Words have the power to encourage.

As far back as I can recall, worrying has been what I did. Somehow I began to feel as if I worried enough about my health that I had it under control when in reality I had not experienced enough of life yet to know how little control I had. Until Valentine’s Day of my junior year in college when my life as I knew it was about to be thrown the fastest curveball I had ever seen.

As a Christian and as a black woman, I spent a lot of years juggling “student Jamila”, “work Jamila”, “church Jamila”, “family Jamila”, “friend Jamila”, and “wife Jamila”. I know this makes it sound like I have multiple personality disorder. Praise the Lord, I do not. These are just some of the masks I’ve worn to fit into the different parts and places of my life.

Have you ever wondered to yourself, why is my journey a mess? when will I get there in life? Well, that question is normal. It comes up when we are scared and doubt God's plan for us or when we don't understand God's work on our journey.

When I truly accepted that bad things were going to happen in my life and that it didn’t mean that I had been forsaken; it didn’t mean that all hope was lost; and it didn’t mean that there weren’t good things that would also continue to happen in my future….it was such a relief!

I believe that God is good all the time and all the time, God is good. But can we be real for a minute? Everything in life doesn’t always feel good. There are times when the situations we are facing seem unbearable and just saying “God is good all the time” doesn’t make you feel any better.

This is a moment in time where the depth of our belief in this scripture is being tested. I truly believe that even though it may seem like our way of life has come to a screeching halt, God is still in control. He has not forsaken us. We are not doomed.

God is with you, even when bad things happen. Yes, He allows bad things to happen for a greater purpose. Personally I’ve had a lot of bad things happen to me, but I’ve also been extremely thankful that I haven’t experienced some of the bad things that others have. And even in the midst of some of the horrible things, I can see how God has been faithful, brought me through those experiences and never left me.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you realized that you’ve totally misunderstood something God told you? I’ll never forget last year when I was praying over my plans for loved+blessed and I clearly felt the Lord whisper to me the word “Yield”…

God’s plan is easy to see when we are looking back over our lives. Hindsight is 2020. But vision for the future requires trust and faith.

“Write.” This was the word I heard from the Lord at a women’s conference in 2016. I heard it, not audibly, but in my spirit- in HIS spirit, living within me. Then, just to confirm and “make his way plain for me” he wrote it out right there in front of me…

The other day my boss asked me how I liked my job. It was an interesting question because he knows that this is nowhere near where I expected to be at this point in my life.

Sometimes God’s faithfulness is easiest to see when we look backward instead of forward. We’ve all heard the saying “Don’t look back, you’re not going that way,” and I agree with the sentiment of that statement. It is really unhealthy wallow in the past. But I’ve found that reflecting on the past can give you hope for the future…