Thirty, Flirty, + Expectant
As we entered 2020, I wrote a blog—the last blog I wrote, actually—called A Decade Called Healing about the last 10 years. While the last 10 years have held the most healing, I’ve been looking forward to 30 just about since I turned 20. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt both older than my same-aged peers and well acquainted with my inner child. It’s an interesting collision that I’d like to say I’ve grown accustomed to, but in the last few years I’ve fought with it and the enemy of not just my soul, but my identity has fought me over it too. I’ve fought with being dissatisfied with my age and frustrated with being called young or “just a baby”, as if living in the thought of well once I’m 30 people will stop calling me a “baby”. It felt like to be called young or a baby was to devalue my life’s experiences or all that God’s walked me through. Additionally, our journey with infertility mixed in and it felt that my age wouldn’t be discredited if we had the children we’ve lost; that somehow parenthood was the visual accreditation or validation for age and maturity. If the last 10 years of my life are called Healing, the last collective 30 would be called Identity.
The beauty of the journey of identity is when you know the source of your identity it’s not just the journey of knowing yourself, it’s also a dive deeper of understanding the Source. At a young age I identified God as Father and a relationship with Him began. At 12 years old after being addicted to pornography since age 10, He showed me who I would become had I continued the lifestyle I was living as someone who claimed Jesus in public, but lived in sin in private. My lifestyle wasn’t reflecting or aligning with who He created me to be, my core identity as an image bearer.
In high school, I’d write anger poetry about the identity collision I experienced when friends and peers, Black and Caucasian, called me the “whitest black girl they know”… oreo, coconut, etc. Anything dark on the outside and white on the inside. I just wanted to be me, the girl getting her education. I didn’t understand my blackness or why I wasn’t like everyone else, besides my Dad being from Guyana, a formerly British colony. It was an easy answer in Southeastern Louisiana. I knew a lot of people, but I didn’t have a lot of real friends. I knew who God was, but my trust for things like provision were rocky.
I went to Bible college where I got to spread my wings and experience life outside of the small town I’d grown up in, but planned on returning to—God had other plans, of course. My first semester in this class called Real Christianity, my professor started off the class with, “In this class, we’re going to tear down everything you thought you knew about God, your pastor’s beliefs about God, your parents’ beliefs about God, and you’re gonna get to know Him for yourself.” What he didn’t say was that in discovering God for yourself would also mean undoing who you know yourself to be, at some level. So, I started that journey and fell in love with this God I’d learned about from childhood and had learned about relationship, but not about intimacy and desire. I’d learned about the counterfeit of intimacy and desire in pornography and to steer clear of it in True Love Waits, but never the beauty of intimacy with God. While learning the beauty of soaking in His presence without saying a word, He simultaneously started cracking into places of pain that blinded me from knowing who I was and who He was calling me to.
Mason and I met, became friends, started dating, and broke up 7 months later. The journey of identity is beautiful, but not always pretty. I learned that I didn’t really know what a healthy relationship was, and while I’d learned to hear the voice of the Lord, I hadn’t found my own voice. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be in the context of a dating relationship. So, I went on a deeper journey with Jesus and moved to New Hampshire, my desert season. God did so much in my heart and mind in the realm of identity and not losing myself in another one of His creations, but to only be lost in Him to find Him to find me.
After 5 months in the coldest, most beautiful, painful place I’ve ever lived, I moved back to Dallas a different woman than the broken one who’d left Dallas. Lo and behold, Father had Mason on a journey of his own and brought us back together, to different, healthier people than the ones who’d previously dated. We started to get to know the new parts of each other and what God did in our time apart. And I kept getting to know God in a different season. Every season of the last 30 years, I’ve learned God to show a different facet of Himself catering to the part of Him I needed in a given season. He’s been gentle and direct. Comforter and disciplinarian. Heart surgeon and friend. He’s been Father and Love and Kindness. He’s been everything.
