To My Future Son: With Thoughts of Ferguson

You have yet to be born
You have yet to be conceived
But I see you in my dreams
And I dream of the man you will be
And I pray that God would help me to prepare you for this world
Even though I sometimes worry this world is not prepared for you

You are the seed of your mommy and daddy’s hopes and dreams
Irish, African, Scottish, Southern, American
You will be the best remix we will ever help to create
I want you to know your roots
That you come from hardworking people
That you are a descendant of slave and free
I want to play for you the songs of your people
Made on porches and hills
In villages and in cities
In the songs of the free
And the blues of the oppressed
I want you to always find yourself

Your skin
Will be a mix of daddy’s freckles
A tinge of red hair
The rich hue of soil
Sweetened by sun
My son
You will be a symphony of skin tones
A roux of all the generational colors and shades that helped create you

Your hair will curl at the slightest humidity or rain
Will bend and twirl
Constantly searching for beats for minute and electric frequency
Your wide shoulders and chest
Will carry the load God gives you to bear
While helping you to surrender that load to the One who has already carried it all

Your hands are meant for pianos, for saxophones
For carpentry, for artistry
For sketching the architecture and design that comes to your mind
For handling scalpel and needle to fix heart and brain
For lifting praise, for counting the days
For drawing the line
For knowing when to stand up and fight

When it’s time
I want to prepare you
For walking out of our door
Into a world that may see your brown skin and fear it
Misunderstand it
Demand it be subdued

I want you to walk tall, with your shoulders back as your grandma taught me to
But because I love you
I will tell you sad truths
Everyone will not love your brown skin as much as you do
There have been many men and women before you
Who lost their lives for having the same brown skin you do

My son
I will not teach you to walk in fear
To judge anyone by their color of skin or the money they make
Only by their character and the respect they choose to give or take
I will pray for you every night
And think of the mothers of Oscar, Sean, Amadou, Trayvon, Emmett, Michael
And so many more
Who’s hope for what would have been their son’s future now lies in you

And I will hug you
And kiss you
Even if it embarrasses you
For all the mama’s kisses missed
For all the things these sons didn’t live to experience

My son, every life matters
Their lives mattered
Your life matters too
I love you,
Your future mommy

Adventures in Staying

A month ago my husband and I sat next to each other at a lawyer’s office to face a mountain of paperwork. We were buying our first home and felt like two kids wearing our parents’ clothes, fishing our hands out of sleeves that seemed too long to sign our lives away for the next thirty years.

This is the closest we have come to saying vows and making promises since our wedding day. Visions of the future danced behind our eyes. Would our future children know this house? Would their little feet lightly patter its floors? We imagined family gatherings, Thanksgivings, Christmases, birthdays, house parties. What would our family table be like?

My husband and I both changed addresses many times as kids. I grew up a military kid of divorced parents and he grew up a pastor’s son. The calling to serve sent our parents packing and unpacking several times in our childhood. I cried over friendships lost, over school years that must be interrupted to face a new city.

I attended eight different schools between kindergarten and senior year of high school. I spent most years dividing my time between summers with my dad, stepmother, sister and two brothers in one state, and the school year with my mom and sister in another. I’ve lived at seventeen different addresses in my life. I’m prepared to pack luggage for any length of trip. I have mastered the art of travel size.

I learned how to make friends anywhere and how to find something in common with almost anyone I meet. I lived on the west coast, in the south, the Midwest and Texas. I took my first flight at 4 years old and I’m so comfortable flying that my white noise of choice mimics the sound of an airplane cabin.

I’ve never fantasized about living in Brazil. I never dreamed of Paris, London, Milan, Cairo, or Johannesburg. I fantasized about home. I always had a twinge of jealousy for my friends whose parents lived in the same house all the years they grew up, whose parents still have the same phone number, same candy dishes full of peppermints, same old wallpaper and family photos.

