My Testimony

Hello Beauties!

This post is a bit late and for very good reason. The last couple of months haven’t been the easiest for me. Never in my life have I experienced so much emotional weight at one time in my life. For many of you, this will be your first time hearing about the incident that happened to my family and I this past November, but for some of you it is just in update. Honestly the past two months have been an emotional rollercoaster. Not until very recently have I actually come to terms with the event and put words to how I felt about what transpired that night.

Let me start off with the afternoon leading up to the incident. It was a couple of days before Thanksgiving and I caught a megabus around 4pm in order to get back home to Detroit. On the bus ride home I was pondering a lot of things about my journey up until that point. (For the record, I am in my senior year of college and most of my life at this point revolves around these moments.) Plus, I had a 6-hour trip back to Michigan with ample amount of time to think over things so why not.  I started to ask God questions about what I should do next and where He wanted me to be in the next six months. You know, all of the things you ask God when you’re flipping out about your future. But to my surprise all the Lord told me to do was rest in Him. It was craziness!!

In my mind all I wanted was a play-by-play on who to email and what jobs I needed to seek out to in order to get to where I needed to be by graduation.  However, the only instruction I got for my life that night was to go deeper in God than I ever have before. He wanted my heart, my plans, and everything else that seemed to be getting in the way of what truly mattered; our relationship.

So in that moment, I said yes”. I promised to seek Him more than I ever had before. What clicked in that moment is that when you’re connected to God all of the opportunities start flowing. Nothing is bigger than He is, so why on earth should I worry about things that He has already planned for me? A few moments later I would understand why that conversation between God and I transpired and how it would forever shift my life.

Fast-forwarding to about 8 hours later, my bus finally got to Detroit. It was four hours late, getting me there at 1 a.m. instead of 10 p.m. When I arrived at the bus stop my mom and grandfather were there to pick me up. As soon as I saw them I was elated and so happy to be home for the holidays. We talked about plans for the upcoming week  and my grandfather even sang his church solo from the past Sunday just so that I could hear how amazing he sounded. It was just as good as I imagined it would be.

We continued to drive deeper into the city and about 5 minutes away from the house we went down a street that could have been our last road. As we turned the corner onto this street a car sped towards us head on. At first my mom thought that it was a drunk driver, so she got to the other side of the road so they could pass us. However, this car didn’t speed off like we thought it would. Instead the driver blocked my mom on the side of the road and the passenger jumped out of the front seat with a gun.

Immediately I put my head down in the backseat and started screaming the name of Jesus to the top of my lungs (praise God for instincts). At this point my mom starts backing up the car to get out of harms way. She backed the car up about a half a block down the street with both men shooting at us as we tried to escape. The car then spun around and by the grace of God it stopped in the opposite direction of the shooters. We then sped down the street in hopes of getting away, but they began chasing us down the street!  Thankfully my mom has an amazing sports car that she never even needed until that moment which allowed us to speed off without them being able to keep up.

Disclaimer: First of all, that didn’t have to be her initial response. She could have easily decided to just give them the car and our lives. Instead, my beautiful strong fighter mama decided that we had a chance. She also had no idea if there were cars behind her in order to get us off of that street without hitting a parked vehicle, but GOD! My mother was being led by the Holy Spirit that entire time and I thank God for her courage. She’s a LIONESS!!

Now can I just say, JESUS DID IT! (Insert Praise Break)

So yeah guys, that’s been my reality these past months and the fact that I am still living and breathing today is a complete testament to the blood of Jesus.  I know that there were angels protecting us that night and shielding us from every bullet that was shot our way.

Oh..and another thing, there were no signs of bullet holes anywhere on our car. Talk about going through the fire without the stench of smoke! God is real ya’ll.

BUT...even with such a tremendous victory comes other things too. Like the fact that going home to Detroit no longer feels like home to me. Or the fact that being out late when it’s dark makes me fearful about what could happen next.

Honestly it has freaked me out, plus we live in a society where violence happens every day and many innocent people have lost their lives because of it. I’m even sad to say that the news never impacted me before like it does now. Our society is so full of senseless violence that not until a gun was pointed at me and my own family was I actually hit with the reality that many are lost in incidents like that every day.

These last couple of months have been rough. I was happy to be alive of course, but I found out that although God gave my family victory over death the devil was still trying his best to make me think that we hadn’t won. So he tried to hit me with fear and emotional torment. I’ve fought with my mind on questions like, “Why am I still here?” or “What is the point of even trying when you never know what tomorrow will bring?”.  I mean I was on some serious Netflix and popcorn type stuff…for possibly a couple days at a time. I was going through! I didn’t even want to talk about it with friends because it only brought flashbacks that would haunt me in my sleep.  On top of that I was going through crazy warfare so I would wake up in the morning and still be tired enough to sleep another 8 hours.

Now as bad as that time was, I knew that I had to deal with the pain. My way of dealing with it probably wasn’t the healthiest, but I had “my moment”. Now, the other side of having that moment is that I had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t stay there. I had to gather up all my strength and not let fear win!  Every day is another reminder that in my weakness He is strong.

Even the biggest victories require that you tend to your wounds after the fight.

This holiday season has been nothing short of a rehab for me and my family. 2016 is a big deal, y'all. New Years day we celebrated a year that we thought we would never see. I am thankful that this year I have the opportunity to give God that yes that He asked for that dark night in November. My heart has never been so open or grateful.

To all of you, may each day be filled with purpose. Do not fear the times that we are living in. Instead know that greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4). You overcome. Always.

I love you all,