Burnout Confessions

I have half finished blog posts, partially created notebooks for a give away, video content that needs editing, and a whole list of ideas for more content. So why don't you see it? Burnout. In a previous YouTube video, I shared a little bit about how crazy the past few years have been, but it isn't just the past few years, it's all of life!

I got my first summer job at 14 years old and have been either working or in school (or both) ever since. In 2014, while I was in grad school, my doctor said I had low iron. This is normal for women and seemed logical to me. Since 2014, most doctor visits have the statement "you have really low iron levels" or "we really need to work on your iron." My ferratin levels have not risen past 4 since doctors first started telling me this in 2014. (Ferratin deals with iron stores within your body, and to my knowledge the lower-bound for "normal" is 11.) Eventually, doctors started telling me I had "weird" shaped blood cells. A few months ago I had a doctor decide to figure out why my blood cells "look weird" and he confirmed that I have Hemoglobin C trait. Turns out 33% of my red blood cells are duds...

Nonetheless, I managed to work 20 hours for my advisor, a few hours a week as a tutor, and crank out a PhD while I was "severely iron deficient." I went straight to work after defending my dissertaion (didn't even wait for graduation), was cranking out a podcast episode a week, became a leader in a young adult ministry, and ended up involved in trying to better the community. I got laid off my job, interviewed every day until I had a new job, got sick from the stress of it, had 2 family members die from COVID within a month of each other, sold my house, moved 2000 miles away from my family to a place I'd never even visited, and am still going... All while being "severely iron deficient."

The number one symptom of iron deficiency is fatigue. If this is how I opperate at a deficit, I feel like I could solve world hunger if I were firing on all cylinders.

But I'm not, and I realized that I need a vacation. Not a trip to some exotic place or a fancy hotel. Just a responsibility free, break from pushing through life like super woman. So, I'm taking the summer off. Well, I'll still be going to work cause I don't have a rich uncle who died and left me enough money to pay for gas, but I'm not going to worry about the blog. I'm not going to worry about keeping my house spotless. I'm going to play video games. Journal for fun. Play laser tag with the cats. Sit outside and watch the birds—if the temperature drops below 100, that is.

See you in August.

Life Lessons from a Band Geek

The things I learned in Marching Band had a profound effect on who I am today and how I approach Christianity.

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice; and they will become one flock, with one shepherd. John 10:16 NASB

It sounds crazy but, the things I learned in Marching Band had a profound effect on who I am today and how I approach Christianity. God's truth is eternal. When Christ said there are sheep of a different fold that hear His voice, I think He was referencing the fact that if your ear is searching for truth you will find God's truth in places you'd least expect. I've previously shared a few things I learned from Greek life that I thought I should have learned from Church. Today, I'm sharing what I learned from middle/high school band.

Summary of Lessons

1. Look at problems from different angles and be willing to accept that you might have to take a different route
   I forgot to elaborate on why I told you the story of not being able to make a sound of the flute. From that experienced I learned two things: when a problem occurs, don't be afraid to take in all the evidence and look at the problem from a different angle; also, just because you can't do something the same way someone else does, doesn't mean you can't do it—take a different path
2. When in doubt, leave it out (conditionally)
3. Delayed gratification
4. Have a winners mindset
5. Early is on time, on time is late
6. Leave a place better than you found it
7. Let the things you love anchor you
8. Keeping a code of loyalty and love
9. Perspective is the key to harmony

Bible Verses

Below are the Biblical references I alluded to in the video

• Sheep of a different fold -> John 10:16
• 10 wise/foolish virgins -> Matthew 25
• Store up your treasures in the Kingdom -> Matthew 6:20

Retail Therapy

I used to by shoes when I was sad,
     Shoes when I was stressed,
     Shoes when I was mad...
I love the smell of them fresh out the box
The scent of the newness wafting in my nostrils
The scent acting like an emotional detox—
And I would wear my new shoes feeling hip,
Confident in the way they looked,
Confident in the way they matched my outfit.
Not a single thing in life had changed,
But when I put them on everything was different
But when I put them on, my perspective was rearranged...
I used to by shoes when I was bored,
     Shoes when I was happy,
     Shoes when I was adored.

Photocredit: Unsplash.com/Verity Sanders

Greek vs. Christian Life

You'd think I would learn how to be a good Christian from the Church, but the major lessons the spark my growth as a young adult were actually taught to me by the ladies of my sorority. Now I'm sharing them with you so we can start sharing them as a Church.

Season 1 Episode 14

¹⁷Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their thoughts. ¹⁸They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. ¹⁹They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. ²⁰But that is not how you came to know Christ, ²¹assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, ²²to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, ²³to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. ²⁵Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and don’t give the devil an opportunity. ²⁸Let the thief no longer steal. Instead, he is to do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need. ²⁹No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. ³⁰And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by him for the day of redemption. ³¹Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice. ³²And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.Acts 22:16 CSB

