myself up with the words I use but yesterday, I fell short.

I’m going to listen to more of this audiobook. Maybe cry. Put my phone on DND. Feel the loneliness envelop me. Nap the pain away and then act like I’m okay. That’s all I can do.
what is a sacrifice? (let shit burn.)

August 19th, 2024

I talk often about placing men at the Creator’s feet and asking Her to fix them. Men don’t know how to advocate for themselves. Sexism is an eternal stain. I ask God to cover them because the pain resonates through the distance. I feel their heartbeat because it’s familiar. It palpitates from fear just like mine. We’re boxing with the same demons. I think that’s why gravity pulled some of these beings into my orbit. The worst feeling is loneliness.

I’m reminded of what it means to be a disciple, to be a witness. Someone is always watching you. Someone is always looking at you to be an example of how to get through this thing called life. There’s this belief within my community that God puts you through things so others can see what it is that She does. You’re the sign and wonder. Relationship with Her clears a righteous path. Those who draw paths of confusion and deceit lack wisdom.

How I got here is a testament to Her. She shows me that those idols called fear can’t do what She does.

She is the Maker of all things.

She’s also a reminder of the weakness of idols. She breathes, they don’t. She can destroy and rebuild.

I live and breathe as the sheep of the Good Shepherd because of how lost I was until I was found. Even as I try to peel off the mark branded on me as one of those commissioned to do great things because it comes with a responsibility I’m not sure I can bear.

I just want to be a normal girl. I want to be able to catch feelings and not have to reap for them.

God doesn’t shame me for feelings. She certainly doesn’t shame me for wants and needs. She knows my heart and that I mean well.

I just have to be smart about this shit.

I know me. Infatuation is my middle name. I always fall for the idea of someone and whatever it is that they can give me. It’s been a part of my personality since a man’s touch made me feel a way. And held value. So in a season where value can be misplaced, you fall hard for the idea they can count you as something. That vaunted something that’s been escaping you for years: to be seen. That’s all it took.

I keep hearing Her: it’s not a wrong thing, just a misplaced one.

I’m ready to be over it, the idea of whatever I want “it” to be. I wanted it to be the balm to heal unresolved trauma. For every boy that made fun of me, for every man that would rather hide the shame than acknowledge the desire. For every unrequited love and text not returned. For every popular boy who paid me dust but swept me off of my feet in those stories I wrote to escape from what felt like a loveless world. Through all of this I felt like I was the weird girl holding on for dear life. I wore’ irrational’ like a badge of honor.

I told someone that if he liked me, then it would mean something. It would be the bruised heel to a snake’s head. It would heal all, redeem all that was lost. Death would be defeated. I’ve felt dead for quite some time. I don’t reach for intimacy and sensuality out of discipline but rather out of fear. The fear of not being good enough. I fear being the “worst mistake” he could have made. A fear of having to confront my past of searching out for love in places of ruin and paying a price for it.

Redemption may just pass right over me and the blood plastered on the door frame is my own.

But what kind of sacrifice is this?
the light.

December 25th, 2023

There would be this marvelous light. From darkness. This sign. The reveal of what was to come after the destruction. Peace. That’s all they – we, us — ever wanted. A moment in time when the weapons would crumble and the enemies would fall to their knees in defeat. When the groves would be full of trees and the animals would live harmoniously. The lion would no longer stalk the lamb. When children could play in the streets now rid of those hazards and terrors that once made it impossible to do so.

Gentility. The bruised won’t be broken. Direction. The paths once crooked would be made straight. Sight restored, ears tuned to hear the right notes.

All of that, in a baby.

The Creator sees such power in things deemed by those as being weak, those drunk off of their own might.

The Creator sees the weak, the opposed. This baby was born to free those just like him. Oppressed, on the run. Ordered to be killed because though the world may have seen him as just a little one, those in power knew him to be a threat. You must keep people oppressed to keep yourself in power. Master’s rules, master’s tools. Yet they couldn’t. Couldn’t while in the arms of his mother and couldn’t as he hung by his arms on the cross. Death was defeated in many ways. That’s what light is supposed to do.

Where’s the light in the everlasting season of darkness, of death?

I sometimes fail to see the light of Jesus. It’s simply not there. I know him as a reconciler, a grafter. The searcher for the lost, the one who rejoices when his children come home after years of being gone. There’s no war, no destruction of peoples. There’s no blockades, no refusal to disperse aid. There’s no bombing of people who just happen to be in the way. There’s no intended decimation of an entire group of people who were there before you. There’s no destruction of hospitals and soldiers all too happy to shoot and kill, even when its their own people. There’s no kicking people out of house and home and then locking the remnants in. There’s no cutting off of life-saving services. There’s no collective punishment.

That’s what was promised to be away from us when that root of Jesse arrived. Tools of decay and destruction would be melted down into tools of healing and rehabilitation. A bringer of justice and freedom who arrive to settle disputes between nations. That’s what a Wonderful Counselor is supposed to do. No more gloom for those in distress. A yoke shatterer. A rod breaker.

A prince of peace.

A prince of peace who told us that while we wait, we must be his light. To reconcile with those we’ve lost along the way. To be of service. To help bring justice to those who’ve been wronged. To put down our swords. To make a pathway straight for someone trying to find their way. To provide for each other. To call out the injustice in our midst. To make the oppressor be in fear. To be good counsel and to seek peace.

To be that marvelous light. As bright as the star that called those three men to Bethlehem to celebrate the birth of the one who Isaiah prophesied to bring light into the darkness. This season should remind us to be as guided by that light as they were and call for peace and justice as our Savior would. Even as darkness surrounds the world.

Tag: reflection

this brain.

what is a sacrifice? (let shit burn.)

the light.