I met someone.

There. I said it.

& strangely enough, I don’t feel the need to immediately qualify that statement with everything that could go wrong.

That’s new for me.

Usually sistah, when something feels good, my mind starts preparing for the ending before the beginning has even had a chance to breathe.

I think about all the ways it could hurt. All the things I could miss. All the signs I might overlook because I want something to work.

I’ve learned to be careful with hope.

Not because I don’t want it, but because I’ve had to learn what it costs when hope is placed in the wrong hands.

Heartbreak changes you. In all ways that ain’t always good either.

In ways God never intended

It teaches you to hesitate before you answer the phone. To read between sentences. To question consistency. To wonder if someone’s affection has an expiration date. It makes you wonder whether you’re actually being loved or just being loved for as long as you’re convenient.

& eventually, you become tired.

Just so very tired

Tired of rebuilding the same parts of yourself. Tired of telling yourself that the next person won’t be the last person. Tired of pretending that losing someone doesn’t take something with it when they leave.

So when I met someone and realized I felt good around him, I noticed the fear almost immediately.

Not fear of him.

Fear of what it would mean to let myself believe in something again.

Because I don’t think I can take another heartbreak.

Maybe that’s dramatic.

Maybe it’s honest.

Thats a kind of exhaustion that comes from loving people who don’t know how to hold what you’ve given them. You eventually start wondering if being open is worth the risk. If being vulnerable is brave or just naive. If protecting yourself is wisdom or fear wearing a nicer outfit.

I’ve been somewhere in between.

& lately, I’ve been talking to God about it.

Not asking for a perfect person.

Not asking for guarantees.

Honestly, I’m not even asking for a forever.

I’m asking for discernment.

For peace.

For the ability to recognize what is good without sabotaging it because I’m terrified of what it could become.

& maybe, in His own way, God understands that I’m tired.

Maybe He knows that I’m not asking Him to remove every possibility of pain because I know that’s not how life works.

Maybe I’m just asking Him to be gentle with me while I try again.

Because trying again takes something.

It takes courage to let someone get to know you after you’ve spent so much time learning how to protect yourself.

It takes courage to admit, I like this.

It takes even more courage to say, I’m happy.

Without immediately adding, but we’ll see.

I don’t know what this becomes.

I’m trying not to.

I’m trying to stay here.

In the conversations.

In the laughter.

In the small moments that don’t need to be turned into predictions about the future.

I’m trying to let something good be good before I start asking whether it will last.

& maybe, that’s the lesson I’m being given right now.

Not that this person is necessarily my person.

Not that God has finally handed me the relationship I’ve been waiting for.

But that maybe I am allowed to experience something beautiful without bracing for impact.

Maybe I can let myself be cared for without constantly looking for the moment I’ll have to recover.

Maybe I can keep my eyes open and my feet on the ground while still allowing myself to hope.

That’s the strange thing about getting older, or maybe just getting hurt enough times.

You stop looking for fireworks.

You start looking for peace.

For someone whose presence doesn’t make you question your worth.

For consistency.

For honesty.

For something that doesn’t require you to abandon yourself to keep it.

& right now, that’s what this feels like.

Good.

Not perfect.

Not promised.

Just good.

& I’m grateful.

I’m also scared.

Both things can be true.

So I’m giving this the only thing I know how to give it without losing myself: room.

Room to grow.

Room to disappoint me if it has to.

Room to surprise me.

Room to become something I didn’t expect.

& room for God to write whatever comes next.

I’m not going to pretend I don’t know what heartbreak feels like.

I do.

I know how it changes the way you love. I know how it makes you second-guess the very things you used to give freely.

But I also know this:

I don’t want what happened to me to become the reason I never let anything good happen to me again.

So, for now, I’m choosing to stay open.

Not recklessly.

Not blindly.

Just enough.

Enough to see where this goes.

Enough to enjoy what is happening right now.

Enough to believe that maybe my life isn’t always going to be a collection of things I survived.

Maybe some things will simply be things I get to keep.

& if I’m being honest, that’s what I’m praying for.

Not a love that never hurts.

A love that feels safe enough to be real.

Hopefully, maybe, God willing.

this time, I get to be soft.

I keep thinking about love lately.

Not the pretty kind. Not the kind people put into quotes or songs. I mean the kind that stays somewhere inside you long after you’ve convinced yourself it doesn’t.

I wonder if we ever really know what love is while we’re living it.

Or if we only understand it after.

I was talking to my friend about how strange it is that you can love someone so deeply, and then someone else comes into your life and somehow you stop thinking about the person who came before them.

& that bothered me.

Because if I loved them that much, how could I forget?

Was it ever really love?

Or did I just learn how to put it somewhere I didn’t have to look at it?

Maybe we don’t forget people.

Maybe we just stop visiting certain memories because we have too much life happening in front of us.

I think about my first love sometimes.

Not necessarily him as he is now. Sometimes I don’t even know if I miss him.

I think I miss who we were.

Who I was.

Read more

What if God is not just asking me to work here? What if He placed me here?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

Not because I have some grand, perfectly packaged revelation. Honestly, I’m still figuring it out. But I’ve started noticing how often God can use ordinary places to remind us of things we thought we had forgotten.

A job can be more than a paycheck.

A difficult season can be more than something to survive.

A room where you feel different can become a room where you learn what it means to carry yourself differently.

the thing that feels like an inconvenience is actually part of the invitation.

There’s something strange about being the only Black woman in a space.

You become aware of yourself in ways you might not be anywhere else.

You notice who looks like you.

You notice who doesn’t.

You notice the assumptions people make, the conversations you have, the ways you represent yourself—and sometimes, whether you like it or not, the ways people may perceive you as representing something bigger than yourself.

But I’ve been thinking about how God has never required us to blend in before He could use us.

In Scripture, God repeatedly placed people in rooms where they were different.

Joseph was in Egypt.

Esther was in a Persian palace.

Daniel was in Babylon.

Ruth was a foreigner.

None of them looked at their surroundings and thought, This is obviously where I belong.

& maybe that’s the point.

Sometimes God puts you somewhere unfamiliar because there is something you can carry into that environment that wouldn’t mean the same thing somewhere comfortable.

Your faith.

Your character.

Your kindness.

Your perspective.

Your restraint.

Your ability to serve people who may not understand you.

Your willingness to remain soft in a place that gives you plenty of reasons to become hard.

Maybe being different isn’t always something to escape.

Maybe sometimes it’s part of the assignment.

Customer service will test every ounce of sanctification you thought you had.

People can be entitled.

Impatient.

Demanding.

Sometimes downright rude.

& girl….if we’re being especially honest, there are moments when the Christian response we want to give and the Christian response we’re actually called to give are two very different things.

But maybe that’s where faith becomes practical.

It’s easy to talk about being loving when nobody is irritating you.

It’s easy to talk about patience when nobody is making your day harder.

It’s easy to say you want to reflect Christ when everyone around you is treating you well.

The real test is what comes out of you when someone gives you every reason to give them something else.

Maybe the customer isn’t the problem

Maybe your response to the problem is

That doesn’t mean allowing people to mistreat you.

It doesn’t mean abandoning boundaries.

It doesn’t mean pretending difficult behavior is okay.

It means remembering that your character doesn’t have to be dictated by someone else’s.