00:02:40	Hey guys welcome back to the PSALMS to God podcast. So today I want to talk about the massive changes that happened as I was growing in Christ in my 20s—and I feel like a lot of these changes are so subtle. I don't think I fully changed as a person. It's not...it's not to say that people who knew me in my 20s would meet me now be like “Yo, you ain't changed a bit. You the same crazy kid you was at 20.” There are some significant changes that people would be able to identify in me, but I think the biggest changes have been like philosophical changes or mentality changes, attitude changes—things that maybe I do the same things or I believe the same things, but how I go about them and how I approach them are very different. So for instance, I’ve talked about my temper: the same things make me mad. Make no doubt about it, the same thing that made me go off when I was 20, will still make me mad if you do it now. But the reaction you get may be different and how I process it, how long I stay mad about it, all of those things have been changing. And one of the things that I realized is that as I’ve been getting closer and closer to God and as I've been letting the Holy Spirit shape what kind of person I should be, a lot of the things I learned about my Christian walk did not come from a church. They actually came from me joining my sorority.
00:04:23	I'ma let y'all ponder that for a minute
00:04:28	And so I wanted to talk about 3 lessons that I actually learned from my sorority that apply heavily into my day-to-day walk with Christ, and how they[1] started molding me in my 20s—my early 20s, in my late 20s—and why I think these are important things that we start teaching at church that we start fostering within the Church with a Capital C, so that we are ready for Christ, so that we are more efficient at spreading the word of God, at spreading the love of God.
00:05:05	So the first thing that I learned was about creating a family out of people you are not related to, and not just so I'm not related to you but you a stranger. It’s really easy for us to treat our friends like family. You know, a lot of people will refer to their best friends as their sister or their brother, you know. And you've been cool with this person for tens and thousands of years—okay I'm being crazy right now, but you know what I mean—you’ve known this person your whole life and so you treat them like family because you've known them for a long time but what about the person that you meet that you have never seen before. They just wandered into your church one day. ...By themselves. Do you talk to them? Do you hang out with them? Are you cordial, or do you treat them like that your long-lost cousin that you ain't seen in 10 years?
00:06:01	I learned a lot from these ladies! And what I learned about this from my sorority is just that. When you join a fraternity or sorority you take an oath of sisterhood (or brotherhood in the case of a fraternity) to all of the other people that join your organization, and when you take that oath that means that when you go places, you introduce yourself. So if I see a member of my sorority just randomly walking across the street. Like say she has on her letters—I may not I have on my letters but technically this oath that you’ve taken of sisterhood, I would walk up to her and be like “Hey, I'm also in his organization,” you know, “This is where I crossed, this is when I crossed. How are you? Nice to meet you,” blah blah blah.[2] Like you would just introduce yourself and start talking to this person. And I have had this happen to me. I've been out wearing my letters—or actually somebody who goes to my church is a member of my organization, and I met them because they saw my car, which had a tag on it,[3] and they left me a note on my windshield wiper with their phone number saying “Hey call me.” Like literally this is how people in the sorority will meet each other. And you know I've never been somewhere where, you know, someone just didn't act friendly towards me because of the sorority.
00:07:28	I remember when I first joined my sorority, I went to a conference, and I was really nervous about going to the conference because my prophyte[4] wasn't going. And I was like, “I'm not going to know anybody 😰,” and she was like “Hello! It's a sorority conference, like everyone there is supposed to be your sister!” And sure enough when I got there, everyone was like “Oh, you came by yourself? You can sit with us. You know, I'm so-and-so. Hey, how's it going? Tell me about yourself.” And by the time I left I was friends with most of the people there. Like...I...we were cool! And that's how it should feel when you go to church—but it doesn't.
00:08:06	Going to a new church is one of the most intimidating things. I mean it's like—it is less intimidating to go to the club by yourself than to go to a church by yourself, and that's a problem, because that's not how it's supposed to be. And you know, I remember I had a sorority sister who needed to come to South Florida to take care of some business, but she didn't have money for a hotel room, and I happened to live close where she needed to handle her business—me and another sorority sister, but the other sorority sister I had was living, I think with her boyfriend or something. There was a reason that she couldn't offer her a place to stay. They knew each other. I only knew of her through the sorority, but she ended up staying with me because I'm the one who had the space for her to stay, and that is something that we... I mean when have you ever been like, “So I have business in…” Let's pick a random place. “I have business in...uh...San Francisco. I don't know anybody in San Francisco. I really need to go out there and handle this business, but I just do have enough money for the flight. I don't have any money for a plane ticket.[5] I am going to call the Church in San Francisco, and tell them what's going on and somebody from this Church is going to offer me a room to stay in for the night, so that I can do what I need to do and get back over here.”
00:09:41	Have any of y'all experienced this? I've never experienced this, ‘cause the devil got us with fear, right. ‘Cause we're afraid. What if the person calling is not really who they say they are? What if they're crazy? What if they murder me in my sleep? What if the person I'm going to stay with is crazy? What if they murder me in my sleep? That's fear, y’all. That’s the devil talking; that is not of God.
00:10:05	Just like I gave my sorority sister a bed for the night, we are supposed to be doing this for our fellow Christians. Family and church are synonymous. Jesus goes through this in Matthew 12:48-50. It's synonymous, OK. There should be no orphans in our churches. OK, we're always talking about people growing up in single-parent homes. If you're growing up in the church, you may only have a mother in your house, or you may only have a father in your house, but the men and women of the congregation should be stepping up to act as mothers, to act as fathers to those children. We should not be abandoning our old people. They should not feel lonely. Single people in the church should not feel lonely. Even amongst married couples, they shouldn't feel isolated. New mothers: they should have support. We are supposed to be a community and a family, and it should be the least intimidating place to go. We should be able to go there and receive help and give help as needed. And I did not learn that in a church setting, I learned that in a sorority setting, and that's sad. But that's not the only thing I learned in my sorority so let's keep going with what I learned.
00:11:26	The second thing I learned is about image and how I present myself to the world. If you’ve ever watched sororities, you know that there is a lot that goes on. Like from branding, so for instance wearing your colors. I remember while I was in college I almost never wore the colors of the other organizations. I still...there is some times where I'll put on color combinations, I'm like “Oooh I can't wear this; this is not working right.” And it’s just because if I was going to an event I was going to wear my sorority colors, because it identifies me as a member of my sorority. But it wasn't just about the colors and the letters. One of the first things they told me when I joined the sorority is that once you join the sorority people see you as a member of the sorority, they don't see you as an individual. And so you're no longer out here representing yourself you're representing the sorority: what you say, what you wear, what you do, how you behave, how you treat people... And when they first told me thist, I didn't really pay it that much attention. But as I think about my own process of joining the sorority: why I joined the sorority, how I thought about Greek life; it was true. I never went to the websites of every single sorority in high school and read about them. And you know, understood what they stood for. When I went to college my entire basis of what I believe about Greek life and sororities and fraternities came from the people I had met growing up. How they treated me, how they treated people around them, what they did in the community, that is what I thought their organization stood for, and that is what I believed about people in that particular organization. And that made me either interested or not interested in those particular organizations.
00:13:23	When I joined my sorority and after I had been a member for a while, one of my neos[6] has reiterated this point when she came to the interest meeting, and she said she wanted to join the organization. The reason she listed for wanting to join the organization was because the two of us had been at an awards ceremony together and she had seen me get an award for having a really high GPA. And it had inspired her, and she felt like you know, our organization was doing a lot of things academically—and the sorority is founded on education and on pursuing education. It was actually only established for educators. It's only been in recent years that non-educators could join the organization, and so she wanted to be a part of that. And so seeing that action from me, was part of what inspired her to join the organization. Mind you I had never talked to her. We didn't actually meet at this event. It was just that one thing that was drawing her into organization. I've had other people who joined the organization to have said similar things. Something that... Some interaction they had with some person is what motivated them to join the organization, and even for myself the interactions I had with people who are already in the organization are what led me to choose that particular organization.
00:14:57	The same thing is true about followers of Christ and the church. Most people are not out here reading the Bible cover to cover. They're not studying the Bible. They're not going through and reading the Hebrew and Greek translations, and learning all of the different nuances about context of the Bible. They're not going through the exegesis[7][8] of the Bible. They're not reading apologetics. They are not into the Word that deep. Their introduction to God is me and you, it's the people who are professing to be followers of Christ. And what they're seeing from us is what they think Christianity is all about. That's what they think God is about. So if we're out here acting like hypocrites, that's what they think God is about. If we're out here being hateful and spiteful, that's what they think God is about, and if we're out here loving and doing the Will of God then that's what they'll think God is about.
