Searching

I have a tendency to be impulsive. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to admit that but it’s true. Often my impulsivity is born out of a prolonged suppression. Self imposed. I keep myself from doing what is right for me or stop myself from speaking up for so long that I end up exploding. Yeah, not always the best move. But as I was looking at my website and noticing that I had deleted many of my previous posts, which were all spiritually based, I wondered what was at the core of that impulsive action.

I have spent the better part of my life doing what I thought was the “right” thing to do. Combine that with a side of people pleasing and my life felt less like me own and more like what I thought people wanted from me. I never took the time to investigate for myself what I wanted and then actually do or be that. I remember the day that I deleted my earlier posts. At the time I felt as though I was embarking on a new aspect of my spiritual journey. I was embracing Christianity and doing it with such fervor that it shocked ME. It felt as though this was necessary. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it but I knew that I needed to follow this thread.

I went to church weekly, I read the Bible daily, prayed multiple times a day and even got rid of some of my spiritual trinkets. I had even gone to catholic mass twice bought two rosaries, learned the Hail Mary prayer till I could do it almost by heart and considered becoming a full fledged catholic. You’re girl was GONE!

In all the years of my life I have learned that following the guidance of God/Spirit is essential. That’s not to say that I always do. There have been plenty of times, more than I can count, where I not only didn’t follow God’s advice, I ignored it all together. However, since 2020 my relationship with the Divine was becoming more palpable. I wasn’t just talking at God, I began to listen.

That listening meant a complete upheaval to my life in so many different ways. Each moment I felt ripped out of my comfort zone and continually placed in the unknown. I remember saying sometime around 2020 that

“I’m learning to be comfortable in uncomfortability.”

Listen, if you don’t want God to take you up on what you say, learn to guard your words. I can’t say that I was uncomfortable in church but it certainly was an unknown. Though the familiarity was thick and wrapped itself around me like a glove around me I couldn’t understand the reason for this detour.

No matter what the reason I was dutiful and did what God told me to do. Now that I’m coming down from my Jesus high I believe that I have a clear understanding of what God was doing. First, and this is more my personal revelation, I had to mend some generational wounds. I’ll get to that in another post. Second, as a spiritual wellness coach who uplifts and caters to the black community, I have to be able to understand the full scope of what lives within many of the people that I work with. Many of my clients are black women around the ages of 30 to 50 and are seeking something else, something that they can resonate with in a more tangible way. Some still go to church but feel that they need a spiritual supplement, others left the church all together and want to expand their spiritual horizons.

In either case, being in church and being in mass (though not for as long as my clients) enables me to meet them where they’re at and use language that they understand and feel most comfortable with. I won’t get into a whole discussion about the declining attendance of black folks in church. There are plenty of blogs and videos from people who have way more knowledge about that topic. What I can say is that we as a people, black people, are waking up to something much larger than church. And as folks are waking up they’re searching for truth. They’re searching for themselves.

Being able to help people who stand at a spiritual crossroads is an assignment that I gladly take on. This work, this life is not easy and we need all the tools and community support that we can get.