You can still be gracious.

You can still be professional.

You can still be kind.

You can still represent Christ.

Even when nobody knows you’re doing it for Him.

Especially then.

Can I give you context?

I used to want to be an interpreter for the United Nations.

That dream feels like it belonged to another version of me.

And now I find myself working in an environment where languages, cultures, countries, and people from all over the world intersect.

Do I speak every language?

Absolutely not.

In fact, sometimes being surrounded by languages I don’t understand reminds me just how much I don’t know.

But maybe that’s part of the reminder too.

Maybe God is showing us that our old dreams aren’t always as random as we thought they were.

Sometimes we imagine a dream has to happen exactly the way we pictured it for it to have meant something.

But what if the dream was revealing something deeper?

Maybe it wasn’t just about becoming an interpreter.

Maybe it was about communication.

Connection.

Culture.

People.

Understanding.

Being a bridge between worlds.

maybe God can use the essence of a dream even when He changes the form.

That’s something I’m learning:

God is not limited by the version of your dream you originally imagined.

Sometimes He takes the desire you thought was about a position and reveals that it was actually about a purpose.

I think we sometimes expect God to speak through one giant, unmistakable moment.

A burning bush.

A dream.

A booming voice.

A sign so obvious that there is no room for doubt.

But maybe God also speaks through patterns.

Through the things that keep coming back.

Through desires you thought you outgrew.

Through opportunities you didn’t plan.

Through discomfort that keeps exposing something in you.

Through people who teach you something without realizing it.

Through the same lesson appearing in different clothes.

Through a door that doesn’t make sense until you’re standing inside the room.

Maybe discernment isn’t always about asking, “Is this definitely God?”

Maybe sometimes it’s also asking,

“What is God inviting me to notice here?”

Because not everything that happens to us is necessarily a divine assignment.

But everything can become an opportunity to ask what God is doing in us.

that’s a different way of looking at life.

Maybe you’re in a job you don’t think you’ll stay at forever.

Maybe you’re in a city you never imagined living in.

Maybe you’re surrounded by people who don’t share your worldview.

Maybe you’re the only one who looks like you in the room.

Maybe you’re constantly reminded of what you don’t know.

Maybe you feel overqualified.

Maybe you feel underqualified.

Maybe you’re wondering why God hasn’t moved you yet.

Maybe you’ve been praying for the next thing so intensely that you’ve forgotten to ask what this thing is teaching you.

What if this season isn’t wasted?

What if you’re learning how to communicate?

How to listen?

How to serve?

How to lead?

How to be uncomfortable without becoming bitter?

How to walk into rooms without shrinking?

How to represent God without needing to announce Him?

How to recognize that your calling may begin long before the title does?

We are so obsessed with getting there that we sometimes miss what God is doing here.

But here matters.

This season matters.

This job matters.

This ordinary Tuesday matters.

The person in front of you matters.

The way you respond matters.

The character you’re building when nobody is applauding matters.

I’ve started to wonder if some of the places God puts us are less about what we are going to accomplish there and more about who we are becoming while we’re there.

Maybe your job isn’t your calling.

Maybe it’s a classroom.

Maybe the season you’re frustrated with is developing something you’ll need later.

Maybe the place where you feel like an outsider is teaching you how to create belonging for someone else.

Maybe the people who test your patience are teaching you how to practice patience.

Maybe the language you don’t understand is reminding you of a dream you buried.

Maybe the environment you didn’t choose is revealing gifts you didn’t know were still inside you.

Maybe the whole thing is making you pay attention.

& maybe that’s enough for now.

I don’t know exactly what God is doing with every detail of my life.

I don’t think we’re supposed to.

But I do know that I’ve become more interested in noticing.

Noticing the connections.

Noticing the patterns.

Noticing the things that feel strangely familiar.

Noticing where I am being stretched.

Noticing where I am being asked to serve.

Noticing where I am becoming more like Christ.

Because maybe faith isn’t always having the full explanation.

Maybe sometimes faith is being willing to say:

“God, I don’t completely understand why I’m here. But if You placed me here, help me see what You want me to see.”

Maybe that prayer changes the way we walk into work tomorrow.

Maybe we stop asking only, “When can I leave?”

& start asking,

“Who can I become while I’m here?”

Because perhaps you are not where you are by accident.

Perhaps the room you’re in is connected to a prayer you prayed years ago.

Perhaps the uncomfortable thing is developing a strength you’ll need later.

Perhaps the dream you thought died is simply being translated into a different language.

& perhaps, in ways you can’t fully see yet, God’s hand has been on the details all along.

I had an argument with my mom.

& im still angry.

Not the kind of angry where you slam a door and feel better twenty minutes later.

The kind that sits in your chest.

The kind that makes you replay the conversation while you’re brushing your teeth.

The kind where you keep thinking of all the things you should have said, except the truth is you probably wouldn’t have said them anyway because you’re so used to making sure everyone else is okay.

That’s the problem.

I’m always making sure everyone else is okay.

I don’t even know when I started doing it.

Maybe that’s a lie.

I do know.

I just don’t remember ever deciding to.

I was the oldest.

being the oldest daughter in my family didn’t just mean I was born first.

It meant I knew.

I knew where things were.

I knew what needed to happen.

I knew what everyone was doing.

I knew who needed what.

I knew what was going to go wrong before it went wrong.

I knew how to fix it.

Cause if I didn’t know, I was expected to figure it out.

I was a kid.

But somehow I was always the one thinking like an adult.

nobody called it anything.

There wasn’t some dramatic moment where my mom sat me down and said,

“Okay. From now on, you’re responsible for everybody.”

It was smaller than that.

That’s what makes it hard to explain.

It was a thousand tiny things.

Can you?

Can you make sure?

Can you remember?

Can you help?

Can you handle this?

Can you call them?

Can you figure out what’s happening?

Can you keep an eye on your brother?

Can you make sure everyone gets there?

Can you

Can you

Can you

eventually you stop hearing the question.

You just do it.

You become the person who knows.

The person who remembers.

The person who handles.

The person who doesn’t need to be asked.

…everyone loves that person.

People tell you you’re mature.

You’re responsible.

You’re so dependable.

You’re such a good daughter.

& you smile.

Because what else are you supposed to do?

Tell them you don’t want to be dependable anymore?

Tell them sometimes you want to be the stupid one?

The clueless one?

The one who doesn’t know what time everyone needs to leave?

The one who doesn’t have a backup plan?

The one who gets to say,

“I don’t know. Ask Mommy”

Except Mommy is the person asking you.

that’s the confusion see

Because I love my mama

I really do.

That’s what makes being angry with her so complicated.

If I didn’t love her, this would be easier.

I could just decide she was wrong.

I could make her the villain.

I could tell the story where I’m the daughter who finally stood up for herself and walked away.

But that’s not my story.

My story is that I love my mother and I’m still fucking tired.

I’m tired of being the person who has to think about everybody.

I’m tired of the invisible list in my head.

I’m tired of knowing what everyone needs before they say it.

I’m tired of feeling guilty when I don’t help.

I’m tired of being annoyed when nobody helps.

I’m tired of being resentful about things I never asked for but somehow became responsible for.

the worst part?

Sometimes I don’t even know how to stop.

Because when you’ve been doing something your whole life, it starts to feel like you.

