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Follow the Leader

I haven’t felt convicted about anything like the way I’ve been convicted about not writing. I asked God how come I can’t just write in my journal, how I’m not sure about this whole blogging thing. It takes time, I’m not really sure what the value is, and I am not comfortable being as vulnerable as He asks me to be sometimes.

If I’m completely honest, this blog is a mirror I was not and still am not ready to face. The stories and lessons I share I have not fully learned yet, and it’s embarrassing and shameful to admit how often and how violently I fall. I hope I am not perceived as a hypocrite. I’m very clear about my own truths. I believe in who God is intellectually, and I know His voice and His presence. But I doubt His character, and I have proven to be untrustworthy by my disobedience. No sugar coating, that’s the truth. I know God loves me wholly, and that He will never stop loving me. But His plans for me require me to trust Him, so my disobedience is postponing my own destiny. This includes my inconsistency in doing things I know He has told me to do, like write this blog. It’s an abnormal dynamic to profess belief in God, but in your heart not let Him lead you.

God absolutely told me about myself the past few days, around the theme of being led/trusting. The first revelation happened on last Saturday. I’m trying to do a low-buy 2025, focusing on changing my relationship with money and consumption. I love to shop, and I had bought some purses I did not need, and I was feeling guilty and shameful for having broken my low-buy rule. I was laying down on my bed and decided up be quiet, which is rare for me. I usually have some type of background noise, whether that be TikTok videos, tv, music, something. I was reflecting on why I broke my own rule and bought things I didn’t need. And I heard God say to me these words: “you’re buying yourself a future you don’t trust me to give you”. And hearing that immediately broke my heart, because I knew it was true and I couldn’t deny it.

Doubt is my biggest opportunity in my relationship with God, besides obedience, and I know they go hand-in-hand. I’m not a person who has received a specific promise from God or specific prophecies where I was told that God would do a specific thing. So overtime, I began to doubt that God had a specific plan for me, that God wasn’t gonna do anything special with me. So I decided to make myself feel special, through different behaviors and choices. I saw myself and my patterns crystal clear.

The second encounter happened today in my women’s Bible study, and the topic was about Psalms 23 and the sheep and the Shepherd. The leader asked a question about our thoughts about God being your Shepherd. As people were sharing, I heard God say this to me: “I am not your Shepherd, and it’s not because you don’t believe in who I am, but it’s because I am not the one who leads you. Your desires lead you.” And immediately I teared up again and I could not look away. I could not deny it because it is true. My profession of who God is to me does not align with my practice of God is to me. I like to say that He is Lord over my life, and I even put Him in charge of certain aspects of my life, but not in all areas, and not all of the time.

My final encounter with God happened as I was watching my pastor’s weekly Bible study. I had my glasses off because I was laying in bed relaxing. My pastor was speaking about John, and as I was listening I heard God say these words: “take your glasses off and let me lead you”. Now this might sound odd to you, but I immediately knew what He was asking of me. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 11 years old, and I will soon be 37. I have a very strong prescription and I never go anywhere without wearing my glasses, in fact, it would be highly dangerous to do so. I can’t drive without them, I can’t work, I can’t cook, I can’t even see TV clearly without them. The only time I don’t wear my glasses is when I’m at home relaxing, and that’s because I am familiar with my home so I never feel lost. What God asked me to do is to let Him leave me, knowing that I won’t be able to see everything. I won’t have the control that I’m used to having. And that is a scary thing for me to consider. Because even though I know that there are things that are unhealthy for me in my life that I perpetually choose, the familiarity of those things gives me peace. I’d be giving up the piece of what I know for the sense of loss in what I don’t.

I know God loves me because He is so thoughtful in how He speaks to me, where he aligns my own experiences to show me a specific theme.

