Who am I, now?

My husband designed a fashionable oversized women’s T- shirt for me with my name “Patience Murray,” going across the collar area, and it also had my face on it, as an animated character in the middle. I looked straight out of a Disney movie, in fact, it was one of my childhood dreams to be a Disney character. I wanted to be one of those people swirling my wand at the TV Screen to a kid watching at home, making my mickey mouse ears glow, while saying “Stay Tuned to Disney Channel.”?

The T-shirt was filled with pink, purple, yellow, orange, and hints of blue in a tye-dye pattern. All of the alluring colors served as a canvas for my beautiful brown face in the center, with the biggest, brightest, and whitest smile. The words “Champion,” and “That’s Law,” could be read down each side of my face. I had become very keen with these phrases, and of course, my thoughtful husband remembered to include them in this work of art he had been secretly creating for the past two months. He’s always been good at hiding secrets, too good at times. I digress, as this is a happy moment of reflection. Or is it? Just kidding.

It had sparkle animations on there too, creating the illusion that my diamonds were literally dancing and gleaming off of the shirt. I never saw a manifested product so perfectly aligned with the essence of who I am on the inside. However, I quickly realized that, creatively, I could have never created the masterpiece my husband sculpted for me. Bishop TD Jakes once said, “Great people can never see greatness in themselves,” and I felt that, deep in my spirit. The T-Shirt was divinely on-time and prompted me to think about my roots, on the fifth day of September, following the fifth year anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting.?

The T-shirt was perfect, it’s aroma was a hint of everything I inhaled inside myself, but couldn’t exhale to the world. The bubbliness, keenness, enthusiasm, mysticism, joy, profundity, the actual glimmer in God’s eye, was captured on that shirt, and is everything inside of me.

I began to ask this question again, “Who am I?”

?I say again, because the first time I began asking this question was in my early childhood years. The desire to understand why my dreams are so big, is something I’ve always wrestled with, even before I knew that I was wrestling.

I decided to pin the T-Shirt up on the wall in our bedroom, so I could look at it everyday for inspiration. Then, a whisper told me to begin placing relevant phrases, life experiences, thoughts, or images, underneath it on sticky notes, that will remind me of the cultural, spiritual, and creative influences that created that beautifully enchanting brown girl in the middle.

Once I started with the first sticky note, I couldn’t be stopped. Before I knew it, I was looking at over 83 sticky notes.

I wrote, “Cheetah Girls,” first, then “That’s So Raven,” followed. I kept going until I started venturing into more musical influences like, “Brandy Norwood,” and “Left-Eye from TLC.” Naturally, I started writing more phrases that related to the painful influences in my life like, “My mother’s absence,” and “Bullied in School, Camp, and by Family Members.” Until I circled back to my legendary musical inspirations like, “Aretha Franklin,” then ‘Whitney Houston,” then “CeCe Winans,” and “Anita Baker.”

All of these experiences make up who I am.

God had destined me for greatness at an early age. I always sensed it, in fact, my first Facebook name was “Only 4 Mizzy Destined,” or “Mizzy Destined 4 Greatness,” something like that, I digress.

Since then, I knew deep in my soul that I was called to succeed and do great things. But that sticky notes wall under the T-Shirt revealed to me that those painful influences stopped me from dreaming big. The traumatization of my upbringing broke my spirit early on, and diminished my ability to dream as big as I possibly could.

I knew a girl like me could dream, but I never allowed myself to believe in the possibilities of my biggest, wildest, or insanely impossible dreams. I didn’t have the supportive family structure, so I made the decision to limit myself, to think more, practically.

I never wanted to limit myself, but those fears of never reaching the stars were affirmed by people in my family, at school, and in my neighborhood. It seemed like people always found a way to knock me down an inch.

I started to believe that they were right. I was even thankful that they helped me see that a girl from Philadelphia, with my background, couldn’t possibly defy the odds. She couldn’t possibly go on to become more than what she saw growing up, so it was no point of wasting time trying. From former drug addict uncles, to broken philly mother figures, to cold-hearted non-believers, to the narrow minded dreamers. They all collectively made me think that I had to downsize my dreams, to make it make sense.

However, dreams don’t always make sense.

All we can do is follow that inner voice that tells us that anything is possible for those who believe. Although my belief system was contaminated by limited ideologies, I always held on to a tiny, crumb-like piece of the dream God gave me as a child. I found it safer, less heart-breaking, less disappointing, less humiliating to keep my biggest dreams to myself.

I felt like no one would understand why someone like me, a little broken girl from north Philly, could have the audacity to dream so big. I remember writing a poem that went like, “Who am I to be who I am, I ask myself sometimes.”

Oftentimes I felt like there was something wrong with me, because of the fact that I dreamed so big. It caused a deep perplexity in me as a child. I started asking more cynical questions like, “What makes me so special, that I think different from everyone else?” and “Who told me to dream beyond my limits?”

I could never figure out why. And after years, and years, of marinating in, and meditating on the unwise, unmotivated, uninspired, and the uneducated counsel I grew up with, I finally surrendered my biggest aspirations, and consciously settled for a mundane reality. One that quickly became spiritually unrecognizable to my soul, to my truest self.

I wanted to be in control of my destiny, even if it was to my own detriment. At least, if I didn’t make it, it would have been my own fault, at least I would have controlled the narrative - all the way down to rock bottom. And I did, but it cost me.

If there’s a cost to living the life of your dreams, then you better believe that there is a cost from running away from your calling as well.

Whenever we go against our intuition, that prickling and tickling gut feeling that warns us, that’s when we get into trouble.

There’s an all-powerful, divine safety and protection that comes along with being aligned with the vision that God has for your life. If you shut out that voice, telling you to dream big dreams, there could be fatal consequences.?

However, if you’re one of those people who have been graced with a second chance, by God, to have breath in your lungs, to have life, and have it more abundantly, then please, take the opportunity to make all of your biggest, wildest, and most insanely impossible dreams come true.

Don’t go after your dreams like your life depends on it, go after your dreams like everyone else’s life depends on you showing them that, anything is possible for those who do believe in miracles.

Sincerely,

Patience