Maybe I’m just organized.

Maybe I’m just responsible.

Maybe I’m just the oldest.

Maybe this is what being a good daughter looks like.

Maybe I’m being dramatic.

Maybe everyone has to help their family.

Maybe I’m selfish.

Maybe I should just do it.

That’s the voice in my head.

Just do it.

Just handle it.

It’ll be easier.

Don’t make it a thing.

Don’t start something.

Don’t make mommy feel bad.

Don’t make everyone uncomfortable.

Just do it.

So I do.

& then one day you realize you’re furious.

Not because of the thing you’re doing.

Because of every single thing before it.

You’re angry at today’s request because you’re actually angry about the last twenty years.

You’re angry at the question because you remember all the other questions.

You’re angry that someone assumes you’ll handle it because you have spent your entire life teaching them that you will.

& then comes the fucked up part

You don’t know how to be angry without feeling guilty.

So even while I’m angry at my mama there’s another part of me asking if I’m being unfair.

If I’m hurting her.

If I’m being ungrateful.

If she thinks I’m saying she was a bad mother.

that’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying I was her daughter.

& sometimes I think I needed to be allowed to just be that.

I needed someone else to think about the logistics.

I needed someone else to know.

I needed someone else to carry it.

I needed to be able to be a kid without wondering what everybody else needed from me.

Maybe that’s what hurts the most.

Not that I had responsibilities.

It’s that I don’t remember anyone telling me I could put them down.

I don’t remember anyone saying,

“You don’t have to worry about this.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Go play.”

“Go be a kid.”

“It’s not your problem.”

Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time letting people help me now.

Because somewhere in me, there is still this little girl who doesn’t believe anyone is coming.

So she gets there first.

She figures it out first.

She plans for the worst.

She makes herself useful.

She becomes indispensable.

& then she wonders why she’s exhausted.

I’m realizing

Oh.

I wasn’t just “the responsible one.”

I was carrying things.

Things that weren’t mine.

maybe my mama didn’t know.

Maybe she was doing the best she could.

Maybe she was carrying her own things.

Maybe nobody taught her any different.

Maybe this is something she inherited too.

I can understand all of that.

& still be angry.

Both can be true.

That’s the part I’m trying to learn.

Understanding someone doesn’t mean I have to keep carrying what they gave me.

Maybe things will just be different.

Maybe someone else will have to step up.

Maybe someone else will forget something.

Maybe something won’t be perfectly organized.

Maybe there will be a little chaos.

Maybe that’s okay.

Maybe I don’t have to prevent every bad thing from happening.

Maybe I don’t have to be the family emergency contact in every sense of the word.

Maybe I can just be someone’s daughter.

& maybe my mama will have to learn how to let me be that.

I’m still angry.

I don’t know if I’m done being angry.

Cause honestly, I don’t think I need to rush through it.

Because maybe anger is what happens when the part of you that has been saying it’s fine for twenty years finally gets tired.

Maybe anger is the first honest thing.

I’m angry that I had to grow up so quickly.

I’m angry that being capable became an expectation.

I’m angry that people mistook my coping mechanisms for my personality.

I’m angry that I became good at carrying things nobody noticed I was carrying.

I’m angry that I still feel guilty when I put something down.

& I’m angry that part of me is still waiting for someone to tell me I’m allowed to.

So I’ll tell her myself.

You don’t have to figure it out.

You don’t have to fix it.

You don’t have to know what everyone is doing.

You don’t have to keep everybody happy.

You don’t have to be the strong one.

You don’t have to be the good daughter.

You don’t have to earn your place here by being useful.

You can be tired.

You can be angry.

You can be difficult.

You can say no.

You can let someone else handle it.

You can love your mother and still be hurt by her.

You can understand where she came from and still decide you don’t want to carry it forward.

You can put the phone down.

You can stop answering.

You can let the problem belong to the person it actually belongs to.

You can be the daughter.

Just the daughter.

& maybe, finally, that’s enough.

I was supposed to go home.

My time was up.

My workday was done.

Cause technically, this wasn’t even my airline’s problem.

The passenger had been denied boarding on another airline because of an issue that wasn’t her fault. She had been waiting for over an hour and a half for the other airline’s lead to come and resolve it.

I could have left.

I should have left

I was supposed to leave.

But the Holy Spirit said to stay

So I stayed.

Not because I was being paid to stay.

Not because anyone was asking me to stay.

Not because I thought someone would notice.

& definitely not because I was thinking about some reward at the end of it.

I stayed because I knew I was being obedient.

Then I found out why.

Her husband had died.

She was trying to get to Dubai to make arrangements.

I remember thinking about how much she was already carrying.

Grief.

Loss.

Travel.

Stress.

& now, after losing her husband, she was standing in an airport unable to even board her flight because of someone else’s mistake.

So I stayed.

I helped get her a hotel.

I helped get her rebooked.

I stayed way past the time I was supposed to be done.

I didn’t resent it.

Because by then I understood.

This wasn’t really about a flight.

It was about a person.

A grieving woman who needed somebody to stand beside her when everything felt like it was going wrong.

Eventually, we got it handled.

then she hugged me.

& she cried.

She kept thanking me over and over.

these weren’t tears of frustration anymore.

They were tears of relief.

Tears of joy.

She held onto me and kept saying thank you.

& then she said,

“God will bless you for this.”

here’s the part that stopped me.

Behind us was the restaurant bar.

glowing in neon were the words:

LIFTED SPIRITS.

I just stood there for a second.

Because that’s exactly what I had been doing.

Not solving her grief.

I couldn’t do that.

Not replacing her husband.

I couldn’t do that either.

Not changing what happened to her.

But I could lift her spirit.

I could make an awful day a little lighter.

I could stand there and help carry one small piece of what she was going through.

I think that’s something God asks us to do more often than we realize.

Lifted spirits.

Not everything we do for somebody has to come with a reward.

Not every act of kindness needs to turn into a testimony about how God blessed us.

Sometimes God asks us to be the blessing.

Sometimes He asks us to give without expecting anything back.

Sometimes He asks us to stay when we’d rather go home.

Sometimes obedience looks like being inconvenienced.

Sometimes it costs you your time.

Sometimes it costs you your comfort.

Sometimes it means doing something that technically isn’t your responsibility.

Man, sometimes you don’t get anything in return except the privilege of knowing you did what God asked you to do.

That’s enough.

Because I wasn’t standing there thinking, God, if I stay, what are You going to give me?

I wasn’t making a deal with God.

I wasn’t doing it for a blessing.

I stayed because He told me to stay.

& then I got to watch her spirit lift.

I got to watch the tears change.

From frustration and heartbreak...

to relief.

To gratitude.

To joy.

& then she hugged me and told me God would bless me.

Maybe He will.

But honestly?

I already felt blessed.

Not because I received something.

Because I got to be obedient.

Because I got to be there.

Because for one woman who was grieving her husband and trying to navigate a day that had already become harder than it needed to be, I got to make things a little easier.

I got to lift her spirit.

Saints?! isn’t that what we’re here to do sometimes?

Not always preach.

Not always fix.

Not always explain.

Sometimes just show up

Sometimes just stay

Sometimes just help.