00:16:02	And a lot of people if you talk to them about why they're against Christianity or why they're not Christian or why they’re not Believers, the things that come out of their mouth are not Biblical! They are things that the Bible would agree with them on, and be like “Yeah Jesus doesn't believe that either!” But what they see tells them something different.
00:16:22	And still in Matthew 12 (Matthew 12:33), Jesus again tells us that you know a tree by the fruit, right. A good tree bears good fruit. A bad tree bears bad fruit. Your actions speak to what you are, what kind of tree you are. Are you a follower of God? Are you not a follower of God? Your actions will tell that. How you portray yourself to the public will tell that story. You do not have to put a big sign in front of an apple tree that says it is an apple tree. You see the apple on it, you see that it's a good apple that you want to eat the apple, you know it's an apple tree. Same thing with a pear tree, a plum tree, a banana tree. It doesn't matter. You can look at the fruit. You can tell them that it's a good fruit, and you can tell that you can eat it. You don't need a sign.
00:17:14	The same thing as true as Christians. I don't need to wear a shirt that says “Christian” or that says “I love Jesus.” What I need to do is act like what God told me to act like in his Word, and that is how people will know the fruit of my labor. That's how they will know that I am a good tree bearing good fruit, and that will also help then to identify Christ and want to pursue a relationship with Christ.
00:17:43	Like I said I learned that from the sorority and from having to deal with knowing the consequences of my actions would reflect on the sorority. Knowing that the directors of Greek life were going to have something to say to me if I was doing something crazy. You know, knowing that people were watching me with certain expectations. All of that informed how I was behaving, and so the same thing is true here. There's a lot more than I can say but for time’s sake, I'm going to jump to the third point.
00:18:20	And that is about prioritization and excuses. So when you join an organization, one of the first things you learn is that suddenly you have a lot on your plate. OK? You’re supposed to be a student; that is your first and primary reason for being in college. You’re supposed to have good grades. You supposed to get a decent GPA. You supposed to learn whatever you need to learn, get whatever internships you need to get, so that you can get a job when you graduate—otherwise you're not going to be able to pay Sallie May back, and thats going to be a problem. That's your first priority, but you also want to do things, extracurricular things, and in most cases an organization is not going to accept you into their organization unless you have other things going on. So for instance I was involved in a lot of community service organizations on campus, my prophyte was involved in band (I was also in a band). You know, my neos were in various different organization. There was one organization, the organization that was the largest organization, their members were in everything. You know, they were mentors. They were on the welcoming committee. Like, you could not get through your freshman year without meeting somebody from this organization through the other organizations on campus, and I think that was strategic, but in general you have responsibility in those organizations as well.
00:19:53	But then when you join your sorority, you take on obligations and responsibilities there too. So now you need to manage your time andyour schedule such that you are able to get everything done without failing at something. And when you're in trouble, you need to let somebody know if they had I can't get this done. There are no excuses for why you're not getting things done. A lot of times we think certain things are valid excuses, but the truth is what you want to do, you will do, and what you want to get done will get done. This is the most important lesson I have learned in my life. People make time for what they want to make time for, and that goes a long way. I'm telling you guys whether it's about relationship, friendships, goals: it does not matter. When you want to do something, you will do it you will find a way to get it done. I’ve seen this time and time again with my own planning, with other people's planning. If people are constantly forgetting you or neglecting you. They're not getting your stuff done? It's not a priority. When you make a list, say you make a list of things that you need to do and there's this one thing that you keep forgetting to do. You never get it done. It's because it's not a priority to you. It's not important to you. You're okay with it being unresolved.
00:21:31	I learned this going through the sorority, you know. When things get bad, you know, these are the kind of conversation you have. Why aren't you doing this? Why didn't you get this done? Why are your grades slipping? You shouldn't be so concerned about showing up to the party if your grades are slipping. These types of conversations really make you refocus your priority list, what your actions are doing vs. what you're saying.
00:21:57	And I know that a popular phrase within the church is “giving honor to God who is first and foremost in my life.” And as I was going through my 20s I started to realize that there are a lot of things that I was doing that put priority on something else over God. In life there are things that we want that God does not want for us. And I have found myself as I got into my late 20s and even now in my 30s saying phrases like “Y'all I want something that I don't want to want because God doesn't want me to want it, but I want it. But I don't want it.” And these are the cases where we start getting real tangled up and real messy with our prioritization and our excuses. We start doing things we ain't got no business doing or avoiding doing things that we should be doing. We say “oh I'm too tired to do this,” “oh you know I'm going to do this tomorrow,” or whatever, and we put off things and never do it. You know, I'm going to read the whole Bible from cover to cover, but I don't. But I spent 2 hours scrolling through Instagram. Or you know, I don't know. I'm going to go to prayer meeting. I didn't go to prayer meeting, but I watched every episode of this new show that they just put out on Netflix, right?[9]
00:23:24	We do these things. because where our priority is is often within self. We live in a society that is always talking about self—self love, self care, self healing. And I'm not saying that these things are bad in and of themselves, but we have to be mindful that is not all—it's not about self, OK. God is self-less. And sometimes we have to prioritize God over ourselves, or actually all the time we should be prioritizing God over ourselves. But one of the examples that I can use for you guys is that last week when I started this series, I said I wanted to do all three episodes last week. That didn't quite happen, but I did manage to get 2 out during last week. And that second episode almost killed me to get it out. The day that I—the night before I was going to publish that episode, one of my friend asked for a ride to the airport. Now like I said in the very beginning about being like family I realized that I should give her a ride to the airport. I didn't have a reason not to, and in general it didn't seem like a big deal. It's probably like a 20-minute drive to the airport, so I figured this might take 40 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour at most, right. It's an hour. I can spare an hour, still get this podcast edited, the transcript done, publish everything. It'll be fine. But then she was running late, one thing happened, another thing happened, and this turned into like 2 hours, and so I didn't end up getting home until like 10 o'clock that night. And I had not done anything for the podcast before I left. So when I got home at 10, I was like “oh man this is about to be rough. I am not going to be able to get this done and still get a nice 8 hours of sleep and get to work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.” But I was prioritizing the fact that God had asked me to do that episode, and it's sad that God was asking me to get this message out for whatever purpose. And so I was like, “You gotta do this. You gotta get this done. You gotta get this episode out. You made the decision not to work on this more before you left.” ‘Cause I had three hours that I could have worked on it before I went to pick her up, and I just did not. So I told myself like you're going to suffer the consequences because you need to keep your priorities straight. So I started working on the episode; it took me until 2 a.m. to finish editing it and doing the transcripts and doing the graphics and all of that. And I published it.
00:26:20	And you know what, God rewarded me, because I still woke up in time to get to work on time at 7:30. I was not tired at work. I didn't fall asleep at my desk. I was good. I made it all throughout that day. I got everything done. I was fine. This weekend I caught up on my sleep. Everything is great.
00:26:41	This is a type of prioritization that is hard, and it took me a long time to be able to look at myself, look at my actions, and realize that I'm actually prioritizing something else over God. Because we naturally like to make excuses for ourselves. We like to say “Well God knows my heart.” “Well God knows that I needed some rest,” and “He knows that, you know, I was tired” or “He knows that, you know, this is OK,” “I need to do this to pay my bills. I need to do this to get this job and I need this job because I need the money,” and all of these things. And we'll start compromising what God has asked of us, whether it's a Commandment that God has asked of us or the conviction that God has given us. And we will put that down to follow something the world has taught us. And that is not keeping God first. That is a prioritization issue. And I learned how to identify that through my sorority.
00:27:44	So these are the 3 things that I think have had the most profound effect as I've been growing in Christ, like I said in my 20s and now into my 30s. And I realize that the roots of all of these things actually were given to me by the sorority that I joined, and I'm thankful for that, but I wanted to put it out there. Because I think these are things that we should be getting from the Church these are things that should be, for somebody like me who grew up in the church, I should have already known these things by the time I joined the sorority. I shouldn't have had to join a sorority to learn these things, and I just wanted to share that for people who are new in the faith, for people who are, you know, old heads in the faith, that we need to do a better job—we, me included— of teaching ourselves and those around us in the body of Christ these traits, so that we can form a stronger bond, a stronger Church. That way we can be more effective and more efficient at spreading the love of God.
00:28:49	So I hope that this helps you and I hope this helps you to understand where I'm coming from as I continue the podcast. Thank you guys for tuning in, once again. Much love to you guys. dDon't forget to subscribe. You can add me on Instagram shiree.hughes and I will see you guys next time. Also the transcript for this particular episode is at www.psalmstoGod.com/christianlife See ya.

