These are the stories of my journey. ( if you perfer to listen ….please scroll to the bottom)
Not long ago, I heard a song called I Told Jesus by Roberta Flack. I had always known the singer, but somehow, I had never heard this song. It was buried in a collection of vinyl records that had found their way into my life—forgotten by someone else, gifted by fate.
Every Sunday, I make an effort to play one of those records. What good is a treasure if it just gathers dust? On this particular Sunday, I pulled out the album, and the last song on Side One caught my eye: I Told Jesus.
I pressed play. And suddenly, I was no longer in my living room. I was nine years old again.
The lyrics hit me like a memory I had tried to bury. I told Jesus to change my name… And another line: Jesus said that my Father wouldn’t know me.
I knew exactly what that meant.
The Night I Screamed to the Sky
I remember hating my life as a child. Hating it so deeply that I couldn’t understand why some divine intelligence had placed me in that home, with those people, in that pain. It didn’t make sense.
One night, past midnight, while the house was silent and everyone slept, I made a decision. I got up from my bed, carefully opened the door, and ran down the hallway, down the urine-stained stairwell, out into the fresh night air. I ran past the gates of my schoolyard and into the darkness.
And I stood there, barefoot, a little girl crying out to the sky.
“I want to go home! I hate it here! They are so mean to me!”
“Jesus, wherever you are, just take me home!”
Silence.
I sobbed, hugging myself in the dark. And then, from nowhere, from everywhere, I heard a voice.
“You can’t. Turn around and go back.”
My heart stopped.
I don’t know how to explain it, but I know what I heard.
I screamed again. “No! I want to go home!”
The voice returned. “No. You must turn around and go back.”
“But she is so mean!” I sobbed.
“I hear you,” the voice said. “Go home.”
Suddenly, reality hit me. I was a child standing alone in the dark, past midnight, barefoot, desperate. And I was terrified. I ran as fast as I could, back through the pathway, up the hallway, through the door—carefully, quietly, because if anyone woke up, I’d get beaten.
I crawled into bed, pulled the covers over my head, and cried. “Don’t be mad at me, Jesus, if I hate everybody. Because I told you—I want to go home.”
I didn’t even know where home was. I just knew it wasn’t where I was.
The Journey to Freedom
Fast forward to that Sunday in my living room, the needle tracing the grooves of that old record, Roberta Flack’s voice filling the space. I Told Jesus.
Tears streamed down my face. I had asked, and something—whatever it was—had answered. Not in the way I expected, but in the way I needed.
I once thought of Jesus not as a man, but as an energy—an energy of freedom. And when I spoke to that energy, I didn’t realize what it would cost me. I had to lose everything to become who I was meant to be. My name. My home. My identity. Everything.
Had I known then how much pain and sacrifice it would take, would I have still done it? No. Probably not. But faith is funny like that. It doesn’t show you the whole journey. It just asks you to take the next step.
I had to leave behind my past. I had to rebuild my life from nothing. And now? Now, I have love. I have a partner who healed wounds I didn’t even know I had. He was my answer, the proof that someone was listening that night in the schoolyard.
Looking back at that little girl, standing in the dark, I wonder: If she knew what it would take to get here, would she still have done it?
No.
But she wasn’t alone. And neither are you.
A Mantra for Those Who Are Calling Out
If you have to scream to the sky, do it. If you have to whisper your dreams into the dark, do it. Something is listening.
The world will try to strip you of hope, of belief, of magic. Don’t let it.
Tell Jesus. Tell the universe. Tell your future that you want it.
And then, be ready for the journey it takes to get there.
Mantra: “I trust the journey, even when I cannot see the path. I surrender, knowing I am guided to where I need to be.”
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