Sometimes just hold somebody while they cry.

sometimes,

Sometimes if we’re willing to be obedient enough to stay past our own plans, we get to see the reason God asked us to.

That neon sign said:

LIFTED SPIRITS.

I will never look at those words the same way again.

Because that day, I wasn’t just looking at a sign.

I was living it.

I was supposed to go home.

But God asked me to stay.

So I stayed.

& for a little while, I got to help carry someone’s heartbreak.

I got to lift her spirit.

I got to see, firsthand, what obedience can look like when nobody is watching.

Except God.

There are things you aren’t supposed to admit out loud anymore.

Not if you want to sound “woke”.

Not if you want people to believe you’ve transcended race, trauma, preference, disappointment, desire.

But let me tell you the truth that keeps embarrassing me.

I still look for Black men.

Not because I think they’re easier.

God knows they aren’t.

Not because I think they’re better.

That depends on the day.

I look because something in me still answers when something in them enters the room.

It’s before I see him.

It’s the cadence.

The way certain words fall off the tongue like they’ve been passed down instead of learned. The laugh that starts in the chest before it reaches the mouth. The little “man...” under his breath after hearing something unbelievable. Sometimes I know before I ever turn my head.

Then I look.

& almost every time, I’m right.

It’s in the walk too.

Not one walk

there isn’t one Black walk but a certain relationship to space. Some brothers move like the room belongs to them. Others move like they’ve spent their entire lives preparing to defend themselves inside it.

Swag and survival can look surprisingly similar from across the room.

Then there’s the scent.

No, not because Black men smell one way.

Let’s be forreal

I mean his scent. The cologne that arrives a second before he does. Cocoa butter. Fresh detergent. Sometimes even the weed smoke he swore he quit. A barber’s aftershave. Laundry soap from his mama house still clinging to an old hoodie. Every man smells like a story, but somehow I always believe I already know the language.

They announce themselves without introducing themselves.

& maybe that’s what love is sometimes.

Recognition before confirmation.

I wish the story ended there.

It doesn’t.

Because loving Black men has been one long exercise in contradiction.

I have watched them survive things that should have broken them.

I have watched them carry families that never once asked if they were tired.

I have watched the world fear them before hearing them.

I have watched little boys become men without ever being allowed to be children.

& then...

I have watched those same men refuse to look inward.

Refuse therapy.

Refuse accountability.

Refuse softness unless it’s two in the morning and nobody is watching.

People throw around “emotional intelligence” like it’s a personality trait.

It isn’t.

It’s a skill.

A practice.

A willingness to name what you’re feeling before anger volunteers to do the talking.

Too many Black men I have known were fluent in providing.

In protecting.

In performing strength.

But ask, “What are you feeling?”

Silence.

Or irritation.

Or a joke.

Or sex.

Anything but the answer.

Not because they don’t feel.

Sometimes because they feel too much.

Because somewhere along the line they learned emotions were liabilities.

So now the women who love them inherit what the world refused to hold.

That doesn’t make it fair.

It doesn’t make it okay.

But it does make it complicated.

People always ask Black women why we don’t just date outside our race.

As if attraction is an application you submit online.

As if history doesn’t live in the body.

As if home is logical.

I’ve tried imagining it.

I’ve met wonderful men who weren’t Black.

Kind.

Curious.

Emotionally available.

The kind of men my friends tell me I deserve.

maybe I do.

But desire has never responded well to lectures.

There is a familiarity I haven’t figured out how to abandon.

The jokes that don’t require explanation

The music.

The grief.

The way one glance across a crowded cookout can become an entire conversation.

The understanding that sometimes exhaustion isn’t about work.

Sometimes it’s about surviving Tuesday.

I don’t know how to explain missing a language before you’ve even left it.

So I don’t.

I just keep trying.

& girl, then there is commitment.

Or rather...

the fear of it

Some Black men speak about partnership like it’s trauma

Love like it’s losing.

They want loyalty before vulnerability.

Wife privileges before husband behavior.

Healing without therapy.

Intimacy without accountability.

A forever that somehow never arrives.

& still...

I know what committed Black love can build.

I’ve seen grandparents who made fifty years look regular

I’ve watched uncles who never let their wives carry groceries.

I’ve watched men braid daughters’ hair, kiss foreheads before work, dance in kitchens while dinner burned.

I’ve seen Black men love with such devotion that it rearranged everyone watching.

Which is exactly why the disappointment cuts so deep.

You can’t mourn what you never believed in.

You mourn what you know is possible.

That’s the hardest part.

I don’t hate Black men.

God.

I wish people understood that criticism isn’t always the opposite of love.

Sometimes it’s evidence of it.

Sometimes you only write this much because you haven’t stopped hoping.

I know there are Black men doing the work.

Going to therapy.

Learning how to apologize.

Being good fathers

Choosing consistency over charisma.

Building families instead of collecting admirers.

I know they’re out there.

I also know too many women who are tired of waiting to meet them.

Maybe that’s what this critique really is.

Not an accusation

Not a love letter.

Something in between.

A record of what it feels like to love a people who have been wounded by the world and, sometimes, wound each other because of it.

A confession that I still turn my head when I hear that laugh.

That voice.

That rhythm.

That unmistakable presence entering a room.

I recognize him before I see him.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s my gift.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s my curse.

I don’t have a conclusion.

Only an ache.

Because there is something profoundly lonely about loving home while wondering whether home knows how to love you back.

If you had asked me a few years ago if I practiced witchcraft, I would’ve laughed.

I would’ve said, Absolutely not.

I wasn’t standing in a dark room chanting over candles. I wasn’t calling myself a witch. I was just doing what everyone else around me seemed to be doing.

Burning sage to “clear the energy.”
Pulling tarot cards because I wanted answers.
Reading my horoscope before making decisions.
Believing the universe was sending me signs.
Trying to manifest the life I wanted.

It all felt harmless.

It felt spiritual.

It even felt empowering.

But deception rarely introduces itself as deception.

It introduces itself as healing.

As self-discovery.

As empowerment.

As “finding your truth.”

Looking back now, I can see what I couldn’t see then: I wasn’t just searching for peace—I was searching for control.

I wanted certainty.

I wanted love.

I wanted to know the future.

I wanted someone to choose me.

& that’s where the enemy met me.

The devil doesn’t always tempt us with things that look evil. Sometimes he tempts us with things that look beautiful. Things that promise comfort, clarity and healing,

He studies our insecurities.

He knows where we feel rejected.

He knows where we feel abandoned.

He knows where we’re desperate.

& he offers shortcuts.

Not because he loves us.

Because he wants us bound.

One of the biggest examples in my own life was a love spell.

Even typing those words makes me cringe.

At the time, I convinced myself it wasn’t that serious. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I just wanted someone to love me. I wanted the relationship I had imagined. I wanted things to work.

I thought I was helping fate along.

Instead, it became one of the clearest examples of why God warns us about things like that

What I wanted so badly ended up bringing confusion, heartache, and consequences I never expected.

It backfired.

Not because love is wrong.

But because manipulation

whether it feels “spiritual” or not is never God’s design.

I was looking for power where only God has authority.

That’s the thing about occult practices.

They often don’t feel dark in the beginning.

They feel comforting.

Tarot feels like guidance.

Astrology feels like understanding yourself.

Sage feels like protection.

Manifestation feels like hope.