Footnotes and References

1. ”They” being the lessons not the sorority.
2. ”Crossed” is a term used in Black Greek Letter Organizations that basically means the when you joined the organization
3. By tag I mean the front plate on my car, which used to have my sorority letters on it. It has since been damaged and I haven’t convinced myself to spend money to replace it
4. A “prophyte” is someone who crossed into your chapter before you
5. I definitely meant place to stay, but clearly I’m thinking hard about plane tickets
6. A “neo” or “neophyte” is someone who recently crossed into the chapter.
7. I might have pronounced this wrong…
8. ”Exegesis”. Merriam-Webster; visited March 2019
9. This is a legitimate personal example. This may have happened a few weeks ago

Born Again

How is it that I’ve been a follower of Christ for 18+ years, but I’m not baptized? Let’s talk about baptism; let’s talk about what it means, what it should mean, and why I take it so seriously. Also, as of recording this, my baptism date might be sooner than you think.

Season 1 Episode 13

And now, why are you delaying? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’Acts 22:16 CSB

00:01:03	Hey guys, welcome back to PSALMS to God podcast! Today's episode is on why I’m not baptized or rather it’s on what I think of baptism—I don’t know, y’all, we're talking about baptism. We're talking about being born again and all of the things that go along with it.
00:01:23	So I started believing in God at a very, very young age; and when I think about the fact that I grew up predominantly in a Baptist Church, it is very surprising that I'm not baptized, because Baptists put a huge emphasis on baptism. The main problem I had growing up with baptism was that I didn't understand it. I knew that Jesus was baptized and I knew that it was something that people did but outside of a tradition, I didn't understand how it fit into things. The main teaching that was prevalent, I guess in my family and the church that I grew up in, was that baptism represented the death and resurrection of Jesus. Now that's not wrong; it's true. It does represent the death and resurrection of Jesus, but as a child what I couldn't get over was the fact that people was getting baptized well before Jesus died. And a lot of these people didn't think Jesus was going to die. The disciples were confused. They did not actually think Jesus was going to die. They thought He was going to establish His kingdom right there in Israel, right then in their lifetime, that He was going to expel the Romans and they were going to live happily ever after. They were not following Him thinking, “oh, we’re going to follow You for a couple of years, and then You're going to get handed over to the Romans and they're going to crucify You.” Like, that's not what they thought was going to happen. So my question was always, like, something else has to be tied to this whole concept of baptism, because all of this was going on—in fact, John the Baptist was baptizing people before Jesus even started His ministry. So what I really wanted to understand as a child was how all of these things tied in.
00:03:31	There is super simple answers to these questions—like, number one: Messianic prophecy. All of these people were awaiting the Messiah; they may not have known it was Jesus, specifically, but they knew that the Messiah was supposed to come. And then, of course, all of this ties into the feasts and the sacrificial system that God laid out from The Exodus onward. These are things that Paul refers to as “the shadow of things to come.”[1] They all pointed to Jesus, and Jesus fulfilled the requirements. This is why Jesus was crucified at Passover: He was the Passover Lamb, and that's why it's important that Passover and the resurrection—well Passover and the crucifixion—happen simultaneously, and then, you know, the resurrection happening a few days later. This is how everything plays out—it's all symbolic. It's all fulfillment a prophecy that’s all playing in to the Baptism. And that would have been a very simple answer for the people at the church to give to me, but they couldn't.
00:04:42	And when they couldn't answer my question, I didn't think they knew what they were talking about. So I wouldn't let them baptize me, because I felt like you should know what you're talking about and what you're doing if you're going to baptize me, and I should fully understand what it is that I'm committing to and what I am staying with this action. I've always been someone who wants to know what it is that I'm saying and what it means. I think think it’s a very deliberate action, and I saw it as something that was very serious, and not something to do just because everyone's doing it, not to do it just because that's what is expected, or that's with traditional, and that is what prevented me from getting baptized at the moment that I decided that Jesus was Who He said He was.
00:05:36	Photocredit: Unsplash.com/Jong Marshes Fast forward into present-day and you know, I did my studying I started to understand more about what Baptism is and how it plays out—and you know, actually, before I continue the story, before I start to get into where I am in the baptism journey, I actually want to stop and talk some more about what baptism is, because we live in a society and a time where we are blessed beyond our wildest imagination. Yeah there's a lot of stuff going on; it's crazy. Things could definitely be better. That’s, you know, the problem with living in a fallen world, there's always something to complain about, but in previous times... So, like, if we go back to the days of Moses, and we go back to the days of Jesus, there were a lot of people who could not read. Bible were not just out for people to consume, or I guess at that time, the Old Testament was not just out for people to consume. It was written on scrolls kept by the scribes and the priests, and you had to go to them to get knowledge and to get the Word of God, unless God blessed you and came and talked to you directly. Moving into, you know, the Dark Ages, there were Bibles and there was texts, but they were only translated into Latin. So if you didn't speak Latin, you couldn't read it. Once again, there were only certain people who were actually afforded the privilege of an education to know how to read. Then of course you know they started translating Bibles into the common vernacular, and so people could read it if they could speak that language, but once again you still had to be able to read, you still had to have access to the book, and that struggle has been going on. You know, it went on for a long time. I mean obviously I am a descendant of slaves. My ancestors were not allowed to read, therefore, they would not have been able to read a Bible, even though it would have been available in English, They couldn't have bought a Bible either. All kinds of problems that would have existed with that…
00:07:54	But in today's society, not only do most people have the ability to read, we have audio books so it can be read to you. We have Google and we have Ctrl+F—! Y'all, you could find anything with Ctrl+F—or Cmd+F, for my fellow Mac users out there. But you can go on Google and you can type in, you know, “verses about baptism,” and just find list of verses about baptism. You don't have to memorize the whole Bible, or you know, search through it on your own to find it, which is a blessing. We can get to information so much quicker that way, and we should definitely be taking advantage of that.
00:08:41	And so with that being said I get deeper into the story about baptism and where I am on my journey, there are actually two verses that I want to read about it. One is expanding on what baptism is and what it symbolizes, and the other one is going to set the tone for what I'm going to talk about in terms of why I've struggled with getting baptized, since I've understood what it means.[2]
00:09:12	The first verse I want to read is in 1 Peter 3:18-22: “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, in which he also went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison who in the past were disobedient, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared. In it a few—that is, eight people—were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you (not as the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.”
00:10:16	Now a second verse I want to read is in Matthew 28:17-20: “When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.””[3]
00:10:59	So, the reason I wanted to point out these two verses is because they highlight some things that I think are very important in baptism. The first is that baptism is a pledge. It is a pledge of your allegiance to God. It is a declaration that you believe in the Most High, that you accept the gift of salvation that Jesus has given us through His crucifixion and resurrection, and it is a...I guess a sign of surrender to Him—that you are submitting to his kingdom and making Him King over your life. The second verse speaks on the fact that you are baptized in that authority, that you are baptized in the name of the Father. the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that you are following the teachings of Jesus and of Christ.[4] So basically you're following what's written in the word of God, the Bible.
00:12:06	The problem that I've had since I understand what baptism is and have been trying to get baptized is that I don't want to be baptized into a denomination. I don't believe in denominations. Denominations are man-made organizations and are operating off of man-made traditions. Yes, I understand why there are denominations. I understand why the church is fractured, and it has a lot to do with Satan playing with words and confusing interpretations, so we believe things that are different doctrinally. That is why you choose to go to different churches. And I fully understand that, and I'm not saying that that's not valid, but the fact of the matter is, when you profess to believe in God, you're you're pledging—like, I said it's a pledge of allegiance, and I don't want to pledge my allegiance to the Baptist Church or the Methodist Church or the Seventh Day Adventist Church or the Presbyterian Church. I want to pledge my allegiance to Christ. There is only one body of Christ! People say ”the church” a lot of times they mean the church with the little C, but I'm talking about “the Church” with a Capital C, and that is the body of Christ that's following the word of God. They're keeping the law and the testimony of Jesus Christ [5] and that has nothing to do with any man made entity, and I'm not trying to be out here calling myself by these names of these denominations.
