The Dithering of a District Diva

When I received an invitation in the mail to my law school’s annual Black Law Students Association event, “Intro to the Bar,” I tossed it immediately. Nope, not going back there.  My knee-jerk reaction surprised me. I love my law school, I love my professors, my career is on track, and my life is beautiful…so what was the big deal? I shrugged off the introspection and moved on with life, content with my decision not to go.

Then, I received an email from a friend asking for all of the Hampton University alum and scholarship recipients to return for Intro to the Bar to honor our former Dean — who started what we dubbed the “Hampton Scholarship” — with a special presentation, since she has now retired.  I was immediately convicted. How could I not go back to honor my Dean? How could I not go back home?

As with all “family” situations, there are great memories that you want to relive in your mind forever — and terrible memories that you just want to forget (and hope everyone else forgets, as well). There are people who love you and people who love to see you fall. (You know how family does it). Throughout my third year in law school, I was terribly depressed, inconsolably sad, and often alone — not lonely — actually physically by myself ,with no one else, on my own.  To have been ignored would have been a kindness, but I was mocked and laughed at by my peers to my face and behind my back. My deepest confidences were betrayed, exaggerated, and flat out made up as fodder for my classmates’ Third-year boredom.  It was certainly the hardest year of my life to date, but, I asked myself Did it really trump the two great years that preceded this one? I’m over it, I’d forgiven folks, they’d forgiven me, I’d forgiven myself — Could I really not face it all, again? (Read all about it in the Diva Monologues 2011! You think you know, but you have no idea!!)

I resolved that I could only go back because, though I had fallen, I had got back up again. So you can run tell THAT, homeboy! I was prepared to say, if anyone brought it up.

So, I booked my flight, made plans to attend with my law school friend, and became increasingly excited as the date of the event drew nearer.  The now-practical-and-content me didn’t even rush out to buy a new outfit for the occasion: I’d spent years — and thousands — in law school impressing folks with my clothing; I was done.  My friend and I had a lovely and much-needed spa day, met up with another friend, and caravanned (Lexus-style) down to Macon, Georgia — the place where I grew up and met Jesus for real.

I moved to Macon a 21-year-old baby.  My mother and father moved me into my first apartment and left. Over the proceeding years, I experienced the Dickensian Dichotomy: “the best of times,” and “the worst of times” — great success and great failure, great love and blinding hate, deep joy and relentless pain.  But when I went back down to my alma mater, embraced my Dean, received love and beams of pride from my professors — one in particular who is my heart and soul, always! — and delighted in the growth of the students who were “first years” when I graduated and now into their third year, all the anxiety I was holding on to melted quietly away.  There was only peace left.

But, of course, someone had to bring up “The Dark Ages.”  And yes, I relived it in vivid detail for the curious parties.  But strangely, it didn’t have the effect on me that I feared it might have. I was no longer embarrassed, or hurt, or afraid, or anxious.  In fact, the only time I was drawn near tears was in the realization of how far God brought me in exactly two years’ time.

And I know it was God because there was no one else there. There were no friends, no family, no support system whatsoever. I had been betrayed and I trusted no one.  I even questioned God for allowing me to get myself into this situation, I mean where were the warning signs? “You mean the flashing red lights I sent you that said ‘Danger That-away! Turn Right! No, You’re Other Right, Dummy! O.K., U-Turn! U-Turn! Welp, I tried’?” God had reminded me. I could’ve stayed a betrayed victim, I could’ve been mad at God, I could’ve done what I wanted to do and quit law school and sat in my parents’ basement rockin’ and holdin’ myself for a few years.  If I had had my way, that’s what would’ve happened.

But He kept me. He whispered in my ear, “Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the world.” (Matt. 28:20) He said to me that the absence of everyone in my life was for a reason, so that I might cleave to Him and become stronger in Him. So that I would change. My heart would change. My desires would change. That there were things in my life that had to go and that He had to cut off, because I didn’t have sense enough to do it myself:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

I wasn’t bearing fruit, before. I was lost. Stagnant. Coveting the things of the world. Enjoying the things of the world. I didn’t want to be set apart anymore, I wanted to be like my friends — the friends who ended up leaving and mocking me. But He told me that He didn’t see me the way I saw myself.  He considered even lowly, filthy, depressed, broke-down, me, His friend! It was unimaginable:

^“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.” (John 15: 13-16)

He didn’t choose me to fall, to be alone, to be rockin in my parents’ basement! He chose me to “bear fruit…that will last“! I got up, went back to church, and began building towards the closest relationship I have ever had to God — all because of His pruning in my life. It hurt — I won’t say it didn’t — but going back down there made me realize how much I needed it to hurt. Sometimes, it’s the only way I learn.

And when I remembered the day I walked across that graduation stage in May of 2009 (no chords or ribbons or fanfare, except from the 20 family members who had come from all over to see me walk) I was this close to shouting — both back then as I walked, and now as I remembered, for I KNEW, if no one else knew, what God had done for me. I knew in my heart, my mind, and my soul that He is real. If I had ever doubted before, on May 16, 2009, all my doubts were soothed and fears were calmed.

My past cannot ever “come home to roost,” as I will be the first to crow about where God has brought me from! And not just because “If I look at my most vulnerable places and acknowledge the pain I have felt, I can remove that pain from my enemies’ arsenals,” as Audre Lorde has said; but simply because I am convinced that every failure and every hard time is for my good, and for God’s glory.  God promised me that His grace is sufficient to get me through, and it has, and will keep on. And because His power is made perfect in my weakness, therefore will I boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me!

No, I don’t mind going back anymore — it only makes me realize how far He brought me:

Not what I'm gonna be / Aint what I used to be!

I GRAAAAADUATED! (And You Can Live Through Anything if Magic Made It!)

My best girls

My family rolled DEEP for me 🙂

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