But the enemy is perfectly content dressing chains up to look like jewelry.

Scripture tells us that Satan masquerades as an angel of light.

& here’s what breaks my heart the most.

I wasn’t looking for demons.

I was looking for healing.

I wasn’t trying to rebel against God.

I was trying to fill places in my heart that only He could heal.

I think that’s true for so many people.

We’re anxious.

We’re lonely.

We’re grieving.

We’re insecure.

We’re desperate for answers.

Instead of waiting on God, we start looking for immediate reassurance somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

The enemy doesn’t need us to stop believing in God.

Sometimes he just needs us to believe we need something besides God.

But God.

Those two words changed everything for me.

God didn’t expose these things to shame me.

He exposed them to free me.

That’s what His conviction feels like. It doesn’t say, “You’re too far gone.”

It says, “Come home.”

His kindness led me to repentance not fear, not humiliation, but love.

When I started reading Scripture instead of tarot cards, I found something better than predictions.

I found truth.

When I stopped looking to the stars for my identity, I discovered the One who created the stars already knew my name.

When I stopped trying to manipulate outcomes, I learned I could trust God’s timing more than my own striving.

& when I surrendered my need to control everything, I experienced a peace no ritual had ever been able to give me.

That’s the goodness of God.

He doesn’t just rescue us from sin.

He rescues us from deception.

He rescues us from striving.

He rescues us from believing we have to manufacture what only He can provide.

If you’re reading this and you’re where I once was, this isn’t written to condemn you.

It’s written because I recognize myself in you.

I know what it’s like to be searching.

I know what it’s like to want answers so badly that almost anything sounds reasonable.

But I also know this:

Jesus is enough.

You don’t need tarot cards to hear from God.

You don’t need astrology to understand your purpose.

You don’t need sage to protect your home.

You don’t need a spell to receive love.

You need the One who defeated darkness altogether.

I thought I was chasing light.

I had no idea I was walking deeper into darkness.

Thank God He came looking for me anyway.

& if He did it for me, He can do it for you too.

I’ve been contemplating

returning to a version of myself I forgot existed.

She’s fourteen.

She listens to Hilary Duff with the windows down like she’s in the opening scene of a coming-of-age movie. She knows every word to “Pieces of Me” by Ashlee Simpson.

Read more

I think we’re at that age where we finally understand our aunties.

Cause if I’m honest

I think that’s what makes me a little emotional.

Because when we were younger, we thought they were just… grown.

We thought the things they did were normal.

The red lipstick.

The gold hoops.

The leopard print.

The perfume that walked into the room before they even announced themselves.

The big earrings.

The mom jeans that looked better on them than anything we could find today.

We thought they were just getting dressed.

We didn’t realize they were creating a whole world.

A whole feeling.

The ’90s had a way of making Black women look like art.

& I don’t mean perfect.

Read more

I used to think letting people go meant I failed.

That if someone walked away...
if a friendship faded...
if love ended...
if the conversations became shorter until there were none at all...

Then somehow I had done something wrong.

So I’d replay every conversation.
Wonder what I could’ve said differently.
Pray for restoration while secretly trying to orchestrate it myself.

Until God started teaching me something I didn’t want to learn.

Not everything lost is meant to be found again.

Some people are assignments.
Some are seasons.
Some are mirrors.
Some are lessons.
Very few are forever.

The beautiful thing about God is that He never asks us to empty our hands without intending to place something greater inside them.

I’ve noticed something about Him.

He rarely explains why He’s removing someone while He’s removing them.

He just asks for trust.

Trust Me….

Even when it hurts.

Even when you’re confused.

Even when your heart still reaches for what’s already walking away.

Because God sees what we can’t.

He sees the conversations we’ll never have.
The disappointments we haven’t experienced yet.
The heartbreak we don’t know we’re being protected from.
The doors that could never open if we kept standing in front of the ones He already closed.

I’ve stopped seeing endings as punishment.

yeah no, I see it differently now

Now I see them as preparation.

Maybe that’s what peace really is.

Not having all the answers.

Not pretending it didn’t hurt.

Not becoming cold enough that you stop loving people.

Peace is simply believing that God is too good to remove something without purpose.

His character has become my evidence.

I’ve lived long enough to know this:
Every time I thought my life was falling apart, He was quietly rebuilding it into something I couldn’t have imagined.

Every single time.

The friendships I cried over made room for people who actually prayed for me.

The opportunities I lost prepared me for ones I wasn’t ready for yet.

The prayers He said “no” to became the testimonies I thank Him for today.

God has never been careless with my losses.

Never.

So these days, I don’t fight so hard to keep people who are determined to leave.

I bless them.

I thank God for whatever purpose they served.

& I release them with open hands.

Because closed fists can’t receive new blessings.

I’ve become convinced that Heaven doesn’t subtract without multiplying in ways we don’t expect.

Maybe not immediately.

Maybe not in the same form.

But always according to His goodness.

The enemy wants us to believe that what left was the best we’ll ever have.

God whispers something completely different.

“Trust Me. You haven’t seen the best yet.”

So if you’ve been grieving someone who walked away...

If you’ve been mourning the end of a friendship...

If you’re staring at an empty space where someone used to be...

Don’t mistake empty for abandoned.

God often clears the ground before He builds something beautiful.

What feels like loss today may become the very reason you recognize His faithfulness tomorrow.

I’ve made peace with letting people go.

Not because they weren’t important.

But because my life is safest in the hands of a God who knows exactly who belongs in it.

& if He is making room...

Then I can’t wait to see what He’s bringing.

Because I’ve learned something about my Father.

He has never taken anything from me without writing a better story on the other side.

Maybe that’s a dramatic title.

Or maybe it’s the truest sentence I’ve written in a long time.

Lately I’ve been sitting down to write, and every draft somehow finds its way back to disappointment.

Back to the almosts.

Back to the men who couldn’t choose me.

Back to abandonment.

Back to heartbreak.

Back to all the places my heart learned to limp.

& I realized something today...

I’ve spent so much time documenting the people who wounded me that I’ve barely written about the God who has been healing me.

That realization made me cry.

Because if someone only knew me through my writing, they might think the deepest relationship in my life was with my pain.

It isn’t.

It’s with Jesus.

& somehow...

I’ve given my wounds more pages than I’ve given Him.

Today, during worship, I wasn’t asking for anything.

I wasn’t asking Him to send my husband.

I wasn’t asking Him to fix my future.

I wasn’t asking Him why certain prayers still feel unanswered.

I just stood there.

& then His presence found me.

I don’t know how to explain it without sounding foolish to someone who’s never experienced Him.

It wasn’t loud.

There wasn’t a miracle.

No booming voice from heaven.

Just this overwhelming sweetness.

The kind that settles on your soul so gently that before you know it, you’re crying.

Not because you’re broken.

Because you’re being loved.

& for a moment...

nothing else mattered.

Not the years I thought I’d be married by now.

Not the conversations that never became relationships.

Not the disappointments.

Not the waiting.

It was as if He was saying without words,

“Look at Me.”

& I realized how often I’ve been looking over His shoulder.

Always searching for the thing I hope His hands are carrying.

Marriage.

A husband.

The next season.

The answered prayer.

While He’s been standing in front of me all along.

