The next ten years after Kenya’s death encompassed a series of challenges, tests, victories, and defeats. Seasons, like leaves, came and went. Letters and poems to God, to my pain, to my past are what mostly got me through. I would sing songs of the hero in me. The warrior. Jesus reminded me that He was always right there even when I didn’t want to see. I fought the Holy Spirit often in the beginning. He’d speak to me often about putting down the weed, but I made excuses. I can remember one night speaking with Him and going back and forth with the blunt in my hand. I literally was fighting myself, my flesh. He has always spoken to me about the Queen He knew me to be. I couldn’t see past my pain, that’s why He was so right, so necessary. I ran out my grandparents’ house and got in my car, unlit joint still in my hand. My body wanted to feel the instant gratification, but I knew my spirit, this Holy being living inside of me, wouldn’t let me enjoy it. Plus, I wanted to feel new and whole inside for real. I wanted that every day, not just when I was lifted from the tree. It was raining that night. I drove around the block a couple times until I finally threw it out my window. The whole blunt. That was a miracle for me back then. That next morning, I got up and went back to look for it, but it was gone.
I battled with weed on and off for the next ten years. I’d leave it alone for a year or two and somehow find my way back. I never stopped praying, though, never stopped asking for forgiveness, for help. After a while, it just didn’t seem fun anymore, the God in me was bigger than my desire to be high. I smoked my last blunt knowing it was the last. I wasn’t even sad, I just wanted to hurry up and finish it. My body wanted the sensation, but my heart and my mind were ready to move on. I was ready to receive something new even if it hurt or caused me to give up thing that I believed I loved. The beginning stages of walking with my Lord Jesus were actually pretty difficult. Mentally. I was shedding everything that I knew, everything that defined my life, and trading them in for a God I could not see. It was almost like walking on water, walking toward a destination that I couldn’t yet see but felt in my heart no doubt. Walking by faith. This walk can get scary, because you don’t know if you’re going the right way at times. There are seasons of silence, of loss, of coming face to face with the truth.
Constantly. Not a one-time meeting with Truth, but a constant debriefing of evaluating who I was and my heart’s intention. I had to learn how to leave some wounds alone and allow them to bleed, produce an ugly scab, and heal. Some things would remain forever, the ugly scars always there as a reminder of the pain. I had to learn to find peace in Jesus alone and trust Him when He didn’t remove the ugly things. Most importantly, I had to wait. I had to hold on to my faith, cultivate it, and work it. Through death, through being misunderstood and intentions misinterpreted. Through being abandoned and forgotten, falsely accused, laughed at. I had to hold onto God’s word like it was the only thing I had, because in reality it was.
During those ten years I was being prepared. Life turned into a boot camp, a huge training ground. I got beaten by the waves of life but somehow, I never crumbled. I finally graduated from college with a bachelor’s in social services. God took me from a 0.87 GPA to a 3.4. My entire college education was financed through financial aid. While in college I worked at a department store making eight dollars an hour, in order to maintain my help from the county. After graduation, I received a job working as an auditor making about twenty-four dollars an hour. I finally got a letter from Section 8 saying I was approved and began looking for a home for Kenya and me. It was right on time because things started getting really tight at my grandparents’. I was living out of a room, with a busy one-year-old. My grandmother didn’t want baby Kenya wandering around her house, and Kenya was getting frustrated being confined to one small place.
We argued a lot during those times. I was literally fighting for my very life, and every day I came home to a house full of judgment. “You never should have had that baby,” “You ruined your life just like your mother,” “You should have thought about it, I ain’t watching no baby.” I’d cry a lot. Pray a lot. No matter how hard it got, I never let go of my faith, and I never stopped pressing toward the goal. I was mad, but never bitter. I mean I wasn’t in denial, I knew what was true, I admitted my faults and recognized what decisions I made. That was an important piece to my healing process. Acknowledgment empowered me to make well-informed decisions.