He simply wants me to follow the leader~

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Gray Matter

I am the type of person who does not find benefit in black-and-white thinking. It’s my belief that very few things are truly black-and-white and that instead, we spend much of our lives navigating in the gray. There are times in our relationships when things aren’t great; when we don’t know what’s going to happen; where neither person is right and the truth is in the middle. There are periods of gray in our careers when we are weighing our desire to do impactful work with the realities of life and the responsibilities that we hold. And I find a lot of gray in my relationship with God. Some aspects of my faith are black-and-white, like my belief in the triune God. But there are other things that I still see gray areas in. For example, there’s a scripture that says that everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial (1 Corinthians 6:12). To me that Scripture highlights the gray that we have to navigate as Christians. Just because you are not a slave to something doesn’t mean that it benefits you. We have free will, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should do everything we can do. That’s gray.

The reason why I’ve been thinking about the gray parts of life is because I am recognizing the polarities that exist in my life. One of the greatest things I’ve learned in the past year is the concept of polarities. The formal definition of a polarity is <the state of having two opposite or contradictory tendencies, opinions, or aspects>. Let me give you an example. A common polarity in life is stability versus change. We are constantly tempted to change something about ourselves. Our skin, our hair, our clothes, our car, our jobs, our relationships, the list goes on. Change is not a bad thing, in fact, change can be a great thing. Some people need to make life changes every few years or they get bored. But just like some people thrive in change, some people thrive in stability. They like knowing the surety of something, and they enjoy the safety that predictability brings. Stable folks are not against change, but they need a reason for it and want to plan for it. Stable people sometimes correlate change with chaos, and change seekers sometimes correlate stability with redundancy. So now you see how these are polarities of each other, and now that you know the definition, you can probably think of several more types of polarities that exist in your life.

I am definitely someone who enjoys stability. It could be my propensity to worry and have anxiety or just the way my brain chemistry is made up, but it’s easy for me to have what is called catastrophic thinking. This is where in any situation you consider irrational and worst-case scenarios. And you don’t have to think about something big to have this kind of thought pattern. For example, I do not like making left-hand turns on busy streets, and I’ve been like this for years. When I’m confronted with having to make a left turn, I sometimes get this irrational fear that another car is going to hit mine. Has this ever actually happened to me? Nope. But at that moment my brain believes it could happen, and I’ve found myself sitting for 5 minutes waiting for cars to pass by (with folks honking behind me). I’m stable in the way that I drive, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have room to change.

I shared that example because I want to make the point of saying that just because you recognize polarities in your life does not mean that they have to stay that way. Just because I am stable and have often done the same things does not mean that I should not be open to change. It doesn’t mean that I am redundant either, because there is wisdom in many of the decisions I make. What it does mean is that I have to learn to live in the gray more. I cannot look at things through a lens of either/or, but instead through a lens of both/and. I can be a stable Mabel and seek adventures and experiences at the same time. I can be hesitant about the future and be expectant about the future at the same time. The polarities in my life do not define me, but I can let them give color and context to my thoughts and my decisions.

As I was preparing to write this blog I started thinking about the phrase gray matter and I decided to research it. One thing you may not know about me is that I find neuroscience fascinating. I think it’s amazing how the mind works and how there are interconnected neurons and transmitters that ultimately shape how we think, how we respond, and how we process information. So I was delightfully surprised that when I researched gray matter I learned that it is directly involved with the brain and how we think. Gray matter plays a big role in many of our mental functions; it’s where our information processing happens and it gives us our ability to think and reason. It is key to what controls our movement, memory, and our emotions. Because it’s so important to our brain, the decrease and/or damage of gray matter is what leads to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

Hopefully, you’re still with me, because I was so excited to learn about this. I am the type of person who believes that God created science, and I think it’s beautiful that God created a space in our brains that allows us to process and intake information and emote. Simply put, God allows us to have gray matter in our brains so that we can process the gray areas in our lives. He is the chief scientist, and He never misses.

