reframing femininity
“Crown or no crown, you’re still a queen to me.” I read these bold, black words in a small card with a picture of a silver glitter crown on the cover. My friend, Desire—my coworker and fellow sorority sister—left this card for me at our work. It was a sweet gift: we had just learned…
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One short block away is the beach. The soundtrack of the waves rolling consistently onto the shore travels the distance in the cool and refreshing tailwinds. Wrapped in a large beach towel, I notice the softness and warmth of its fabric and the vertical stripes of its rainbow colors. Sitting in the dark of morning,…
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Fifth grade me walked around elementary school wearing a pink sweat suit with penguins embroidered on the front and Velcro sneakers. Glasses framed my brown-black eyes, and my teeth boasted braces. I had a vague impression that this look wasn’t quite right for a preadolescent, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the jump…
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“Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive.” Romans 12:11 The entrance into the new year has surprisingly been held in the embrace of anam ċara. “Anam ċara means soul friend,” John O’Donohue writes. “The anam ċara was a person to whom you could reveal the hidden intimacies of your life.…
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Whistling and gusting wind in the oak trees outside my bedroom window woke me this morning. I tried to stay in bed, but something about the wind felt beckoning to my soul. I came downstairs and opened the blinds, the tree tops ferociously swaying, bending back and forth as the wind had its way with…
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A few months ago, my Pastor gave me Reinhold Niebuhr’s version of the Serenity Prayer, and I have been praying it every day since. One line that continually catches my attention is, “…taking this world as it is, not as I would have it.” Talking with a friend the other night, she was expressing her…
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Splattered across a banner of borrowed paint read the words: “CHS Has No Black Cheerleaders.” Tryouts that year were hard and I was the only person with brown skin to make it. I attribute that to another African-American cheerleader who helped me and also knew what it was like to be the “only” before she…
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Yesterday I felt the Spirit’s prompting to go on a trail run, my first one of 2019. It was a gray wintery day, and although it was approaching mid-afternoon, the sun had not made its grand appearance. I was in my home office with a lengthy to-do list, and it made more sense to stay…
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The last few nights I have been sleep deprived. I squirm under my cozy covers in an attempt to relax, but my chest feels tight, as if my breath is constricted. My body is weary. I attempt to ease my mind, as anxiety-filled scenarios swirl around my head like an annoying replay. After a long…
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Thinking about this month’s theme of desire, I pulled The Journey of Desire by John Eldredge off our bookshelf. I flipped through its well-worn pages, full of highlights and notes scrawled in the margins, evidence that I had once spent a lot of time with this book when we studied it in our small group.…
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