I wonder how many times He’s wanted to simply be with me...

while I’ve been asking Him to bring me someone else.

Today, I didn’t leave church thinking about what I don’t have.

I left thinking...

How could I ever call myself alone when I’ve experienced a love like that?

There are people who have marriage and have never felt what I felt today.

There are people who go home to someone every night and still don’t know what it feels like to have the Creator of the universe wrap Himself around a weary heart.

I did.

Today.

& somehow...

that feels impossible to put into words.

His presence doesn’t erase my desires.

It doesn’t suddenly make me stop wanting to be someone’s wife.

It doesn’t cancel the ache.

It just reminds me that the ache isn’t the truest thing about me anymore.

His love is.

I think that’s what I’ve been missing.

I’ve become such a student of my pain.

I can tell you exactly who hurt me.

Exactly what they said.

Exactly how it changed me.

I can trace every crack in my heart.

But what if I became that familiar with His faithfulness?

What if I started remembering every prayer He answered instead of only the ones He hasn’t?

Every door He opened.

Every time He carried me.

Every moment He refused to let me fall apart.

Every time His presence interrupted my anxiety.

Every time His peace walked into a room before I did.

I’ve written enough about the people who left.

I want to write about the God who stayed.

The God who has never once asked me to earn His affection.

The God who has never made me question whether I’m enough.

The God who has never left my text unanswered.

The God who has never gone quiet because He lost interest.

The God who has seen every version of me

the angry one,

the grieving one,

the hopeful one,

the exhausted one,

the girl who wanted to quit,

the woman who’s still becoming

and somehow...

He has never once loved me less.

I don’t know if I’ll ever stop writing about heartbreak.

It’s part of my story.

But I refuse to let it become the headline.

Because when I stand before God one day, I don’t want the loudest chapter of my life to be about the people who hurt me.

I want it to be about the God who never did.

Maybe that’s the story I’ve been trying to write all along.

I just finally remembered who the main character is.

I’m done pretending that disappearing slowly hurts less than leaving all at once.

It doesn’t.

People love to say, “Well... at least they’re trying.”

Trying?

Where?

Because from where I’m standing, a child shouldn’t have to call three, four, five times just to hear their parent’s voice.

A child shouldn’t have to wonder if today is the day they’ll answer.

A child shouldn’t have to earn a conversation.

& I sure as hell shouldn’t be expected to facilitate one.

Somehow, the responsibility always finds the parent who stayed.

“Did you tell him to call?”

“Put him on the phone.”

“Encourage him to talk.”

No.

I’m done translating silence into effort.

I’m done dressing up inconsistency as “doing the best they can.”

If someone wants to know their child, they’ll know their child.

No reminder from me should be necessary.

What broke me wasn’t even the missed calls.

It was realizing my son had stopped expecting anything.

He’d call.

No answer.

His dad would finally call back.

& suddenly everyone expected me to pull words out of my son’s mouth.

As if I was supposed to manufacture a relationship that hadn’t been built.

As if I was responsible for creating closeness after years of distance.

No.

That isn’t my job.

It never was.

Children become quiet around people who feel unfamiliar.

Not because they’re difficult.

Because relationships require time.

Presence.

Consistency.

You don’t get to disappear and then expect instant access to someone’s heart.

Not even your own child’s.

Here’s the part that makes people uncomfortable.

Some parents don’t actually want the responsibility of parenting.

They want the title.

They want the occasional photo.

The Father’s Day text.

The benefit of saying, “That’s my kid.”

Without doing the ordinary, unglamorous work that earns trust.

Love isn’t proven in declarations.

It’s proven in showing up.

Again.

& again.

& again.

I’m angry.

Not because someone failed me.

Because a little boy had to learn disappointment far earlier than he should have.

I’m angry because children have an incredible ability to normalize neglect.

They don’t always scream.

Sometimes they simply stop asking.

& adults mistake that silence for resilience.

It isn’t.

It’s heartbreak learning how to survive.

So yes, I blocked the number.

Not to punish anyone.

To stop participating.

To stop carrying the emotional labor of a relationship that never belonged on my shoulders.

I’m no longer reminding a grown man to be a father.

I’m no longer convincing a child to keep reaching for someone who keeps letting go.

If that makes me difficult, so be it.

If that makes me bitter in someone’s story, I’ll survive it.

Because protecting my peace sometimes means allowing someone else to experience the full weight of their own choices.

& here’s the truth no one likes to say out loud:

Children remember who made them feel safe.

They remember who showed up.

They remember who stayed.

Presence leaves fingerprints.

So does absence.

& what’s even sadder..

I know amazingly beautiful fathers who show up.

Everyday.

I just didn’t choose the right one.

So I’ll live with my choice.

& he will live with his.

There is a version of womanhood we’ve been quietly sold.

It tells us our beauty doesn’t exist until someone stares.
Our softness doesn’t count until someone protects it.
Our worth isn’t real until a man with access chooses us.

We’ve been taught to confuse being desired with being valuable.

They’re not the same thing.

The other day I went to a day party.

I expected music.
A drink.
Maybe a few laughs.

What I didn’t expect was to walk in and feel every eye turn toward me.

Not because I was trying to be the prettiest woman in the room. Not because I had engineered some perfect outfit or rehearsed confidence in the mirror.

I simply arrived.

There is a difference.

I didn’t shrink.
I didn’t scan the room wondering if anyone thought I was beautiful.
I didn’t perform.

I just existed.

& somehow that was enough.

The line wrapped around the building, but I never stood in it. A friend of a football player waved me through the entrance like I belonged there all along.

No begging.

No proving.

No convincing anyone to let me in.

Just access.

I kept thinking about how much of my life I’ve spent believing I had to earn doors that were always going to open for me.

How exhausting.

He treated me with kindness.

He made sure I was taken care of.

We danced until my feet forgot every room I’d ever entered trying to be enough.

He made me feel like a queen.

But here’s what surprised me.

The feeling didn’t come from him.

It came from me.

That’s the part I don’t think we tell women enough.

Because if a man can make you feel like royalty, another man can make you feel disposable.

If your identity is borrowed, someone else eventually collects it.

I don’t want borrowed love anymore.

I don’t want confidence that disappears when a text goes unanswered.

I don’t want to feel beautiful only when someone reaches for my waist.

I don’t want to mistake attention for affection.

I don’t want to build a life where my reflection depends on whoever is standing beside me.

I remembered a quote that has been echoing in my spirit:

I am the sun. The planets orbit me. I do not orbit the planets.

For years I lived backwards.

Orbiting men.

Orbiting their moods.

Their validation.

Their silence.

Their potential.

Their inability to choose me.

Making their gravity stronger than my own.

Women become galaxies and then spend decades convincing themselves they’re only moons.

How tragic.

The sun doesn’t chase.

The sun doesn’t negotiate its light.

It doesn’t ask permission to rise.

It simply does.

& everything else adjusts.

Somewhere along the way we started believing love was a destination instead of an identity.

But love isn’t who finally picks you.

Love is who you become when you remember God already did.

Before anyone called you gorgeous.

Before anyone opened the VIP gate.

Before anyone held your hand while the music played.

Before anyone looked at you like you were the only woman in the room.

You were already loved.

Already chosen.

Already radiant.

The party ended.

The music faded.

The lights came on.