I love that God was thoughtful of me this week. He put the phrase dark matter in my heart and then allowed the meaning of the word to speak to what I have been thinking and feeling this week. Sidenote: God will talk to you and do special things for you based on your personality. God allowed me to learn something really cool about a topic that He knows interests me because he knows me. 💖

I am still fascinated with gray matter and knowing me I’ll probably find a book to read so I can learn more. But for this blog, I really want you to accept and allow yourself to sit in the gray matter in your life. Those places where you don’t know what is the right way, what the future holds, and whether you should make that change or remain stable. There is beauty in the gray of life, and there can be joy in the polarities that we live with. I have been asking God about the difference between being stable and being stagnant, and as usual, His sandal is upside my head. At first, I wasn’t in a place to hear Him, but once I recognized the gray matter in my heart and mind I began to listen. I hope you listen when He speaks to you too.

See y’all next week~

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The Maturation of Sacrifice

For the past few months, I’ve been thinking about the different sacrifices I have made throughout my life (so far) and the sacrifices I know I will have to make in the future. When I was a child, I did not like the idea of sacrifice because of the lens that I saw it through. I often saw certain themes related to sacrifice; I saw the women in my family sacrifice more than the men in my family. To be honest, I even believed that women should sacrifice more since we are the ones who are nurturers and mothers and wives. I couldn’t figure out why we seemed to have a heavier burden than men did, and I didn’t look forward to that being my future just because I was a woman.

As I got older, I intentionally put myself in positions where I would not have to sacrifice that much, and once I became independent I reveled in my power of not having to sacrifice as much as others did. In fact, the last substantial sacrifice I remember making before becoming independent was when I moved in with my maternal grandparents when my grandmother was in her middle stages of dementia, and my grandfather wanted to keep her at home. I moved in with them for about six months or so to help out with my grandmother‘s care, in addition to home health aids coming a few times a week. At that time my mama warned me not to move in with them, and it wasn’t because she didn’t believe that I was capable of helping, but because she knew how much I loved my grandmother and she knew I wasn’t ready for the emotional sacrifice of having to see her in a state of diminished capacity 24/7. She ended up being proven right; it was incredibly painful to see my granny lose her speech and her mobility and see my papa grieve the woman that he knew and the life that he was used to. We eventually moved my granny into a facility where she stayed for many years before she passed away.

While she was at her facility, I moved out and I’ve been out on my own ever since. Outside of church, spending time with my family, and my work obligations, I found myself not having to sacrifice much. I won’t say that I was selfish, because I’ve always had a generous heart and I love and support the people around me. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that independence allowed me to make decisions about who/what I sacrifice for vs it being required and/or forced on me. I enjoyed my own company and the autonomy of my own time. I did not have the responsibilities of being a wife or mother, and I promised myself that any sacrifices I made in the future would be my own choice. I wondered what would happen as my parents got older and if they became ill, but I talked with my brother about it and we both agreed that we would both step up when that time came.

But then I was confronted with the idea of sacrifice being non-optional, and that is when my paternal granny passed away. At her homegoing service, different family members shared about how much she sacrificed for her many brothers and sisters, uncles, and cousins. She was a woman who thought of her family first and who did everything she could to support her loved ones. While I was grateful to hear her spoken of so highly and celebrated, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to her own dreams and desires. I wondered if she had any unspoken regrets, or if she ever felt feelings of resentment that she never spoke out loud.

I have a tradition in my family that is not spoken out loud, but one that has been a repeated pattern, and that tradition is the single woman in the family becoming the primary caretaker for their elderly family member. I’ve seen this play out throughout my life, and I have a fear that I will follow in the footsteps of this tradition. I use the word fear cautiously because caring for my elders is not something I am afraid of; it’s the way the care is done that I don’t want to mimic. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and I have every intention to honor my parents and to care for them the way they have cared for me. But I want to care for my family and not sacrifice my own well-being in the process, and not sacrifice my own dreams and desires. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know if this is what will happen. I don’t know if I will repeat the cycle, and that uncertainty brings a lot of emotions, and I will honor them.