Which is why the idea of having a permanent address with our names on the title and deed is cause for pause and reflection. As my husband and I have unpacked our life and left the boxes on the curb for the weekly trash run, as we’ve learned how to newly navigate a city we have both called home for years from our new address, and stare at blank walls and rooms that are now canvas to us, I know a new calling.

I don’t begrudge my childhood. I am thankful for the experience of having lived in different places, sat at different tables, learned to make friends no matter what our class, culture or skin color. This seemingly vagabond life prepared me for what I’m doing today: traveling, speaking, listening, performing, meeting new people from all walks of life and beliefs.

We have walked alongside many of our friends as faith and calling has led them to cross seas, sell possessions, uproot comfortability, serve in areas that are underserved, and immerse themselves in a culture very different from their own. As we have unpacked and settled in, the house has brought us new focus. We realized we are beginning a new adventure.

God is calling us to an adventure in staying, a journey of finding and keeping home. As traveling artists, my husband and I will find ourselves in many hotel rooms, churches, venues, and tour buses, so we’ve learned to make home wherever we are. But God has also given two people who are well acquainted with boxes, moving trucks and luggage, a place to unpack, breathe, rest, get to know our neighbors, serve our city and be a part of the art, creativity and community that is being built here.

I don’t long for a far away adventure, although if one comes along I’m happy to pack a bag and embrace the journey. I’m learning there are many times in life that God will call us to leave. But there are also times God will call us to stay. The lesson isn’t just in the staying or the leaving. The lesson is in continuing to follow the God who calls, whether it means we pack what little we have in a bag for a new address, or whether it means we unpack our life, put things in their respective drawers and cabinets, and make ourselves at home.

The Ministry of Disappointment

I grew up as a church teen in the 1990s. Kirk Franklin had just proved that gospel songs could be played in church and in the club. Gold and purple “Jesus Is Lord” banners were selling out as fast as you could sing a Maranatha song. It was an age of believing that the gospel could be connected to prosperity; that in the name of Jesus we could not only find love and peace, but also a Benz, a McMansion, a future husband (also known as Boaz), a future wive (also known as Proverbs 31 women), land, a larger paycheck, and awesome shoes. Whether you named it and claimed it, or marched around it six times in silence and the seventh time while blasting your loud trumpet (or shofar or boom box or tambourine or whatever you had on hand), believing that these things would bring you the answers to miraculous prayers became a way of life.

I don’t mean to poke fun. Okay I do a little bit, but I can’t completely poke fun. Sometimes I watched those prayers work. I watched people of faith pray for the sick and the sick were healed. I watched church members move into houses that the lender had nearly laughed them out of the door for attempting to buy. I watched Boazes and Proverbs 31 women find each other, marry and start families. So for years, I assumed this was the walk of faith. You see something you want, you pray and ask God, and you quote God’s word that applies to said request. You focus your positive thinking on the fact that God is powerful enough to answer, and will do all in his power and unlimited resources to fulfill your request.

Then I grew up. I learned the painful way that sometimes, even when we pray and ask God, even when we quote back to God in our prayer the applicable scriptures, even when we walk around the object that we are praying for six times and play our trumpet on the seventh, God doesn’t always answer us the way we want him to.

What do we assume about a God who does this? He must be mean, cold, distant, unloving, inconsiderate. He must be more human and less holy, right? He must care about other people more than he cares about us. He must not see how hard we’ve tried to be good, honest, and righteous.

Sometimes God is the great leader in a ministry of our disappointment. Sometimes we don’t get the job we asked for. Sometimes the Boaz/Proverbs 31 woman we thought we were supposed to marry doesn’t even want a second date. Sometimes we want a Benz and we can only afford a hoopty. Sometimes God allows us to be disappointed. Sometimes we learn through tears, heartache, anger and frustration that God is not a yes person, a genie to summon when we clasp our hands together to pray, a leprechaun or Santa who will fulfill our wishes if we are good children.

Sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we ask because as great as our plans are we don’t know the future pitfalls of our request. Sometimes he doesn’t answer our prayers the way we’d like and later in life we are thankful for his “no,” “not yet,” or “wait.” Sometimes we try our best to reason his sovereignty and we are never able to understand his reasons or the why to anything.

