A personal testimony.

The thing of it is, I was born to serve.

People who assume things about me, assume that I am attempting to do other than serve have to check their own hearts. I have always just filled the spot that needed to be filled. Dishes? I wash them. Alto? I sing my part. Papers? I file them. Babies? I watch them. Food? I fix plates. Trash? I bag it. I was taught to serve by my grandmother, who taught me that only the things that I did for Christ—the things that I did without glamor or praise or notice would remain. That my reward before God would be in the silent parts that did not bring me shine—the floors I swept. The arm of support I offered to an old mother. The nose I wiped. The feet I washed.

I have never wanted a title, only that God knows my name. In my heart my whole life I have only ever wanted that God would call my name and say, “You did good, Kisha.”

And maybe that, too, has been my pride. Because I could always use that as a shield of self righteousness to hide my fear of stepping out on faith to be what God designed me to be. To be able to rebuff a “label” is the purest form of snobbery, when really, I have just been afraid of the weight of a calling that I don’t even understand. My name isn’t Jonah and I didn’t jump on a ship, but I hid nonetheless. Until, tossed to and fro, I was tossed right out into open waters where God said, “walk or sink.”

And here we are.

I was anointed to serve, and service looks like so many different things. Service for me these days looks like me helping my sisters in Christ reclaim the woman within—the one eaten up by years of self doubt and servitude, false messaging and the crippling mentality that we can only be whatever we are wherever we are, to be satisfied with less because to be more is to make those around us uncomfortable.

But. God designed us with great purpose in mind because God knows that if you reclaim a woman, a nation can be saved. Deborah. Jael. Esther. Ruth. Bathsheba. Mary the mother of Christ. Mary the Magdalene. The Samaritan woman at the well. Pricilla. We stand in gaps that allow the healing of the nations, the nurturing of warriors in the kingdom, and the building of the waste places. And yet. That standing in the gap should not ever come at the cost of standing in our own power. It should not ever come at the cost of scraping the corners of empty cups. It should not ever take the place of the cross and crown of Jesus Christ.

The Father’s system is one of restoration and replenishing. The kingdom of God operates without lack because in God nothing is missing or broken. When we allow ourselves to be emptied out but not poured into by the Father, we fall out of line with our Godly portion which is overflow. Then we cannot serve. We cannot give. We sacrifice ourselves and replace the perfect sacrifice of Christ with our imperfect one.

It is here the enemy gains the right to attack our lives in health, wealth, family, and connection. Until we walk in the overflow of God, we will always find ours depleted and resentful, longing for the woman that the 6-year old girl in us promised she’d be: mighty, joyful, genuine, and (most importantly) seen. Seen not necessarily by the world, but seen by our own eyes as the person God created us to be.

So I am beginning this year in the state of reclamation. As God calls you by name, so will I. I will see you and you will see me, and we will stand in the overflow and the gap, fully engaged in whom God created while serving the purpose God called us to serve. As God exposed my idols, so will I expose them. I will be authentic in the tearing down, the digging out, the rooting up, the planting that takes place as God rebuilds and rebuilds and rebuilds the waste places of my life.

I invite you, too, to walk with me into the Year of Reclaim. Let integrity saturated in love be the standard: love God, love people. Love you.