When I think about decisions that I am currently making about my future, my career, and even my retirement and things of that nature, I admit that I am not just thinking about myself anymore. My parents are in their 60s, and I think about them. My grandpa is 85, and I think about him. While I am not an only child, my brother is married with his own family, and I have to acknowledge that. I am single with no family of my own, and I don’t know when and how that might change. If I were 26 again, I would probably pick up and move and do all kinds of adventurous things. And while I’m still young at 36, life is different. There are now realities that I see in my parents and my family that I feel like I need to be here for. That’s why I called this blog the maturation of sacrifice, because maybe the way that I have seen and perceived sacrifice needs to mature.

Under no circumstances have I arrived at total peace with sacrifice. God is still going to have to work on my heart concerning the fears I have about the future. But one thing I do know is that I’m not going to give up on my own dreams and desires. Life is moving incredibly fast and time is the only thing that we can never get back. I don’t want to have any more regrets with the time I have left.

For all the people who have to sacrifice and who don’t have a choice in the why, the how, or the how long, I see you. Most importantly, God sees you. I believe that no desire or dream is ignored by God. He sees all of it, and He sees all of you.

See y’all next week~

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The F Word

I may be alone in saying this, but I hate it when I hear people use christian clichés as a way of dismissing someone’s pain. For example, someone shares how they are disappointed with you about something that they really wanted that didn’t happen, and the response they get is “It’s okay, this just means that God has something better for you.” Now, while I understand the heart behind this type of response and I acknowledge that we do not always know God’s plan, these types of sayings do not erase the pain that person is in. Newsflash- we can know and believe that God’s plans for us are good and perfect, and we can still be disappointed and confused at Him for not giving us what we wanted. In our lives, our efforts may not always match the outcomes we get.

Another cliché that I remember hearing especially as a student was “Do your best and trust God with the rest.”Again, while this sounds good, and while the intention behind this statement is kind, I believe that it creates a false narrative for people. Just because you try your best and you trust God with the rest does not mean you will receive the best outcome; in fact, let’s be real- there are some things we put effort into that we didn’t even talk to God about.

The point of today’s blog is to be honest about the outcomes we have had in life and to examine our relationship with failure. Now I want to be clear that there is no failure in God, but let’s not be confused-there is certainly failure in humanity. As long as we are living on this earth we will fail as human beings; we have failed before and we will fail again. But this is why it’s important to know what failure actually means versus how we use it in our everyday language.

Failure has multiple definitions in the dictionary, but today I want to focus on the first three definitions found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The first definition of failure is an omission of occurrence or performance, and an example of this would be failing to get to work on time. The second definition of failure is a lack of success, like failing in business. The third and final definition of the word failure is falling short; having a deficiency, like saving up your money for a down payment, but not having enough.

The reason why I wanted to focus on all three of these definitions is because I believe that they all speak to the different emotions we have when we experience failure. Depending on the person, you may not feel any type of way if you fail to be at work on time, especially if you have a job with autonomy/flexibility. But if you work in a time-sensitive role, where you have to clock in and out every day, you might have stronger emotions about being late. Or let’s think about all of the times we failed to succeed at something. When you’re in college and you study for weeks for that test and you still only get a C grade. When you invest hours into a work project and the company decides to change courses and pursue another idea. When you launch your business after years of planning and don’t make any profit. In these examples, the outcome that you get can feel like a waste of the effort you put in.

It takes a lot of mental and emotional energy to put effort into something, not knowing what the outcome will be. This year I told myself that I would be braver and try and go for new things and put myself out there more, both in my career and in my personal life. There are two major things that I applied a lot of effort to, things that I stepped outside of my comfort zone for, and things that I genuinely asked and believed God for. Guess what? Both things failed. After the news of each outcome, I initially told myself those same tired christian clichés. “God has a plan that I don’t see yet”, “Every rejection is God’s protection“, and my personal favorite, “God I thank you for every closed door.” Don’t I sound super saved? YES!