I’m learning to accept this mystery of God. There are many things about God I will come to know or understand and there is plenty I will never know, never understand, never be able to put words to. There are questions I will always have of God that I may have to wait until heaven to ask him (assuming there is question and answer time in heaven).

I was denied to three grad schools. I fell in love and had my heart broken. I’ve experienced broken family relationships that did not wrap up cleanly and with resolve like a Hallmark Channel family movie. I’ve had my health threaten my life and dreams. I’ve been angry with God. I’ve cussed and cursed. I’ve brandished my fist at God and I’ve wept like a baby with my face planted in the carpet asking for his help.

Disappointment is the crucible that can make even the most faith-filled person question God’s existence and his authority. It can also be the place that we truly find God and separate our need for answers from his all encompassing love for us. God is not an absent parent who, between shifts at his job and a run for cigarettes, forgets that we need milk for school in the morning. God is not a strict teacher who wants to sting our knuckles with a ruler every time we make a mistake.

God loves us. Not just because bumper stickers or badly designed t-shirts say so. God loves us. Not just because we try to be good or do good things for him. God loves us. Not because we clock in on time at church on Sunday or ladle chili into bowls at a soup kitchen. He loves us because he said so, because it is only in his character to do so. He is the God whose love is found in prosperity and poverty, in answers and in questions, in disappointment and in miracles. He is the God who keeps track of our tears, helps us to find joy and wants to walk with us everyday, whether we have the answers or not.

Like a Virgin

I lost my virginity in a hotel room. It was not like the movies, no dramatic musical crescendos, no perfectly crafted lines of dialogue, just two people cautiously traveling each other’s bodies for the first time. I was 31 years old and it was beautiful.

Like many church girls I signed a True Love Waits card when I was 14 and started wearing a purity ring in high school. My church community supported me, and my group of friends, mostly virgins, gave me no peer pressure.

In college, I busied myself in campus ministry and avoided dating to keep my worst fear from coming true. I was raised by a single mother who endeavored not to raise her daughters to intentionally become single mothers. I feared that I would arrive home with swollen belly and potential dreams dashed instead of completing the college degree my mom worked so hard to help me pay for and complete.

After college I spent my spare time working with the college ministry at church. It was normal on our team of twenty or so twenty-somethings for none of us to be getting any so my abstinence was accepted, applauded, and encouraged. My virginity wasn’t considered a freak of nature until I left my church bubble.

This is when I realized to be a virgin in my 20s, quickly approaching my 30s, to many people, seemed strange, weird, and unfortunate. I started working as an arts journalist, which changed my environment from church services to clubs and hip hop shows. When strangers asked about my ring and I explained it was a symbol of my commitment to Jesus to wait until I got married to have sex, I was met with blank stares.

In my late twenties, my virginity turned into a worry. I wondered what grown man would want to marry a woman in her thirties who had no sexual experience. A few potential dates applauded my choice. A couple of them tried a relationship with me only to decide breaking up was the best thing to do. Some of them expressly let me know that they did not date virgins, and didn’t want the responsibility, the clinging or the baggage.

By the time I turned thirty I was beginning to wonder if the status that I had worn proudly as a ring on my finger had become a liability to be managed and cautiously explained. So I decided the main thing my potential suitors needed to know was that I didn’t want to have sex until marriage. Whether my number of partners was zero or infinity was none of their business, especially on a first date. If we made it past a few dates into something that had the potential for a relationship, then I could share my status.

I wasn’t ashamed of my choice but I realized I didn’t have to wear my virginity on my sleeve. My virginity wasn’t the center of my worth. I realized although 14-year-old-me had signed a True Love Waits card, and high-school-me put on a purity ring, I was an adult now. My decision to wait to have sex until I got married didn’t have to be a platform for me to stand on. It was also a personal, private journey between God and me. A decision I would wrestle with, feel good about, get frustrated with, pray about, cry about, then feel peace about and decide that holding on to my virginity was something I really wanted to do: for God, for my future spouse and children, but also for myself.