00:13:54	It's interesting. I’ve met that people that are like “Yo, I'm a Lutheran.” So you followed the teachings of Martin Luther? I’mma need you to not follow the teachings of Martin Luther, I’mma need you to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Martin Luther may have been trying to follow Jesus Christ, but at the end of the day Martin Luther is just a man, and he could have messed up. He could have gotten an interpretation wrong, or He could have got some right. At the end of the day your standard still needs to be Jesus, not Luther. I've seen this a lot. I attend a Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and a lot of times people get up and are like, “I'm an Adventist. Adventists do this. We’re Adventists. This is how Adventists behave.” And I’m like, “No, you're an Adventist. I am a follower of Christ.” I don't follow Adventism, because Adventism is a man-made institution, and it can be right in some cases, and it can be wrong in some cases. I agree with a majority of what I've know that they teach—I don't know what all they teach, to be honest, because like I said, I’m not an Adventist. The things that I do know, most of them I agree with, that's why I attend your church, but if at any point I think that your beliefs differ from what is taught by the Bible, then I'm going with the Bible. I'm not going with you because I'm a follower of Christ not of Adventism.
00:15:19	You know, it's interesting because to me it's so obvious because you just look at what you're calling yourself, and it's not pointing back to Christ. When I first walked in, and people kept talking about adventism, I'm not going to lie I didn't know what Advent meant. And I grew up in a church! So if I didn't know what advent meant, and I grew up in the church, I grew up a believer, I grew up studying the Word of God... I took a theology classes in college, and I still didn't know what this word meant, you cannot tell me if you go up to the average person on the side of the street who doesn't know anything about God, that they're going to connect the word Advent to Jesus Christ. I'm just not, I'm not buying that, I'm sorry.
00:16:11	And so, the problem I’ve had, is that normally when you go to somebody, they are not really interested in the concept of baptizing you just in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; they're trying to make you a member of their church with a little C, but I'm not trying to be a member of your church with a little C. I’m trying to be a member of the Church with a Capital C. I'm not... I'm not interested in extracurricular activities, OK? This ain’t about building resumes. This is not about all this other stuff. I'm not trying to have citizenship in all these other kingdom and all this stuff; I'm only trying to be in The Kingdom, OK? There's only one Kingdom, and that’s the kingdom I'm trying to get citizenship in.
00:16:55	I've had... I've noticed that... I mean, if you go to these different churches, even how you go about getting baptized is different, and it boggles my mind. So growing up in a Baptist church: at every service they have an altar call. They ask you if you want to be baptized If you go down and say “yes, I want to be baptized. I've been called to be baptized.” You talk to the preacher, they give you a date, you to show up, they dunk you in the water, you've been baptized. You are now a member of the Baptist Church.
00:17:25	Now, that being said, there's a lot lacking, because there is no spiritual mentorship, or guidance and discipleship, or anything. It's kind of just random. Like you just walk up and say “I want to be baptized,” then it's done, which is what happened to a lot of my family members who grew up in a Baptist Church. And so it doesn't necessarily promote spiritual growth. So when I talked to the preacher at the church I attend and now, I fully understood his point of view that you know, baptism; it's about rebirth it's about being born again. And so you know, as he was saying, like an ideal situation is not a baby coming into the world with no family, right? You want them to have a family. That's what the church is for; that's why you're supposed to be baptized into a body of believers, and then you're supposed to be nurtured by those believers. It’s not the intent that you get baptized and then just go off on your own.
00:18:32	Of course that's not what I'm asking, either. It's not that I don't want to be affiliated with other Christians, it's being affiliated with a man-made religion. But even then, the way they do baptism is that when you express an interest in being baptized, they have a baptismal class and you have to attend this class. And in this class, they go over these fundamental beliefs of their denomination, which then, when you agree to be baptized you're basically affirming that you agree with those fundamental beliefs, and at that point, I feel like you're not being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, you're being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and all of these fundamental beliefs that belong to this man-made entity. You're pledging your allegiance to this doctrine.
00:19:28	And to be honest, I don't agree with all of the fundamental beliefs that they put before me. I didn't attend the class, either. I read the verses, and I read the pamphlet, and I read the booklet. And you know, there are parts of it that I'm like, “Yeah, I totally fully agree with that.” I didn't need to read the book to understand that or to believe that, but then there were parts that I was like, “Yeah, nope. I don't agree with that.” And then there were parts that I was like, “I don't know.” If you know anything about Seventh-day Adventists, you know that they think that Ellen White was a prophet, I've never read any of her writings. I don't know. I’ve heard some interesting things about her; there are some people who would definitely contest the fact that she's a prophet. I can't tell you one way or the other, but I'm really trying to study the Word of God. I'm trying to be solid on what The Word says, so I don't really have time to go off and be reading her writings, because at this point, I just want to be more solid, like I said, in The Word. And anything that brought up outside of that has to be measured against The Word, and if I'm not solid in The Word, I can't tell you if she's a prophet or not, because I got to be solid with the Bible first. So I don't really have time to read about her to determine whether I agree or disagree. So I'm not about to commit to that to be baptized, obviously, and I don't think I should have to.
00:21:09	Even here, when they're baptizing people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they're not asking to affirm that Moses was who Moses was, that Moses was a prophet or that he was a prolific person in the grand scheme of things. They're asking “Do you believe that Jesus is the son of God, that he died on the cross to save you from your sins?” Now that being said, in order for these people to have affirm that, you have to come to the agreement that you know, what Moses wrote was from God, and that the prophecies that Isaiah outlined, and that these other people outlined were true, because they point to the Messiah. So all of that goes hand-in-hand, however, all of that is contained within the Bible, so in order to get baptized you really don't need to affirm anyone that comes after the Bible. In fact you shouldn't be affirming anyone that comes after the Bible, because what you should be affirming is that the Bible is the core of your belief, and anything that contradicts it is not of God. If you’re going with what's here. then sure maybe you are a prophet. You know, but that's not contingent upon me being baptized, if that makes any sense.
00:22:33	And so really the way I felt about it is that this is not the biblical way of baptism. I just want somebody to dunk me in the water and say “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and I want it to be a profession of my allegiance to Christ and to God, the kingdom of God, and that I am committing to studying the Word of God, and allowing the Holy Spirit to teach me what I'm supposed to know. And that I'm committing to following whatever the Holy Spirit leads me to. So like I said, “the Church.” I don't really care about all of this man made extraness, and all of this stuff that's tradition and whatever the case may be. So that's really been the holdup of why I have not been baptized since I've come to the understanding of what it means to be baptized, and since I've accepted that explanation. But I do feel like I've been baptized of the Holy Spirit, because I have already committed to God and I have already surrendered to God.
00:23:57	It’s not like I'm over here thinking like, “Well, I don’t know what I believe or if I believer.” Like that's not the case. And I do believe in baptism, and I do believe that we should be baptized, that we should be following the example that Christ set forth for us. For me it's just a matter of when and where, and finding somebody that understands what I'm saying when I say I want to be baptized into thee Church, and not some random church or a church. And that's basically where I am.
00:24:32	So for my prayer warriors out there that listen in, please pray for me and for the people surrounding me, you know, that the Holy Spirit will make a way, and that me and the pastor that I’ve been talking to come to some sort of agreement, and that you know I can finally take that step. Because I do think that once the Holy Spirit convicts you of something then you are obligated to carry it out in the manner that the Holy Spirit asks of you. And I feel like the conviction that the Holy Spirit has put on my heart is there for a reason. If it didn't matter then you know, I probably would have been baptized a year ago. It would have happened and I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but there is a conviction there, that it should be done the right way, and that conviction has been there for a while, and so I want to carry it out the way the Spirit has it planned to be carried out. And you know, for a while I felt some type of way about it. I felt like “Oh, maybe something's wrong with me. Maybe I'm confused. Maybe the devil is at work here,” but when I actually looked back at my own story, and I looked at Jesus' story. I realized that I think—no I know, that it's going exactly the way God planned it to. It parallels! I mean Jesus went to the Temple to learn when he was 12; I was about 12 when I came into the understanding of what I believed. But Jesus didn’t get baptized until he was 30; and I'm 30. So, we'll see. I'm just going to follow where the Holy Spirit leads, so stay tuned in. Like I said keep praying for me!
00:26:48	Thank you guys for tuning in. I hope this episode was a blessing. If you are also thinking about being baptized or you're not sure what you believe, I definitely encourage you to reach out to other believers, to read the word for yourself— like I said we live in a blessed generation where knowledge is at the tip of our fingertips, so I definitely encourage you to make the time to spend with God in the Word to try to get closer and to try to understand what it is you believe in. I will be praying for you, and you should pray for yourself that God would show you what direction he has for you, and I hope that you will also pursue citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. So not only will I see you in the afterlife, but I will hopefully see you in the next episode. Thank you guys once again for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe, like, follow on Instagram, whatever makes you happiest. You can find a transcript of this specific episode at www.psalmstogod.com/bornagain. See you next time.

