How could you want something so badly? Like want it with every fiber of your being? Then heaven finally gives you the opportunity and you freeze up? Literally you’ve talked for nine years, and the tenth God Himself handed you the mic and said, “Spit that fire, Queen.” Was the mere idea of the dream enough for me? Was I just to lay the foundation and plant the seeds to watch my children reap the harvest? My heart says No. It says, This is your harvest, your time. You must fly. To fly, you must trust. To trust, you must believe. I thought I did, believe I mean. When it was easy to, when there was nothing to lose, when pride wasn’t yet alive. Something happened in the stripping, the breaking. Vulnerability. Truth. Naked and exposed. What do you want from me, black man? Love? From this true place, this pure space? See I’m genuinely me and aware, and that’s scary. I’ve been raised from the dead, resurrected from the ashes of life. I walk with a limp from the wrestling matches I’ve had with my heavenly Father. Discipline and bruises are not far from me. Blame it on the large amounts of ambition deposited in my DNA. When you’ve died to self and are reborn to Jesus’ magnificent light, you become conscious. Awake. That type of light is too bright to sleep through. You can ignore it for so long, but it will find you. It will say, “Queen, come on love, its time!” My vision lasts decades. It does not only serve me. It serves an entire generation of unwanted children. A generation of seers. A generation of seeds that are birthed to a nation that has plans of mass incarceration, genocide, and governments that pimp their talents and nurse them into poverty. You see, it’s clear to me I am in a strange land. This is not my father’s house. No, I am far from home. A sojourner in a distant land. My language is truth. They have learned to twist truth here so that what appear to be words of genuine intent, what is behind them is corrupt. That hardens the heart, you know. This environment has turned something created to bless, love, prosper, and shine, and laugh, increase, and heal into a ruthless warrior, warring, fiery, militant fighter for justice. Justice. Merciless when it comes to manipulators of justice. Whether intentional or accidental, doesn’t matter: you must die. Zero tolerance tunnel vision death to anything in the path trying to block this new life and message I’ve come to deliver to these children. My brothers, my sisters. So much death has hardened my heart. I’ve slayed so many demons that I didn’t realize the battles were over, and I had been fighting the memory of my own. Fighting memories, nightmares, possibilities, fears. Beautiful black woman thick thighs, robust behind, full breasts, chocolate sun-kissed skin, curly locks shining from the roots of blackberries and pain, endless potential, stuck in the cycle of what if. “Wake up, Queen,” time to move from dream state to reality and execution. Fear is such a terrible reason to stay still. It’s been a pattern of mine to pile up so many layers and walls that prevent love’s penetration. Love is the only real thing. Love is what allows the heart to beat. The heat needed to melt the years of deception, pain, rage, lies, venom, hate, unforgiveness…. The bitterness that’s created seeps into the brain, the thinking, and exits the lips of the wounded. Those words produce fruit in communities, in lives of brown boys and girls. Broken dreams, busted souls, and hopelessness. And every day we wake up trying to mask the pains of yesterday while being force-fed the pains of today. There is only one sure fix to deliver a heart from this state—surgery. There is only one physician who is so skilled with a scalpel and possesses the wisdom to know the cure for every individual heart. Jesus is His name. All we have to do is ask, ask for our hearts to be softened.