I had seen and experienced enough abandonment, in my own family and among my friends. I wanted my first time having sex to be with a man who married me, wanted a family with me, and, like me, was living an imperfect life while growing and knowing Jesus.

The man I married had been my friend for almost two years. When I told him I was a virgin, as we held hands on our first date, I waited to be rejected or made fun of. He didn’t do either. He let me know that he respected and admired my choice and that before we were friends he committed to remain celibate until marriage.

A little over a year from that first date, we stood across from each other in front of our friends and family and vowed to love, respect, and walk through all seasons of life together. I shared a beautiful first time with him on our honeymoon.

I don’t regret it. I didn’t all of a sudden feel like the heroine of some chick flick but I felt sexy and beautiful and safe and loved. Not just because of the intimate experience I had with my husband but also because I was learning to love myself and to support my own decisions.

There are a lot of things connected to sex: our souls, spirits, bodies and emotions. There is a lot of guilt and shame shoveled at us for what we’ve done and sometimes for what we haven’t done; for what was done to us, or what we’ve done to others. God never meant for sex or sexual experiences to be a dumping ground for guilt and shame.

The choice to remain a virgin until marriage is an honorable one, just as the choice to wait until marriage whether you’re a virgin or not is honorable too.

The most important part is letting what we do with our bodies and souls, first become a personal conversation with the God who invented sex, created intimacy and feels no shame about communicating with us about either. From there we can make decisions that honor the God who made us in the first place and loves us unconditionally.

My Princess Problem

I stood in front of a room of young girls and women, first graders to college students. I talked to them about how we want to carry good words with us. Words that remind us we are beautiful just the way we are, that we are loved and accepted, that God has plans for us and created us for a reason, that none of us are mistakes no matter how we got here.

I showed them pictures of my little girl self and how it took me so long to love and accept her and that I’m still learning to do so. And then I took questions.

One of the girls asked me, “Who is your favorite Disney princess?”

“I don’t have a favorite Disney princess,” I said.

And the entire room gasped.

I cycled through all the Disney movies I knew, the classic Disney films I’d grown up with before there was “Frozen” and “Brave.” I thought of “Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, how I never identified with their fair skin and straight hair. I thought of how divorce limited any memories I’d have of being daddy’s princess. I thought of how I grew up being raised by strong women who could not wait on Prince Charming or fairy godmothers or spells to rescue them so they became “can-do” women instead.

So I never dressed up as a princess, never imagined myself a tiara, preferred a fresh pair of sneakers instead of glass slippers, found my fairy tales in Toni Morrison’s fiction, Maya Angelou’s poetry, and John Steptoe’s African tale, “Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters.”

Then I remembered talking about princesses with another room of young women, many if whom had lived enough life to be twice their teen age. They were survivors of exploitation, trafficking, and abuse, beginning the lifelong journey of recovery. Once or month or so we sit at a table and write together.

We write about God, about the past, about things we love, about wounds. I asked them to write about what they thought about the word princess. I was curious to see if they had the same complicated relationship I had to the word princess. Some found it easy to identify with fairytales, some couldn’t bring themselves to believe in fairy tales based on the harsh realities their lives had been.

We tried an experiment. I asked them to invent their own princess and kingdom. We used our pens to describe what our version of princess would be like, what would be the rules of our kingdom, how we would treat the people who lived there.

We wrote about how we would help the people who lived in our respective kingdoms. Princess fashions ranged from gold to couture to sneakers and jeans. As we read aloud our various inventions of princess, I realized there was power in that.

Movies, magazines, or fairy tales don’t have to be the sole definition of princess for my generation of girls or any of the generations to follow. We get to invent our own princesses, tell our own stories.

I hope to say to young girls what I continue to say to my own little girl self; you can be your own version of princess. Whether you wear tutus or chucks, have freckles or rock an afro, remember that God makes no mistakes and he creates no replicas. So be the unique, original you that God made. That is the coolest, most awesome, absolute best thing you can be.