I didn’t notice it then, but God was pulling me in the direction He needed me to be all along.
At the time, it didn’t feel like purpose. It felt like pressure.
Like when my grandmother this bold, powerful woman who owned her own church in Brooklyn. Would tell me to get up and speak in front of the congregation.
She didn’t ask. She instructed. She didn’t coddle. She called.
She had a presence that filled the room. A voice that demanded attention, not out of pride, but out of deep conviction. She built a place where people came to cry, heal, worship, and believe. That church was more than a building it was her mission, her ministry, her offering.
And somehow, she saw something in me too. Even when I was quiet, even when I was unsure.
I wanted to shrink, but she wouldn’t let me. I wanted to disappear, but she made me stand up straighter. I didn’t know it then, but every time she called me forward, she was preparing me.
She was teaching me how to speak, how to be heard, how to own the space I was in.
Back then, I didn’t understand. I just thought she was being hard on me. But now I see she wasn’t trying to embarrass me, she was trying to build me. She knew what was inside me before I did.
Years later, the nudge came back. But this time, it was quieter, more internal. A whisper to start a website. That whisper started in 2011 or 2012.
And like before, I hesitated.
Not because I didn’t want to but because the world had taught me to listen to voices that didn’t come from God.
Voices that told me I wasn’t qualified.
Voices that made me question my worth.
Voices that made me doubt the legacy I was born into.
But God never stopped pulling.
And neither did the memory of my grandmother.
I realized that the fire in her?
It was in me too.
It had just been buried under years of fear, people-pleasing, and silence.
My grandmother didn’t just own a church she owned her voice, her mission, her identity. And I’m finally learning to do the same.
She didn’t raise me to stay small. She didn’t push me to speak for no reason. She was making sure I knew who I was before the world had a chance to end that spark.
Her prayers are still opening doors for me.
Her strength is still woven into my story.
And her faith is the reason I can finally hear God clearly after all this time.
I didn’t notice it then.
But I do now.
God was pulling me all along.
And He used her hands to do it.
For my grandmother, who saw the fire in me before I ever knew it was there.