While in college part dos, new pains sifted to the surface. While you can read more about the healing part of this time in my last blog, the part that applies most to this is that I started a deeper journey of identity and healing with God, my therapist, and Mason as it related to repressed childhood trauma. The process of counseling in group therapy with a Christian, Spirit-filled, licensed therapist brought to light behaviors that were byproducts of trauma rather than characteristics of personality and what I’d added to the “Hello, My Name Is” label I’d worn on my chest. God did so, SO much in the 2-3 months of weekly counseling—I highly encourage counseling to everyone and it doesn’t have to be something huge and deep to utilize the gift that is counseling: shameless plug. Mason and I got engaged and 6 months later got married. The identity journey never stopped.
In getting married, 7 years ago next month, the identity journey continued. Early on, I learned my husband was not created to meet 100% of my needs and to expect that of him would lead to loads of disappointment and unnecessary heartache. It wasn’t good for man (Adam) to be alone, so God gave him a helper… not someone who completed him. My husband couldn’t be my God-replacer. The identity of wife is a whole ‘nother, on-going adventure! The identity journey has undoubtedly continued in marriage; it’s just involved Mason more, obviously. Six months into marriage, I cut off all my hair and started this natural-haired adventure that picked up on the ethnicity related identity journey I’d left off in high school, which has been an ongoing, interestingly beautiful journey to say the least (Black Girl Chronicles).
Four years ago April 29th, we moved to Missouri and the identity journey continued as expected. We became southerners and proud Texans living in the Midwest, a place we’ve learned you cannot compare to Dallas. It’s not fair… to anyone. A year into our move we lost our son Malachi and infertility stepped into the battle for a spot on my name tag. We hadn’t been trying to expand our family for long, so infertility easily didn’t get a place. However, a year and a half later after we’d seen specialists and done treatments and all the things that invade privacy, infertility seemed to be putting up a compelling fight. I went into preterm labor with Zadok and we lost him too. If you haven’t read at all about the journey with loss and grief, go back to my first blog and start reading. After losing Zadok was probably where my identity was most under fire. Motherhood with no children to show for it. Pseudo-motherhood to children who weren’t mine. Loving and living for a God who I assumed would stop all bad things that could happen to me since I was diligently attempting to live my life to reflect His Son, Jesus. There was so much. But through the journey of grief and identity, I learned God deeper and His heart deeper and in turn I learned a deeper part of myself and who I am because of who He is. Infertility does NOT get a spot on my name tag!
And then almost a year ago I took a position as Residence Director (New Adventure Next Exit) and, of course, that started more identity things in the most beautiful ways from public speaking and confidence and empowering young women in the biggest developmental times in their lives and pointing students to a real God who for real loves them and really wants to have a relationship with them and pointing students to seeking the heart of God for their identity and spiritual warfare in my “house” that has housed 150 other women and being a boss and being a leader who students are actually looking to and living where I work and the enneagram… where I used to be a two and have recently discovered I am too confrontational and outspoken to be a two.
I know this has been a long post and maybe you think it should’ve been called “Thirty, Chatty, & Identity”… I mean, flirty has nothing to do with this at all and is strictly just from 13 Going on 30 (“thirty, flirty, and thriving”)… but that doesn’t flow. I’ve called it “Thirty, Flirty, & Expectant” because if there is one thing I have learned as a culmination of the last 30 years of my life it is this: God is good and when not-good things happen it’s not His fault, and I can EXPECT Him to be faithful, to be true to His word, to use ALL things for my good and His glory. I can EXPECT miracles. I can EXPECT He will walk with me every step of my journey to knowing Him deeper and in turn my own identity. I can EXPECT His promises to me will be fulfilled.
ex·pect·ant /ikˈspektənt/
adjectivehaving or showing an excited feeling that something is about to happen, especially something pleasant and interesting.
God has set the stage and, walking into my 30s, I am filled with expectancy for His goodness and mercy that will continue to follow me all the days of my life. I am filled with expectancy that “I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13). I am filled with expectancy for Him to continue to bring revelation to who I am in Him, to empower others to see who they are in Him when they seek after Him with all their hearts and find Him (Jeremiah 29:13), and to confidently use the voice He has given me as I adventure on alongside Him, expectant for more.