& I realized something followed me home that had nothing to do with who I spent the afternoon with.

It was me.

Not the woman trying to earn attention.

The woman who remembered she was never lacking.

Maybe that’s what healing really is.

Not finding someone who loves you enough to convince you you’re worthy.

But finally believing you were worthy before they ever learned your name.

So this is my plea to every woman reading this:

Stop measuring your life by who is standing next to you in the photos.

Stop believing your value rises and falls with someone’s interest.

Stop making yourself a moon in someone else’s solar system.

Come back to yourself.

Come back to the God who called you beloved before the world ever called you beautiful.

Because love was never supposed to be the man holding your hand.

Love was always supposed to be the woman walking into the room already knowing who she was.

You are not waiting for your light.

You are the light everyone else has been standing in.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from working two jobs.

Or raising children.

Or paying bills.

It comes from being expected to carry things that were never yours.

Tonight it sounded like this.

“Can you take him off speaker?”

& maybe that shouldn’t have irritated me.

Maybe it was a reasonable request.

Maybe he really couldn’t hear him.

But that’s not what broke something open in me.

It was what that sentence represented.

Because I swear...

Somehow...

Everything eventually becomes my responsibility.

If my son doesn’t want to talk, I’m supposed to warm him up.

If the conversation is awkward, I’m supposed to smooth it over.

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The waitress smiled when he looked her in the eye.

He remembered.

“Thank you,” he said before she walked away.

Later, when the bill came, I slid it toward him.

“No,” I said. “This is your part.”

I showed him how to read the receipt. How to calculate a tip. Why we don’t leave people with less than they earned just because nobody is watching.

I pointed toward the exit signs.

“Always know where they are.”

Then I looked around the restaurant.

“& don’t ever put your back to the door.”

He looked at me with that face children make when they’re trying to understand why ordinary things suddenly feel important.

He didn’t know I wasn’t just teaching him how to take a woman on a date.

I was teaching him how to make someone feel safe.

There is a difference.

Single motherhood is strange.

People think you’re just raising children.

But sometimes you’re raising the kind of man you hoped would exist before you ever became a mother.

No one talks about that grief.

The quiet kind.

The kind that sits beside you while you’re explaining how to pull out a chair, how to walk closest to traffic, how to pay the bill without making a performance out of it.

The kind that whispers, Who taught you?

The answer is...

Life did.

Disappointment did.

The versions of myself that accepted less than tenderness did.

I have learned that pain has a funny way of becoming curriculum.

You either pass it down...

or you rewrite the lesson.

So there I was.

A woman sitting across from her son.

Teaching him things I learned by realizing they were missing.

Not because expensive dinners make someone a good man.

Not because opening doors earns love.

But because consideration is love in its earliest language.

Attention is love.

Protection is love.

Presence is love.

One day, another woman will sit across from him.

She won’t know there was once a little boy practicing how to fold his napkin.

She won’t know his mama quietly corrected him when he interrupted someone speaking.

She won’t know someone taught him to notice when a glass is empty. To thank the waiter. To leave people better than he found them.

She’ll just think...

He was raised well.

& maybe that’s enough.

Maybe that’s one of the invisible rewards of motherhood.

No applause.

No audience.

Just seeds planted in ordinary moments that bloom in someone else’s life years later.

Sometimes I wonder if single mothers spend their lives building homes they’ll never live in.

Teaching kindness they’ll never receive.

Creating safety they’ll never get to experience.

There is something both beautiful and heartbreaking about that.

But if I’m honest...

I’d do it all over again.

Because my sons are not punishments for what I survived.

They are proof that healing can have a last name.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s what single motherhood really is.

Not just raising children...

but giving the world people who love better than the world loved you.

Maybe that’s why God trusted women like us with sons.

Because healing isn’t always loud.

Sometimes it looks like a little boy learning where the exit signs are.

Sometimes it looks like a receipt folded neatly with a twenty-five percent tip.

Sometimes it looks like a mother swallowing her own ache long enough to make sure another woman’s daughter never has to carry it.

& maybe...

that is the closest thing to redemption I’ve ever touched.

Yesterday, I quit my job.

Not because I couldn’t do it.
Not because I wasn’t good enough.
Not because I couldn’t take criticism.

I quit because I finally realized there’s a difference between being corrected and being disrespected.

Black women know the difference.

We know what it’s like to walk into a room already edited before we’ve spoken a single word. We know what it’s feels like to be called intimidating when we’re simply confident. Difficult when we’re direct. Aggressive when we refuse to let someone mishandle us.

I’ve spent enough years wondering if I should smile more.

Talk softer.

Take up less space.

Make everyone else comfortable at the expense of myself.

Yesterday, I was done.

I watched insecurity wear authority like a uniform. I watched someone confuse my silence for submission, and when I didn’t give them either, suddenly I became the problem.

Funny how that works.

Sometimes the loudest thing in the room isn’t your voice.

It’s someone else’s discomfort with yours.

For so long I thought freedom would feel like winning.

Like confetti.

Like a promotion.

Like someone finally saying, “You were right.”

Instead...

Freedom felt like walking to my car after quitting and realizing I could finally breathe.

Relief doesn’t always look victorious.

Sometimes it looks like unclenching your jaw for the first time in months.

Sometimes it looks like deleting the alarm you no longer have to wake up to.

Sometimes it sounds like silence after surviving noise you convinced yourself was normal.

I’m a single mother.

Every decision I make carries the weight of two little boys watching.

People think single moms only make choices based on money.

But nobody talks about what disrespect costs.

What missing bedtime costs.

What coming home emotionally bankrupt costs.

What sacrificing your peace over and over teaches your children about what they should tolerate.

My boys deserve a mother who is present.

Not just physically.

Spiritually.

Emotionally.

Mentally.

I don’t want them to remember me as the woman who was always exhausted trying to prove she deserved a seat at someone else’s table.

I want them to remember that when the table demanded she shrink, she had enough courage to leave.

Here’s what I wish more Black women knew.

You do not have to become smaller because someone else is uncomfortable with the size of your calling.

You do not have to soften your intelligence so someone else can feel smart.

You do not have to abandon your boundaries to be considered “easy to work with.”

You do not have to apologize for speaking with conviction.

You are allowed to be bold.

Even in rooms that mistake boldness for rebellion.

Especially in rooms that only celebrate your strength when it’s convenient for them.

I don’t know what comes next.

Bills still exist.

Responsibilities still exist.

Fear still whispers.

But peace has a voice too.

& yesterday...

Peace was louder.

Maybe quitting wasn’t the courageous part.

Maybe the courageous part was finally believing that God can do more with my obedience than I could ever do with my survival.

Maybe freedom isn’t the absence of responsibility.

Maybe it’s finally having the courage to choose yourself without feeling guilty for it.

I didn’t leave because I was weak.

I left because I was free.

& if you’ve been surviving rooms that keep asking you to disappear...

This is your reminder.

You were never too much.

You were just standing in places that benefited from you believing you weren’t enough.

Leave the room.

There is a life waiting for the version of you that no longer apologizes for being seen.

I don’t think we talk enough about the way people settle for God.

Not choose Him.
Not desire Him.
Not ache for Him.
Settle.