Footnotes and References

1. Hebrews 8:5; 10:1
2. Clearly I was having trouble spiting my words out here.
3. You’re right, I didn’t need as much as I read for context, but that’s what I saw first as I was recording, so I just went with it
4. I don’t know why I worded this like this
5. Revelation 12:17

How I Found God

Why do I believe in God? Why do I believe in Christ? There are plenty of historical prophecies in the Bible, but something has to make you pick it up in the first place. The truth is, the initial steps to belief are always an invitation from the Holy Spirit. Let me testify about how the Holy Spirit invited me to bow before God.

Season 1 Episode 12

¹⁷And it will be in the last days, says God,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all people;
then your sons and your daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
and your old men will dream dreams.
¹⁸I will even pour out my Spirit
on my servants in those days, both men and women
and they will prophesy.
¹⁹I will display wonders in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below:
blood and fire and a cloud of smoke.
²⁰The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes.
²¹Then everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.”Acts 2:17-21 CSB

00:01:40	Hey guys welcome back to the PSALMS to God podcast! So, last Friday I turned 11; it marked 11 years since I joined my sorority. Yeah, I know. What does that have to do with me finding God? Well, I don't know how old I am in Christ. I cannot tell you. Am I 31? No, I'm definitely not 31—I'm not even 31 in real life, what am I talking about? I’m only 30. 😂 My math is bad today guys, but I'm not 30 in Christ, that's for certain, because I didn't know anything as a child. But I've been a believer my whole life. There's never been a point in my life where I did not believe in God, where if you asked me if I believed in God I would say “No, I don't believe in God,” and there was never a point where I was quote-unquote turning away from God. There are points where I was less obedient, but that also has to do with my interpretation of scripture at the time versus my interpretation of scripture now. We won’t dive too deep into that, but in general, I've been a believer my whole life, which kind of poses the problem of how I define when I became a believer and how I identify a quote-unquote birthday or born again day that I would start counting from.
00:03:19	But, you know, in general, most people would probably considered their date of baptism, I guess. And when you think about that, and I think about the amount of friends I have that are in sororities and fraternities that post year after year that it's their anniversary of joining their organization, I've never really seen people post like that about being baptized. I have seen people post that they were baptized—and to be honest only recently have I ever seen that—but I've never really seen people come back and be like “Yo it's been a year since I got baptized! I'm a year in Christ!” or you know, “Hey, it's been 5 years” or “10 years ago, on this day I joined the body of Christ and I'm loving it!” You know, like I never seen those same kinds of posts about joining Christ’s family, and I thought that was interesting—because I'm I'm talking about myself as well. And the Holy Spirit kind of put a lot on my heart to speak about as I was thinking about this and realizing what was happening.
00:04:37	So, there are 3 things that I want to share with you guys and I think it's going to take 3 podcast episodes to do it, because sometimes I get along a little long-winded, and also because I think that they are heavy topics or topics that I want to go all the way in detail with. I want to let the Holy Spirit stay what the Holy Spirit wants to say, and I also don't want you guys to have a 3 hour podcast episode! So, I'm going to break it down into 3 different episodes.
00:05:12	So the first episode is going to be on my testimony of how I came to be a believer and how I ended up where I am, I guess. The second episode is going to be on baptism, because believe it or not I am actually not baptized, and I want to talk about why I'm not baptized and how that kind of happened, and where I am in the journey of getting baptized and all of that stuff. So I went to do an episode on that. The third episode is actually going to come back to this concept of being in a sorority in Greek life, and what I've learned from being in my sorority that I feel like I should have learned from The Church, and as it pertains to how I walk in Christ and how I show my faith in Christ—and don't worry, that’ll make a lot more sense when I actually get to that episode. So those are the three topics that I want to talk about, and I would really like to get all three of those episodes out this week, as opposed to cutting into the other scheduled episodes that I was planning to do, but I know that time doesn't always permit that. So it may be, you know, 3 Monday episodes—but stay tuned, because there will definitely be 3 of them and I am going to do them back to back.
00:06:46	So without further ado, let's jump into how I became a believer.
00:06:53	Like I said in the beginning, I’ve been a believer basically my whole life, and I really cannot explain to you why that is or how that came to be. When I look back, I am actually pretty shocked that I am where I am or that I believe the way that I do, considering my upbringing and how God was presented to me. I don't... Only the Holy Spirit could have brought me to the point that I am now is what I'm trying to say. So, I grew up in a quote-unquote divided household. My mother's family is Methodist and my dad's family is Baptist. Growing up we kind of ping-ponged between the AME Church, which is an African Methodist Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, and the Baptist Church or a Baptist Church, I should say.
00:07:57	Basically in South Carolina when I was born, the churches were basically all segregated—they're still pretty segregated but less so than they were then. So basically Black people did not attend the United Methodist Church, which is why my family attended the AME church, and I was christened[1] at an AME Church. My grandparents on my mother's side were actually pretty instrumental in forming a interracial United Methodist Church. So as I got older we would attend that church sometimes. And my dad's family would attend this Baptist Church and the Baptist Church was actually across the street from my house—like literally across the street, like I used to walk to church.
00:08:47	And so, as I got older, I mean like 5ish, I actually started to attend church on my own. So my parents did not attend church regularly, they were kind of just went whenever they felt like going. And you know, when they went, I went to whichever church they went to, but if I wanted to go to church on my own, I pretty much always went to the Baptist church, because it was across the street and it was easy for me to get to. So what my childhood pretty much looks like was me going to Sunday school pretty much every week,[8] maybe missing once a month or so, but you know, I went to Sunday school pretty much on a regular basis by myself. My mom or dad would walk me across the street and drop me off at the church, and somebody from the church would walk me back across the street and make sure I got home safely.
00:09:51	And I really cannot explain why I used to go to church by myself, what prompted me to go, because my parents were not the parents to make me do it. One of the things that I am extremely grateful for is that they didn't force me to go to church, they didn't force me to believe. There was no ultimatum. It wasn't like, “Get up. Get dressed. Go to church.” It was more like, “Hey, do you want breakfast? Are you going to church?” You know, “What's going on today?” It was pretty much up to me whether I was going to go to church each Sunday or not. And so at some point, when I was 5 or 6, the Baptist church asked me if I wanted to join the Sunday school. I really don't—to this day I don't really understand how you join the Sunday school without joining the church or I don't understand how those are separate entities or whatever, but that was a thing apparently, and I said yes. And I joined the youth choir, and I just kind of became involved in the church in that manner. And from then out, I was basically, a Baptist. So if you talk to me in person, you will hear me say that I grew up as a Baptist, even though technically I attended a Methodist church, as well off and on. This is why I guess I claim Baptist as what I grew up as.
00:11:30	Anyway, I kept attending church all the way throughout Elementary School, and why I was going on my own, and what was motivating me, I really cannot say. I can only speculate that that was the Holy Spirit drawing me to God. So when I was like 8 or 9, I was sitting in church—and I'm pretty sure it was one of the Sunday's that the youth choir performed, and I was sitting with all of the youth—and I distinctly heard a voice say “I am here.” And this was not the preacher, it was not anyone sitting beside me, it was nobody that I could see, saying that they were there. And I came to the conclusion that that was God speaking to me, and God telling me that He was there. And you know, 8-year-old me or 9-year-old me, however old I was, I was like “OK, if You're here, I'm here. I’m trying to be wherever You are.”
00:12:40	And I think is that is probably the moment where I became an outright believer on my own. You know, as kids we typically believe what those around us are telling us. And so our parents tell us, you know, this, that, and the other. The adults in our lives—our grandparents, our aunts, uncles, the people who are teaching at the church, whatever—they're telling you what they believe and you just believe them, because you believe the adults. That was the moment where I was like, “Yeah, God is real. I heard Him! He told me He was here!” And I think that's the moment that I became a believer in God in my own right.
00:13:24	However, I was still a child and so I still had a child’s mind. You know, kids these days learn things a little faster than we did back then. So for those who are younger than me listening, you might think I'm a little slow, but at that age, for instance, explaining Jesus... I could not process that, because when someone is saying, you know, “the virgin Mary gave birth to a child,” I don't know what the word “virgin” means when I’m 8. I don't understand this. This does not compute, because I don't understand the whole process of what this means, what it means for Mary to have a baby as a virgin. That doesn't mean anything to 8-year-old me. Like, I'm hearing people say this is a the miracle, and the reason I think this is a miracle, is because people don't have babies until they're married or not supposed to have babies until they're married, and she wasn't married. But I don't understand the miraculousness of this, because I don't understand how things work, right?
00:14:35	And I also didn't understand the resurrection, the death and resurrection of Christ, because I didn't understand death. I had never experienced death. I didn't really process like, “Oh, people die and it's permanent,” and all of these things. You know, I knew but I didn't know, right? Because you're a child, you don't really think about these things. So my understanding of what it meant to be a believer in Christ, to be a believer in God and to follow God, was still very, very weak—or incomplete, I guess is a better word—at that age because I was so young, and I think this is where it comes in with the age of accountability, and what not. This, I think, was God's first tap on the shoulder, where he was like “Yo, I'm here. This is the time for you to start searching and start understanding what I'm calling you for.”
00:15:30	The second point, I think. The second turning point in my relationship with Christ came when I was in middle school, and I think I was about 12. I had this dream... Y’all this dream! I can still see this dream in my head right now as I'm talking to you. It was a powerful dream, and it's only gotten more powerful over time and as I fully understand what exactly happened in this dream. So in the dream, I was looking for my mother. It was about sunrise, and I was running through the house looking for my mom, couldn't find her. Eventually found her outside on this screen porch that we had. In my dream, my mom kind of disappears into the background. Like, it's like I was looking for her, but once I get to the screen porch she’s basically non-existent, and the focal point becomes what's going on outside in the yard. And in my yard there is a white, lattice cross— so instead of the general plain symbol of the cross that you normally see that just looks like a lowercase T, it was actually made with like lattice. So there were like slats and stuff in it. And it was decorated with these purple flowers, and they were just kind of like draped over the sides of the cross. And there was singing. And the stinging was coming from angels —and I don't know how I knew it was angels, but I knew it was angels, possibly because I couldn't see anybody, but I could hear the singing. And they were singing “Were You There.” I don't know if I already knew the song or not; I don't particularly remember knowing the song at the time but I may have heard it once or twice in church—I mean it's a pretty popular song, so I'm not fully convinced that I didn't know the song, but that's what they were singing in the dream. And then I looked up, and above this cross was a lightning bolt frozen in the sky, and the lighting bolt ended in a ball of fire. And this fire was just kind of hanging over the cross, but instead of it being like a menacing ball of fire, it actually looked like a child had drawn it with like colored pencils. It was very non-threatening, but it was there.
00:18:10	And so I woke up, and I was completely freaked out. I was anxious. I was nervous. I was scared. I was sad. I was happy. I was mad. I was upset. I don't know what I was, but I was freaking out. I could not take this dream. I told my parents. I told friends. I told family, and everybody thought I was pretty crazy. And the only thing that people thought was the least bit, you know, disturbing about the dream, was this lightning bolt/fireball thing, that of course became significantly less disturbing when I said it looked like colored pencil and that it's hanging above a cross. And so it really seemed like oh this was just a dream, you know, forget about it.
00:19:00	So about a month went by, and then we went to my grandparents’ church—the Methodist church—and they were having an Easter play. And when we walked in they had done the stage in the shape of a cross. So they took this cardboard, this white cardboard, and created a cross on top of the choir’s risers. And so the choir came out, in their white robes, and stood in this cross shaped structure, and it looked like a lattice, because you have the different bodies forming the cross. Then they decorated the cross with purple flowers draping over the sides of the cross, and they sang “Were You There.” So, of course you can see how this parallels to the dream that I had had, but this was also the moment that I came to understand what it meant for Christ to die for us, to suffer, and to take on the weight of our sins. So they did a reenactment or a retelling of the crucifixion and the resurrection, and it was at that moment that I really understood that He was beaten and abused and spat upon and separated from God and put in this pain, in this torture for me. For you. For everyone. That my sins and when I do wrong, that is why He was beaten that is why He took that spear to the side. That's why He had to die like that, so that I don't have to die permanently.
00:20:59	And that's a very solemn and bittersweet understanding of what it means for Christ to have risen, to have died and risen, because I feel like the way people celebrate... So, they’re celebrating Easter and Easter is a pagan holiday. I don’t have time to get into all the details about it; I do have a post on the blog about it,[2] and there are plenty of sources online that you can check out, but Easter itself is a pagan holiday. And we see this in how churches celebrate the resurrection, because they're actually celebrating Easter. And so you can see the spring dresses, the colorful, floral dresses and arrangements, and the colorful ties, and people spend a lot of time with Easter egg hunts and all these joyous things. Yes. I am so happy that Christ rose from the dead, and yes that is a joyous occasion, but it's also very bittersweet and solemn because He did suffer for us, and I think that aspects kind of gets lost when you look at how the church celebrates Easter, even though some of them are calling it Resurrection Sunday, or whatever have you. The focus is not really on what it should be—we're going to put it like that.[3]
00:22:31	And so it makes it hard as a youth, as a child, to fully understand what it is that you're claiming to believe in. And that moment was the moment that I fully understood what it meant for Jesus to die for me, and I think that is the moment that I fully came into becoming a believer.
00:22:54	But the dream doesn't stop there. That's not the end of it. Like I said, I became a believer. I, you know, understood what I believed at that point, but you know you still have to grow in your relationship with Christ. And it wasn't until much later that I started to really pursue my relationship with Christ, and really started to dig into the Word of God. And it was during that time that I made the connection of why there was a lightning bolt in my dream and why there was a fireball hanging over the cross.
00:23:39	If you look back, if you want to think about examples in the Bible. When Moses meets God, when God called out to Moses, He called out from the burning bush.[4] When they're going from Egypt to Israel, when He's taking them to the promised land, God leads them as a pillar of smoke in the day, and a pillar of fire at night.[5] And there are several other passages where God reveals himself to his people as fire, and I realized that this ball of fire, this lightning bolt that was in my dream was God. God's presence was in that dream. I was thinking that I was looking for my mother, but really I was looking for my Creator, and because I was young and I didn't have a full understanding of God and of what it was that I believe in, I was thinking of Creator as Mother, my mother is my Earthly creator. But what I was really searching for, I was seeking for who I am, who I'm supposed to be, and God was revealing Himself. He was reiterating what He had already told me, that He was there—”I am here.” And He was there. He showed up in the dream to say, “I'm here. I'm ready to teach you, for you to accept and to come into the body of Christ.” And that is when I realized that that was such a powerful moment. It was like being born again all over again, because I was starting to realize that God took the time to call me personally. It's back to the He knew me before I was formed in the womb.[6] He knows us. He knows what we're going to think. He's calling out for us, and you know, we love Him because He loved us first.[7] And I realize that, I had no idea what was going on, but He was calling out to me, and He showed up in my dream to specifically call me out and say “I am here. Here I am.”
00:25:59	And that was like such a powerful revelation in my mind, to realize that He would want that relationship with me. And I think that is why I have such a strong faith in God today, because I realize that He is real and He's calling me. And I may not known exactly what it is that He's calling me to do, but I know that that call is there, and I know that I have to answer it. And that is how I got to where I am now. Basically just trying to answer that call, and to, you know, remember that He is here, and to follow His word wherever He may be.
00:26:49	So, that is my testimony of how I became a believer and why I'm a believer. Obviously there are more details, but we don't really have time to go into all of that. In any case, in the next episode I'm going to talk about baptism, and why despite everything that I just said I'm not baptized—I know, that’s confusing, so that's why you should listen to the next episode. Hopefully I will put it out this week, but you never know, it might be Monday. I don't really know what's going to happen, because I don't know what my work schedule is going to look like. That's why you should *tongue-tied*—😂sorry—that's why you should subscribe, so you can get notified as soon as the episode comes out. So go ahead and subscribe. In the meantime you can check out the blog. You can also find a transcript for this particular episode at www.psalmstogod.com/howifoundgod. Thank you for tuning in, and I hope this has been a blessing for you. And I will see you in the next episode. See ya.