I let myself have a few days of believing that I was fine, that I was healed from the disappointment I felt. But I’m so grateful that I am mature enough in my walk with Christ to know that God can handle the real emotions I have and that my churchy words and phrases do not distract Him from what’s in my heart. I had to be honest with Him and tell the truth. “God this hurts me, I really wanted this thing”. “I thought this was your will for me and now I am not sure I hear you clearly”. “I’m mad because I feel like you don’t care about the things that I care about”. I had that conversation with God.

But God is so thoughtful and patient with me, and more importantly, He knows me better than anyone. He allowed me to have my tantrum, and then He asked me a couple of questions in return. “So, you only want to give effort when you are guaranteed to get what you want in return?…..” “Why don’t you believe that I know better than you about what’s best for you?” Yep, He slapped me upside my head with His sandal. Again.

So, even though having that talk with God gave me perspective, accepting that I failed still hurts me, and I know that your failures may still sting for you. And while the outcomes in our lives may not be what we wanted, our effort is the win. If you gave your best, hold your head up! The failures we have in this life are not a label or a determinant of our worth, they are just steps on the journey. Know that there are future outcomes in your life that will be good; that the plans of God are for your good. Get up and try again, and don’t be afraid to fail again.

See y’all next week~

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Keep Going

I’m late writing today’s blog, because for the first time in a long time, I was busy with work from the moment I started to the end of my day. But I said I would be consistent, and I will keep that promise to myself.

If I’m honest, I should’ve started planning this week’s blog earlier in the week, but I avoided it because I was trying to get through this week as quickly as possible. My anxiety has been working overtime these days, and usually when I feel anxious, I do only what I have to do and then I spend a lot of time being quiet. I knew that writing this blog would require me to exert more mental and emotional energy than I wanted to give, which is why it’s 6 PM and I’m just now writing this. So since my anxiety is at the top of my mind and heart, that’s what I’m gonna write about today; having the motivation to keep going in the midst of anxiety.

Now, one thing I will not do on this blog is justify, define, and argue about the nuances of mental health. I recognize that they are different types of mental health issues and different ways they show up in each person. If the way I speak about my mental health does not align with how your mental health shows up, that’s perfectly OK. I’m not here to defend anything, I’m only here to own my truth.

When you have anxiety, it can influence your decisions in ways that you may not see at first. For me, one of the areas anxiety has conquered me in the past is through my lack of dreaming. I believe that life should be an adventure, but I worry about the risks associated, and if those risks are worth it. For people with anxiety, risk can be conflated with harm. So you tell yourself that any dream or desire that you have that is not within your total control has the potential to harm you, and as a result, you stop dreaming. Being realistic may not bring you joy, but it does bring you comfort.

I’ve been thinking about faith heavily for the past 6 months, and last year I asked God to show me the dreams that I had thrown away out of fear and my lack of faith. He showed me a few of them, and then He asked me to do something that I didn’t understand at the time. He asked me to write down every time I had been rejected in my life up to this point. And y’all, this was so painful to write, because I had to remember things that I have pushed way down in my heart. Jobs I had applied for, failed friendships and relationships, and even times where I felt rejected by God. When I finished writing, I looked at my total list, and I was troubled at how long it was. I was also troubled at how nothing was on the list more than once, meaning that I had only tried one time, felt rejected, and then quit.

It was at that moment that I realized that I have a quitting problem. When I feel the pain of rejection, my anxiety tells me that I can avoid this pain by never trying again. But with that decision, another type of pain is introduced, regret. There was so much regret on that page, and I honestly felt heartbroken.

So, in September of last year, I decided to get some flip-chart paper and write down my dreams. These included dreams for my family, dreams for my future marriage, dreams about my career, dreams about my finances, etc. I did not hold back, and I wrote down everything that was on my heart. Just writing them down gave me crazy anxiety, but just like this blog, I did it anyway.

