It was in the 1990’s. It was a hot summer day. I was walking from my car to the Burroughs Wellcome building that was now part of Glaxo Wellcome, Inc. It was a stone walkway littered with duck feathers and duck poop. I had made this walk day after day for several months to a job I had grown to hate. But there was something different about today’s walk. As I walked, trying to dodge the poop for the umpteenth time, I heard a voice. It wasn’t like that big God voice. Rather, it was a knowing that pulsated from someone deep within me and it rang in my consciousness. “One day, you will be making this walk for the last time.” That’s what I heard. It didn’t come from my discontent with a horrible job. It came from a Wiser place inside of me that knew before I did that I would be leaving and told me so.
This doesn’t happen often, but it has happened at pivotal times in my life. It’s like something inside stands up in me despite how I am feeling or the load I am carrying and declares something bigger than that moment. Oprah often says that God’s dream for you is always bigger than the one you have for yourself. As I reflect on my life, that has been true time and time again. I hear something rising up in me again. It is a voice within my voice and it’s speaking to my very existence. Another leaving is on the horizon.
I believe that I am a writer. I AM a writer. When Oprah, in Lesson 3 of her Life Class spoke about being a writer, it sounded like she was talking directly to the purpose within me. I have a voice that is amplified when I write. I need to write. It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than being a New York Times Bestseller. It’s bigger than becoming a household name. My gift is to edify. Everything I do, everything I say, my very approach to life, my very heart beats freedom. Freedom from every bondage. Freedom from every box that constricts who we really are. Freedom from every lie that distorts our true value. Freedom from ego, from anger, from fear that says you can’t be, you can’t have, you can’t do. Freedom to be the image of God that exists in all humanity.
I know that most folks reminisce about the Randolph Sisters. I’m humbled and extremely reverent when someone I don’t know was paying attention remembers when we use to sing together as a girl group or when we played for a church choir or when I led praise and worship at Freedom Temple Church. Those were days that I remember with fondness. I am grateful that so many people were encouraged, touched and changed by our music and the presence of God that flowed through it. But one has to know when a season is over and let go. If I were moving in ego, I would be lamenting that those days are over. I would limit God to one mode, one movement, one expression. I would long for the attention and even the celebrity that it brought me in my community and my church affiliation. Writing, on the other hand, is not born of that. I don’t do it for the paycheck or for the attention. I don’t do it for the validation. Writing is my heart song.
What I hear in that knowing place is that I must write. It is not an option; it is a calling. First of all, writing liberates my spirit. It helps me to get centered and to gain perspective. One could say that I need to write for myself just as much as others need to read what I write. It’s therapeutic. It’s illuminating. There are times that I write my own answer, liberate my own heart, get direction for my own life as I write.
Many people don’t know that I lost myself. I went from a outspoken youth to a scared shadow of myself. I was too codependent to speak out my feelings and perceptions freely. I was so afraid of being wrong that I’d often accept someone else’s truth as more important than my own. If someone objected or had a stronger opinion, my sense of self diminished and I became disoriented and lose my way. I’m sooooo glad that the God of all grace wouldn’t let me stay in that state. He brought me answers through books and allowed me to express my own thoughts through journaling. He made room for me.
I know it’ll surprise some people that it wasn’t my upbringing or my religious beliefs that freed me. It wasn’t saying the sinners prayer at the age of 7 years old. It wasn't being in deliverance worship services or having hands laid on me. Because I experienced so much dysfunction in a “Christian” atmosphere, the church, for me, inflicted more suffering than freedom from suffering. More bondage. More confusion. I lamented that I wasn’t good enough. I spent countless hours on the altar, repenting for being me. Repenting that I wasn’t like those around me who told me I should be like them. In hindsight, my suffering wasn’t due to God’s opinion but more the opinions of the church community who couldn’t accept me as me. Lest I should throw out the baby with the bathwater, I must clarify that the organized church is a place where I can still find refuge and draw strength. But the saving of my lost soul didn’t happen in a church. It happened while I was alone: reading Love Is A Choice, Finding My Way Home, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Codependent No More, Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway. It happened as I talked with God about the principles that rang true for me. It was reinforced when I’d hear Oprah and Iyanla and other fellow seekers singing my heart song. I realized that I wasn’t tainted or marred. There was someone else in the world who saw things as I did and I no longer felt like an alien. Slowly and surely, I began to see my own North Star. And I began to follow that star home. Home to my authentic soul. Home to God’s Image inside me as me.
I don’t know where writing will lead or the doors it will open. All I know is that I sense a shift coming. I have something valuable to offer to others. I am convinced of it. My Wise Self is saying the same words that Peter said to the lame man in Acts 3:6: “Silver and gold have I none; but such that I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” Someone out there has been crippled by life and is waiting to receive strength in their ankles. I don’t have a nationally syndicated talk show like Oprah. I don’t have a string of New York Best Sellers like Iyanla. But I do have that “such that I have.” And my purpose is to share it.
