I decided to put a pic of my new cousin to commemorate newness…the theme of the entry. The beginning of this year has been a push to remove all that is old, long overdue in my life. I needed to let go of past hurts… old habits… and past roles that I thought I needed to be. The meal plan helped with this process. I was shedding away pounds as I was shedding away dead weight spiritually that needed to be cleared out. The process was hard… spent quite a few times in prayer in tears but knew this was the only way to make room for more clarity, wisdom and simply… “THAT NEW NEW.”
In fact, I even listened to Hope City’s podcast on Detox throughout the month of March… and even took a break from Facebook and whatever else that could attract more clutter. I wanted to break away from old routines of trying to help everyone that crossed my path… going to the extremes of letting my joy fall to the wayside as I helped them… I am learning now about boundaries… to love from a distance… to be consistent in prayer and allow God to work on those that I can not fully help. I realized that was my MO for most of my life… constantly running with people that had good hearts but had a lot negativity around them. I aware that this was happening, but my overwhelming desire to be there for them, to comfort the, seemed to take over my own sense of joy, peace, and overall balance in my life. I worried about them… I prayed for them more than I prayed for myself…these people were my friends, so I would even put my own happiness on hold to ensure that their happiness was intact. I was giving them all of my energy, good energy, alleviating some weight off them but then taking on their weight. This came clear to me this month….near the end of March right before Easter. It was the revelation of revelations.
My dreams have even started to make sense… I have these new dreams… but then dreams I had a long time ago are starting to make sense. I am starting to recall.. or maybe God is calling me to recall…. what He showed me years ago…as if to show me that they are starting to bloom soon. Like years back… I had a dream that I was walking on a college campus and there was so much darkness, it was a cloudy day and people were just angry… then out of nowhere, I lift my hands up and rays of light comes out of them.. this strong light takes up all of my energy and strength….then all of a sudden I fall into someone’s arms… JESUS…with eyes closed, breathing heavily…then slowly I opened my eyes, which were full of tears and saw a beautiful sunny day.. people smiling and getting along. I had shared this dream before in one of my blog entries, but now I have more clarity… working with young people may be my calling. Also, awhile back I had a dream that I was watching this stage transform. First, it was a small stage with homemade stage scenery for a play… then the small stage got bigger and bigger, transforming into a much more extravagant stage with high-ceiling, bright scenery… and somehow I knew I was directing a play on this HUGE stage. When I had the dream I didn’t quite understand it. It all started to come together when I had a dream sometime last week… I was getting costumes lined up backstage. I was also wearing a gold bikini top and shorts… which definitely symbolizes the bikini competition my sister and I are prepping for… so maybe all this preparation (the process) was molding me to work with children on the stage. The dreams and the random theater projects that just came up out of the blue (God) were all for me to see that I could do this…even if I thought I was not quite qualified to take this on.
Even writing for the stage has been placed in my heart. I wrote a play when I first moved back to Houston.. and this past week started to write another…. not sure what it’s about but the theme lies in identity.
This newfound calling has always been present in my life now that I think about it. Writers and plays… I mean in all the plays I have acted in the writer of the play has always been present in the rehearsal process… which is pretty rare. The writer was present to direct and produce the entire project. I witnessed the whole role of creating and then producing your own work….all to show me that I had the potential to do the very same thing. Even in New York, I met a writer that I kept “bumping” into that was getting his Masters at Juilliard. The random interactions led him to invite me to see one of his plays at Juilliard and then his other play at the Lincoln Center…. he now writes for TV shows. He was maybe a glimpse of what I had the potential of doing one day. I even got to meet Ishmael Reed by performing in one of his plays in New York…another successful playwright. AND, my roommate in New York was a playwright…hmmm.
In middle school, my dad signed me up for a creative writing class, which I had no interest in taking, but left it on schedule anyways, and I ended up enjoying the class. It was then that I realized that writing brought peace within me…my therapy. Another sign is this blog. This was not at all my idea…my friend’s boyfriend, who is now my friend, decided to build this blog for me. Not sure if he thought I had this interesting life but something, or rather The Holy Spirit, thought this may be a way for me to realize my calling. I am actually connecting all these dots as I am writing this right now. Oh, and just last year, a friend of mine, who happens to be good friends with the Locke family, invited me to attend a reading of Attica’s Locke’s new book… who happens to be one of the writers of Empire. I’m not a fan of the series but I respect that a writer from Houston made it to Hollywood with a successful tv series… hmmm…
AND… since I’ve been back home all the guys I’ve dated have been… what? WRITERS!!!
AND Funny, with all this revelation… I realized that I turn 33 this year. Resurrection Year!!!
Well, I guess the detox cleared out all that junk that distracted me from my calling… it’s time to get to work!!!
Imagine there’s a wedding going on. Is that the time to tell the guests to ignore the bridegroom and fast? Sure, there’s a time for fasting—when the bridegroom has been taken away. Look, nobody tears up a new garment to make a patch for an old garment. If he did, the new patch would shrink and rip the old, and the old garment would be worse off than before. And nobody takes freshly squeezed juice and puts it into old, stiff wineskins. If he did, the fresh wine would make the old skins burst open, and both the wine and the wineskins would be ruined. New demands new—new wine for new wineskins.
Luke 5:34-38 (The Voice)