10/13/2024
Day 25/40: 40 Days Till 40 Challenge-
One of the other places that shaped me growing up was my childhood church. El Bethel, EB, was one of the safest places for me as a child. This was the first place where my acting talents saw the light of day. 💯🙏✝️🙌🎭
When I was 16 I was approached by an angel. A childhood friend and I walked to the market up the street one evening after bible study, and she was sharing news with me that crushed me. Out of nowhere this woman walked up to me inquiring about my wellbeing. I felt so seen by her that even though she was a stranger I didn’t allow that to stop me from disclosing my sadness with her.
To my surprise, and with a gentle boldness she told me that “my friend” was not really a friend. My mind was blown, but it would take me years to realize this before I finally parted ways with the friend.
Still, the angel conveyed to me with deep conviction and passion that I was going to do great things. She told me that she could not tell me what I was going to do, but that I was going to help a lot of people. I can still remember the fire in her eyes. The warmth. The sparkle of them. I have never had another encounter like that since.
✨🎉🤗💯🙏✝️🙌💛🥹🔥🎭✍️
During the 2000s, most of the young people of EB were graduating from high school, starting college, and embarking on adulthood. We were a bunch of artistic talents. Many of us had acting, writing, dancing, and singing gifts. God used one young man to start a theatre ensemble where he and friends would come together to write skits and later perform them in a black box theatre. My brother, Mario Lemons, founded Sharing the Gift Project, and invited other artists including myself to write and perform in the skits. It was groundbreaking.
Up until STGP, I had not been invited to share my writing gifts publicly. I had been so consumed with being an actress. It was another outlet creatively speaking that God had opened for me within the church.
Don’t Fight the Process was one of the last projects I had the pleasure of being involved with for STGP. I helped to write and co-write several skits, one of them being My Daughter, the Soldier which dealt with a soldier dealing with PTSD after serving in combat in the Middle East and returning home to live with her mom.
It was a two-person skit. I played the soldier and the woman who played my mom was married at the time to a soldier. I didn’t learn this right away, but in time I was told that her husband struggled with PTSD from his time serving in the Middle East. He disclosed a story that I would later add into the script with his blessing.
It involved a split-second decision that he needed to make concerning a child running towards him with a bomb strapped to him. His decision haunted him. 🥹✍️
After the show's opening night I will never forget how he came to me with open arms and tears…thanking me for telling his story. I was inspired to write about PTSD because around the time of the production so many American soldiers were returning home suffering from it, and it was gaining a lot of media coverage.
However, during a talkback with the audience on our last night I was asked what could be done to help soldiers dealing with PTSD. I was speechless, and unprepared. I remember thinking that in the future this was something that I needed to better consider.
Who knew that all these years later, God was using STGP to prepare me to be a writer. Today I can confidently say that without Sharing the Gift Project there would be no FaMILLy, Preying Wolves Pray, or Predestined.
To my brother Mario, thank you for allowing me to be on the journey with you. It changed my life. All the best to your creative endeavors.
Though EB is no longer my church home when I go and visit there is one lady who manages to speak into my life every time she sees me. I was in my early 20s when Mother Glass told me there was a call upon my life. For the last two decades whenever our paths cross she never fails to ask if I am still writing. Thank you.
Someday, I hope to pass down the faith she has had in me to someone else who will need the encouragement. ✨🎉🤗💯🙏✝️🙌💛
Nowadays when I think about the angel I encountered from Greenfield Market. I know what she couldn’t tell me. And I know why she couldn’t tell me. She couldn’t tell me I was a writer because by faith I had to know that God chose me to be a writer; I had to come into agreement with it. So he gave me the experience with the angel, Sharing the Gift Project, and Mother Glass to remind me of when things got really dark. And hopeless. I would be confident to know that he called me to be…a writer. ✨🎉🤗💯🙏✝️🙌💛🥹🔥🎭✍️