The way you settle for a city you never wanted to live in, but the rent is cheap and you’ve already changed your address.
The way you settle for a man who is kind enough, safe enough, familiar enough, even though your spirit knows he was never your portion.
The way you settle for a life that doesn’t thrill you but doesn’t kill you either, so you call it peace when really it’s just resignation dressed in church clothes.

That’s how some of us come to God.

Not because He was the first thing our hearts reached for, but because everything else broke.
Because the man left.
Because the job fell through.
Because the body got tired.
Because the bank account said enough.
Because the dream took too long.
Because the world that seduced us with promises of fullness finally showed its teeth and left us hungry.

& suddenly God becomes what’s left.

The safe option.
The stable one.
The Holy backup plan.

We don’t say it like that, of course. We’d never be that honest out loud. We know the right language. We know how to make it sound noble. We say things like, “I’m just content in this season.” We say, “God is enough for me.” We say, “I’ve surrendered.”

But some of us haven’t surrendered.
We’ve simply run out of other doors to knock on.

& there is a difference.

Because surrender has softness in it.
Surrender is open-handed.
Surrender says, Even if none of it works out the way I imagined, I have seen enough of Your goodness to know that You are not a consolation prize. You are the prize.

Settling says something else.

Settling says, I tried men first. I tried money first. I tried validation first. I tried beauty, attention, sex, success, applause, distraction, control. I tried building a life sturdy enough to save me. And since none of it held, I guess I’ll take You.

That is a devastating thing to admit.

That sometimes we do not run to God because we are in awe of Him.
We run to Him because we are exhausted.
Because every idol eventually asks for more than it can give.
Because the world has a way of emptying you with both hands and then acting confused when you collapse.
Because we have kissed the mouths of things that could not love us back and still called it living.

& then we crawl toward heaven, not always in devotion, but in defeat.

I know that kind of faith.
The kind with dirt under its nails.
The kind that doesn’t arrive with clean theology and lifted hands but with mascara tracks, unanswered questions, and a deep humiliation over how many times you swore something else would satisfy you.

The kind that sits before God with the remnants of a ruined appetite and whispers, I don’t know if I came because I love You, or because I have nowhere else to go.

Maybe that’s the part nobody says.

Sometimes our relationship with God begins in the rubble of our other loves.

It begins after the man.
After the heartbreak.
After the ambition curdles into anxiety.
After the body image obsession.
After the chasing.
After the proving.
After the flirtation with lives that looked shinier from far away than they ever felt up close.

It begins when your life has finally worn you out enough to tell the truth.

& the truth is ugly.

The truth is that some of us wanted what God could give more than we wanted God Himself.
We wanted the blessing, not the blesser.
We wanted relief, not intimacy.
We wanted Him to patch up the loneliness, fix the finances, regulate the chaos, avenge the heartbreak, and maybe

if He had time

sit quietly in the corner while we got back to pursuing what we really loved.

We wanted God to be useful.
Holy, yes. Powerful, yes. Comforting, yes. But mostly useful.

A divine rescue plan.
A spiritual safety net.
A place to land when our own choices finally stopped holding our weight.

So we sit in church.
We read our Bibles.
We mouth the worship lyrics.
We tell ourselves we’re healed because the chaos got quieter.

But beneath all that, there can still be grief. Not grief over sin. Not grief over distance from God. Grief over the things we really wanted that He didn’t let us keep.

That’s the part that stings.

Some of us are not grieving the distance from Egypt because we miss bondage. We’re grieving because Egypt was familiar.

& God

beautiful, terrifying God

keeps asking us to hunger differently.

Not because He is cruel.
But because He knows what we do not: that every other god leaves bruises.

Every single one.

The god of romance will have you confusing attention with love.
The god of money will convince you rest is laziness and worth is measurable.
The god of beauty will keep moving the finish line until you hate your own reflection.
The god of independence will make intimacy feel like weakness.
The god of control will have you white-knuckling outcomes you were never meant to carry.

& then, when you are finally exhausted enough, there is God.

Still there.
Still so very Holy.
Still so very kind.
Still so,willing to receive a heart that should have come sooner.

That’s what wrecks me, actually.

Not just that we settle for Him.
But that He still takes us.

He still opens the door to people who spent years treating Him like an afterthought.
Still listens to prayers from mouths that only learned His name in crisis.
Still gathers people who spent half their lives chasing lesser lovers and says, Come here anyway.

No bitterness.
No pettiness.
No divine folded arms saying, Oh, so now you need Me?

Just mercy.

Just the scandal of a God who is not embarrassed by our late arrival.

& maybe that’s where the essay should turn, because this isn’t just about the shame of settling for God. It’s about the mercy of a God who refuses to be reduced by the smallness of our love.

Because yes, some of us came to Him after.
After everybody else.
After every other coping mechanism.
After every other god.
After the world had already had first dibs on our youth, our energy, our bodies, our attention, our loyalty, our dreams.

But “after” does not mean unwanted.

It just means honest.

Because eventually, if you stay with Him long enough, something shifts.

You stop treating Him like the last house on the block and start realizing He was home all along.

You stop grieving Him as the thing you had to settle for and start grieving all the years you wasted calling crumbs a feast.
You stop seeing obedience as the death of your joy and start seeing it as the first place joy can breathe.
You stop bringing Him the performance of contentment and start bringing Him your actual heart,

resentment, desire, disappointment, longing, lust for other lives, all of it and letting Him love you there until your appetite changes.

That’s the miracle, I think.

Not just that God saves us.
But that He retrains our desire.

He takes people who only came because they were desperate and teaches them delight.
He takes people who reached for Him as a last resort and slowly becomes their first thought in the morning.
He takes people who wanted His hand and introduces them to His face.
He takes people who thought holiness would starve them and shows them that they have never been more nourished than in His presence.

So maybe that’s what I’m trying to say:

I don’t want to settle for God.
I don’t want to call Him enough only because I couldn’t have what I wanted more.
I don’t want a faith built on holy resignation, where I smile through clenched teeth and call it peace.
I don’t want to stand in worship secretly mourning the life I would choose over Him if I thought I could have it.

I want something truer than that.

I want the kind of love that has looked the world in the face and still says, No, none of you are worth losing Him.
I want the kind of intimacy that doesn’t begin and end in emergency.
I want to know God as more than a shelter from devastation. I want to know Him as beautiful. As satisfying. As the only love that doesn’t turn predatory in my hands.

Because He is not the man you date because the one you really wanted never called back.
He is not the city you move to because your dream one was too expensive.
He is not the consolation ribbon at the end of a life that disappointed you.

He is God.

Which means the tragedy was never that life forced us to “settle” for Him.

The tragedy was that we never believed there was something better to reach for first.

I thought the hard part would be the plane ride.

The waiting at the gate.
The way your stomach folds in on itself when you’re on your way to something you’ve prayed over too long.
The way hope makes a fool of you before heartbreak ever gets the chance.

I thought the hard part would be arriving in Dallas with all that longing packed in my carry-on.
Trying to look pretty and unbothered while my heart was pacing ahead of me, already at the door, already asking to be let in.
Already calling something love before it had done enough to deserve the name.

But Dallas wasn’t the hard part.

The hard part was coming home.

Coming home with the same body, but not the same softness.
Coming home and realizing there are some disappointments that don’t just hurt your feelings, they rearrange your theology.

They make you look at your prayers funny.

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