Footnotes and References

1. A lot of people (denominations) consider Christenings to be Baptisms but you cannot be Baptized if you cannot make the decision to believe and to follow Christ. I basically consider mine a dedication.
2. Posts on Easter can be found under Christian Walk > Holidays > Easter
3. It would be so much better to relate Jesus’ death and resurrection to fulfillment of prophecies and fulfillment of the Old Testament feast days, but I digress.
4. Exodus 3:1-17
5. Actually it’s a pillar of cloud, I don’t know why I said smoke. See Exodus 13:21–22
6. Jeremiah 1:5
7. 1 John 4:19
8. Obviously, this was before I began keeping the Sabbath.

#Veganuary

I am a vegetarian with a severe case of cognitive dissonance. You see, I discovered some time in high school that the more dairy I consume, the more acne I have. I can't tell you if dairy is truly linked to skin problems,[1] because I can only speak from my own experiences, but I can assure you that for me, dairy and skin problems go hand in hand. You'd think I would have given up dairy when I figured this out, but for some reason, I'd rather have acne or itchy skin than give up cheese.

When I started my vegetarian journey, I probably had cheese at every meal. Unlike meat, which disappeared from my diet without me even noticing, cheese was a major player in every meal. Breakfast: cheese grits, cheese in my omelette, egg and cheese biscuit. Lunch: cheese on my salad, cheese in my quesadilla, cheese on my rice... Dinner: cheese on my broccoli, macaroni and cheese, lasagna. I honestly didn't know how to make a meal without adding cheese. During this same time I was having a lot of trouble with me skin so I decided to finally back off the dairy products.

Most dairy products weren't hard for me to give up. I have a food aversion to milk, which means the taste and smell of milk actually make me nauseous. This means I can't do melted ice cream or milk shakes. I'm basically a one scoop, kid's size, for all dairy desserts. I only used milk to cook (which mean I wasted a lot of money buying the smallest container of milk I could find for 1/2 cup to bake something). When I discovered almond milk, coconut milk ice cream and yogurt, and vegan butter, I switched to using these products immediately. The skin trouble I had minimized significantly, but it didn't go away. Probably because cheese was still a part of every meal.

These are actually all vegan!

For the past three or four years, I've been slowly removing cheese from my diet. Last year, I attempted to do one week each month where I only ate plant-based. A lot of times I forgot, but when I remembered, I succeeded. So this year, I decided to participate in Veganuary. It's a month to raise awareness for veganism, and encourages people to eat a plant-based diet (and buy plant-based products) for the month of January. I think the goal is to show people how easy it is, and hopefully convert people to veganism.

Did I make it? With the exception of two days I made it the entire 31 days without eating anything that comes from an animal. One day I had a breakfast bar that was actually marked Kosher dairy, I'm not sure if there was actually dairy in it or if it simply came into contact with dairy during the packaging process. The other day, I went to a work function and ate a fruit dish that actually had cream hidden under the fruit. I was actually pretty proud of myself for managing to only slip up twice, especially since there were 3 events at work that had free cake.

The East Part

Since I'm already vegetarian and use substitute dairy products for most things, it wasn't that noticeable that anything changed. To me, ice cream and yogurt made from coconut milk is better than the original, so that's not an issue at all. I can't tell the difference between vegan butter and regular butter. Almond milk, especially if you get vanilla flavored, has a slightly different taste and smell that you have to get used to, but it isn't that much different either. Substituting these guys out in my every day recipes wasn't hard at all.

The Hard Part

Vegan cheese does not taste like real cheese. Period. I had vegan cheese a couple times throughout the month to curb my cheese cravings, but it wasn't as satisfying as real cheese. Also, eggs are a breakfast go-to of mine. When I wake up late and didn't prep anything, fried egg whites or scrambled eggs with spinach is super easy. I also found that many of the breakfast bars I usually eat aren't vegan, so breakfast suddenly became hard. In general, our society isn't set up to accommodate plant-based diets so this lifestyle requires forethought and meal prepping. Most of the food can be made vegan, stores just choose not offer vegan versions, which means you have to make your own.

Noticeable Differences

Ok, so the real question is was I converted to the plant-based life style and what did I notice health wise this month?

Health wise, I feel pretty much the same. I took a B12 supplement every day since B12 deficiency runs in my family and I primarily get my B12 from eggs, which were struck from my diet. My skin did improve and I don't have any acne at the moment. Unfortunately I still caught a bug the last week of the month due to the weather shift, so as I write this I actually feel pretty crappy. However, since the only real change in my diet was the consumption of cheese and eggs, I expect the difference should have been minimal.

Veganism isn't just about what you eat, it's a lifestyle about protecting animals and the planet. It encompasses much more than just what we eat. I'm all about protecting animals, of course, having grown up on a family farm where the chickens are not treated the way they are in factory farms, I don't feel any guilt about eating the eggs from home. Therefore I don't think I'll be 100% vegan any time soon, but you never know what the future holds.

