Whew! Let’s talk about walking in obedience…
When I first wrote and independently published The Village of Daughters: A Collection of Short Stories in 2022, I wanted to remind girls and women, particularly Black girls and women, of the freedom that exists beyond their suffering. After replaying several conversations in my mind of the struggles they were experiencing, including my own, and rereading the countless stories I’ve written over the years, I wanted to share stories that centered on pivotal moments of our lives. The moments that defined us. Changed us. Hardened our hearts and in most cases, led to depression and anxiety. In fact, some of those moments made us feel like we were losing our minds, until we just lost sight of ourselves altogether. In sorting through all of this information, four phases spoke to my heart: innocence, discovery, awakening, and liberation. These phases describe the transitional periods that we all navigate at every age and stage of life. I figured that if I could just help people recognize where they are in the phases through these short stories, they could see that they were closer to freedom than they thought. The thing is that even after the book’s release, I felt unsettled and found myself always revising it.
Later on, I had a defining experience with these four phases in relation to Christ that evolved from ignorance of knowing Him to awareness, then seeking Him, and ultimately, walking with Him. I realized that the original book version emphasized freedom through the power and knowledge of the individual. It has been on my walk with Christ that I’ve come to understand that “the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength”(1 Corinthians 1:25). This highlights that our strength and wisdom have no comparison to the Almighty God. Everything we have comes from Him, whether we acknowledge Him or not. It is through all that we have that we give Him glory through His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for true freedom is found in Christ alone - not through our own power, but by being born again from the cleansing of the Holy Spirit.
With this revelation, I am led to humbly address my misdirection with Waking Up The Daughters, which is the wake up call that the original book version lacked.
Waking Up the Daughters is coming soon. If you want to be the first to know when it’s available for purchase, just email hello@mywaitingarea.com