One Way Healing Comes
A practice that is changing my life
Hello family,
This week, I’d like to share with you something that’s a bit personal. Something that’s been a consistent part of my life for the last few years and has transformed the way I approach most things.
My journey into meditation as part of my prayer practice began when I experienced a severe health crisis in 2019 that laid me out for eight months. I couldn’t work (I lost nearly 70K in ghostwriting income and took medical leave from teaching), take care of my home (Hubby held us down), or even write beyond journaling. I spent most of my days in my bed or my garden. It was a physical crisis, yes, but I can honestly say now, it was also a spiritual and mental health crisis. I’d ground myself into dust trying to “succeed.” Simultaneously, I’d begun to do deep trauma work with my therapist and all my STUFF was being pulled to the surface and laid bare. So my body, having held all that pain in over 40+ years, and trying to manage my present stresses, responded in terror. It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was a devastating season.
In truth, what learning and then later practicing meditation helped me to do, continues to help me do, is be still. To be willing to reckon with myself and my life in the light and presence of God with absolutely no distractions. When I get still, I can hear from God and myself—my deepest desires—in ways I never imagined before.
In the beginning, it was hard. The resistance in my body was strong. I STRUGGLED struggled through daily meditation because my brain is like a computer with a million tabs open. When I finally began to realize that I didn’t have to change this fact about myself, that I didn’t have to get so angry with myself because I wasn’t “doing it right,” when I learned that there was no perfection to strive for, that’s when I began to settle into the practice and embrace what it was teaching me. I then decided to educate myself on the various forms of meditation. I dug deep into contemplative prayer—a form of prayer meditation practiced by ancient Christian mystics and formalized by Father Thomas Keating. I was very much drawn to these practices but admittedly frustrated because I didn’t see myself—as a Black woman—in those readings. Then I shifted some and began to engage the work of Black theologians like Howard Thurman and Barbara Holmes. I learned that Black artists like Alice Coltrane practiced contemplation and meditation also. How even ancient African, Indigenous, and Hebrew practices mirrored what I was learning.
There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have.
Howard Thurman
Since then, my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being has been greatly served by regular meditation. Just learning how to breathe has been transformative. Now, when things are chaotic in my life and *gestures wildly* the world, I now have a tool that can sit alongside the anxieties and depression that often rise up and weigh me down. A tool I can use to regain my balance; to steady myself; to listen to God in the midst of the noise. It’s certainly not a cure-all, but it’s incredibly helpful.
I share this part of my story with you all because I hope that all of us will remain open to the sometimes unique ways our healing will show up. I undoubtedly know that if I’d ignored that need for stillness, if I’d allowed my earlier narrow-minded teachings about God and Spirit and the way both show up to govern how I dealt with my pain, there’s a strong possibility that I wouldn’t be here to write this message to you.
Stay open to the unexpected moves of the Spirit in your lives. If it’s just 2 minutes a day, consider practicing stillness in whatever way works for you. Put your healing at the top of your to do list. It can and will transform your life.
Love you,
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