References

1. Wendy Marcason RD. "Milk Consumption and Acne—Is There a Link?". Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Volume 110, Issue 1; pg 152. January 2010

Food is Life

I'm excited to announce, the PSALMS to God podcast is finally here. Find out why I chose a bread metaphor, how that relates to my obsession with food, and what that's got to do with...well, anything.

Season 1 Episode 0

¹Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. ²And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. ³And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. ⁴But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.Matthew 4:1-4 KJV

00:01:09	Hey guys, welcome to the PSALMS to God podcast! I'm so excited. So I've been trying to launch this podcast for almost two years now. I know that's a long time to be trying to do something. I have had so many ideas... They never really seemed to work out; I couldn't figure out how to get them to flow together. To be honest, when I came up with this idea, I had zero time, but I knew God was telling me to do a podcast, and I knew He had a reason for telling me to do it.
00:01:43	I think it took me those years to really just get in tune with what is was He was trying to show me. The biggest thing I learned during those two years was that even though I felt like I was doing all of these different things, they weren't actually different. So, at the time, I had three separate blogs because I thought I was talking about three separate ideas. I didn't think that they needed to be on the same blog, because I thought they needed to be in separated spaces because different people would be interested in the different topics.
00:02:15	But as I was trying to figure out how to structure this podcast, and how to make it accessible, how to link it back to a blog, I realized that no matter how unrelated these topics seemed, God is always at the center of the those topics, because He's at the center of my life—or at least I'm trying to make sure He's the center of my life. (I can't claim to be perfect at that just yet.)
00:02:39	Anyway, in the midst of that revelation, PSALMS to God was born. If you've already been to the website, then you already know that PSALMS to God is actually an acronym. It means Praising, Seeking, Appreciating, Loving, Magnifying and Surrendering to God. And that's exactly what the intention of this podcast has always been from the moment I had this idea. I want to praise, seek, appreciate, love, magnify, and surrender to God—no matter what the topic is. So don't be surprised if you start to see some of my other favorite topics pop up on the podcast, whether it be poetry or food, or culturally significant topics. They all are intertwined into the concept of placing God at the center of my life, so they'll probably all pop up on the podcast at some point in time.
00:03:32	Now, in the beginning of this podcast, I started with a quote from Matthew 4:1-4. This is a very, very important verse for everyone, but for me personally, because I am always hungry. Y'all, I'm always hungry, like always! Anyone who knows me personally, knows this to be true. It's so bad that my dad has made the statement that he would rather pay all of my living expenses (except my grocery bill), than to just pay my grocery bill. That's saying something; I just... I eat way, way too much.
00:04:12	Because I know that I'm always hungry, my life is basically structured around the fact that I'm always hungry. If you go to my job, I have a snack drawer. When I pack lunch for work, I pack with the expectation that I will probably eat my lunch before lunch and still be hungry at lunch. So, I pack extra food; I pack extra snacks. If you see me at the store, or at church, or I don't know—where ever, the bowling alley, the mall, it doesn't matter—usually, I have snacks in my purse. I have snacks at home. Sometimes I have snacks in my room because I wake up in the middle of the night hungry.
00:04:52	When I plan my budget, food is the first thing in my mind for the budget, it's the most important thing. I basically budget with the intention that I should be able to spend however much money I want to on food without thinking about it, and everything else should just fit in somewhere.[1] That's kind of crazy, right? That's really crazy, actually. But the reason I'm like that about food is because I'm a picky eater and I think it's important for us to be mindful of what we eat.
00:05:26	Photocredit: Unsplash.com/Anna Pelzer The Bible talks about our bodies being the temple,[2] and you want to take care of the Temple. If you go back and look at the Biblical description of the Temple, you can see how important it was, that it was holy; and of course, you want to treat your body in a similar fashion. Which means you want to be buying the best food to get the best nourishment and the best fuel for your body, so you can run at your optimal best. So this is why I put the most emphasis on food when it comes to me budgeting. Of course, that doesn't mean I should be hungry all the time or eating all the time, but I just wanted to throw out there why I focus on it so heavily when it comes to budgeting.
00:06:11	But physical food is actually immaterial. I know, I was just talking about how I'm always hungry and how food is so important, how did I get to this point? Well, Jesus is showing us this. He's been fasting for 40 days! Y'all, I can't even imagine fasting for 40 minutes,[3] so I know He was hungry! And now, here comes the devil, trying to get Him to turn these stones into bread so that He can eat. Y'all, it's Jesus—of course He can turn the stones in to bread and eat if he wants to, He's Jesus. But, Jesus knew—and He actually goes all the way back to the Old Testament and quotes Moses—He quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 when He's saying "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedth out of the mouth of God." Jesus is reminding us that it's the spiritual food and the spiritual nourishment that we provide to our body that is the most important thing.
00:07:09	So, this habit that I have of structuring my life to accommodate the fact that I'm always hungry physically, should be replicated in my spiritual life; and that's even more important. I should be making sure that I always have spiritual food on hand. I should be always ready with something spiritual—whether I'm starving, and I want a complete feast, or whether I just need a nice simple meal, or if I just need a little snack, just a little taste to have something for the moment; I should have that type of arsenal for my spiritual life, too. I really wanted to imitate this concept in the podcast. I've been trying to balance my life, so that I'm making this kind of structure in my life as well—that I'm, reading the Bible daily; that when I'm in these moods or moments that I know I should be praying that I stop and I get the right scripture or I get a moment of prayer or something to realign me in tune with God. And you know, maybe I would call that a snack or something to put me back on track. Sometimes, I need more and I need to be in the Word a little bit longer, to savor it and to wrap my head around things and let God speak to me. Then of course, there are times when I need to spend a long time just reading and researching and digging and understanding what it is that God has out there for us.
00:08:42	I had this idea to kind of mirror how I'm trying to balance my personal life into this podcast, and so I would arrange the different episodes as what I like to call, crumbs, slices, and loaves. The reason I went with that is kind of a bread metaphor, because the Bible is always talking about bread—breaking bread together,[4] as well as, the bread of life.[5] In John 6:35, Jesus tells us He is the Bread of Life, that when we consume the spiritual bread we never hunger. That's because that spiritual bread—which is Him, which is the Word of God—it leads us to salvation and to eternal life. So, if I do this right, I won't be going around saying I'm always hungry, but in the same sense, I should always be hungry for the Word.
00:09:35	I liked this whole theme of bread, like I said, because it's also about breaking bread together and I want to be able to break bread with you guys. So, sometimes on this podcast, we'll just sit for the little crumb. We'll do something short and sweet; we'll get a verse, we'll just meditate on how that applies to life—maybe have some short thoughts on it. Other times I will dig in a little bit deeper. I had this idea—I found my old high school yearbooks and I was looking at the superlatives for the senior class. Which, I thought that was really interesting to think about how or favorite biblical heroes would have been seen in a superlative light. I want to go into some information on those people and how their lives relates to today through the superlatives—I know that sounds crazy but just stay tuned and you'll see that I'm not crazy.[6] I think it's going to be really cool actually. I just want to bring their stories into modern day conception and let us see a bit more about them, and maybe try to see them in us and us in them. So, that will be what I'm calling our slices of bread. And then once a month or so, I think we should have a deep feast. I'll bring in a friend and we'll have a conversation about a topic. We'll just try to dig really deep into that topic. This season I want to talk about the fruits of the spirit. I think they're really important to defining our faith and defining who we see God as and the character of God. So for those episodes, each episode will focus on a particular fruit of the spirit.
00:11:17	Because I anticipate a lot of information being discussed in some of these episodes, and because I always want to hear your feed back, I'll post transcripts with references and maybe even some footnotes with after thoughts I had after filming the episode on the blog. You can always find the latest episodes under the podcast section of the website, but I'll give a direct link at the beginning and end of each podcast as well.
00:11:44	I hope that you are as excited as I am. I hope you'll join me. Don't forget to subscribe to get automatic updates and I can not wait to talk to you again. In the mean time, visit the blog and view this episode at www.psalmstogod.com/foodislife.

Footnotes and References

1. A more accurate overview of how I budget for groceries is this: Typically, I don't pay attention to prices in the store, I just decided what I want. Over time, I have analyzed my average grocery bill, and I a lot about $50 more to what I expect to spend. After setting that, then I determine how much I can afford in rent, cable, lights, etc.
2. 1 Corinthians 6:19–20
3. This is definitely an exaggeration. I've done 4, 24-hour fasts (but it's probably accurate to say I began struggling about an hour into the fast).
4. Acts 20:7
5. John 6:35
6. At least, I hope!