And, slowly but surely, I’ve been working towards making my dreams a reality. I’ve also been praying that I surrender my dreams to God, and that I believe that His plans for me are infinitely more powerful than my anxiety ever could be. Some of my dreams may not come true, and some of them may not come true at this time. But I’m going to keep going and keep dreaming and keep giving my best so that I’m prepared for whatever my future holds.

Thank you God, for being my peace♥️

Please watch this video to remind yourself of who God is🙌🏾 See y’all next week!

Jaron M. Legrair Studios (TikTok)

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Living an “At Least” Life

It is my belief that the most unhappy people are the those who settle in life, whether that be in their job, their relationship, even where they live. This is not to say that settling is something we should never do, because sometimes we have to pivot in life to reroute ourselves in the right direction. But I’m not talking about that kind of settling-that kind is only temporary. I’m talking about the kind of setting that is not necessary, and that is chosen out of fear and a lack of faith.

Sometimes we settle into making “safe” decisions. Now this is not always true (I’ve definitely made some reckless decisions in the past), but as I get older I have found myself settling more and more. I can provide several intelligent reasons why settling was a good decision in the moment, but the truth is, I can lack faith. Pure and simple.

In my adulthood I’ve learned that there is a key difference between a reason and an excuse. A reason is an explanation for something. An excuse is a justification for something. So, using myself as an example, I have many reasons why I have settled in different areas of my life. What I do not have, however, is an excuse. Deep down, I know that I should overcome my reasons and choose to go for what I really want and believe God for my dreams. And a few weeks ago, God showed me just how costly my settling has been over the course of my life.

I was reading a story I’ve read many times, the story of Moses helping to free the Israellites in Exodus. In Chapter 15, after they crossed the Jordan, they started complaining to Moses, about them having bitter water. So God performed a miracle, and gave them clean drinking water. But by the next chapter, they were complaining again, this time about being hungry, and they compared their current state to when they were under Pharoh’s rule and had ample food. They were so extra, they even accused Moses of trying to starve them to death!

Now, as you read on you will see that God performs another miracle and gives them food, but I stopped at their complaining. I was irritated with them, and I said out loud to God, “How could they entertain returning to forced labor and abuse under Pharoh over some food?“, and God responded “it’s because they had an ‘at least’ mindset”. And then He proceeded to tell me about myself.

To give you a heads up about my relationship with God, it’s very unique. I can hear God as clearly as I can hear anyone, and I jokingly say that He slaps me upside the head with His sandal. And that’s what He did that night. I’m going to summarize our conversation below.

Me: “I just don’t get how they would trade their freedom for some food. They watched you part a sea in half and put it back together.”

Jesus: “It’s funny that you are so irritated with what they did when you have done the same thing multiple times. It’s not about the food, it’s about them not believing that I had better for them, so they were willing to settle for what was safe. “

Me: Silence.

I couldn’t look away, I couldn’t say a word. I had no excuses. Have you ever heard something so piercing that you had to write it down? That was me in that moment, and not only did I write it down, I immediately wrote down examples of how God was right.

Here I was thinking I was better than the Israelites when I was just like them! Okay, no, I’m not in physical bondage or forced to do hard labor. BUT, there have been times when I know that God was asking me to trust Him for better, but I allowed my “at least” thinking cause me to settle, and I didn’t consider what it would cost me.

At least I have a man, even when I knew he was not the right one.

At least it’s a job, even when I was deeply unhappy.

These are excuses I told myself to justify making certain decisions, and can I tell y’all a secret? Neither of these decisions had a happy ending. In fact, they led to the same end result. Regret.

While I wish I would have realized and corrected this mindset years ago, I probably wouldn’t have listened to God or been still enough to hear His voice. But now that I do know, I have some work to do. It’s not easy unlearning a pattern of thinking, but I’m committed to doing it. I don’t want to forfeit anymore of the promises and plans that God for me because of the limitations of my own thinking, and it’s my hope that you don’t want to either. When God speaks, we must listen.

And then we need to DO something. I’m speaking to myself first and always.

See y’all next week!