I be the one crying when I pray, tears falling monsoon style as I ask God, “Why? Why does [this one or that one] treat me like [this way and that way]? I don’t ask for much!”

I don’t ask for much.

Hmph.

I be saying that to God like it‘s a badge of honor, like slapping a Big Joker on the table to set the other team. Like having no requirements or expectations in life and love has made me superior in some way, more deserving because I can suffer through and get by on just the little I did ask for. Never mind the beg and the plead behind it because I ain’t receiving nothing a-tall. From nowhere. Outta nobody.

Hence my “trump card.”

When it came down to it, this year God very clearly told me that I been tripping big time. I had a whole negro nerve, whining about how I didn’t ask for much; that was the whole problem. You get what you believe you should have. And my confession (admitting to it or not) has been up until that moment: I don’t deserve much, so I don’t ask for much of anything.

This jacked up way of thinking has shown up everywhere. Everywhere. And the moment I saw it—the moment Christ adjusted my eyesight—I have set about figuring out how to fix it.

It has started with a big ole BOWL OF SADDOWN. I put everything down. I mean alluvit. My job. My household responsibilities. The unfair expectations of everybody in every area of my life. I holed up in my room and been sitting ever since. Existentially falling apart while watching and weeping at how very little the people I had put my faith in did for me. How I had married myself to a lifetime of assignments and focused myself on turning labor into love, liability into profit, pain into promise.

I finally stopped harping on who wasn’t helping me. But I did take a good long time sitting here beating up myself. Because how did I get here? Nobody supposed to be here! I went from sorrow to flat out rage to sorrow again, nearly killing myself to work myself out of the hole I had dug for myself.

The Lord made me sit down again.

Because in order for me to hit the mark, to hit the spot set before me where Jesus will meet me? I can’t be complaining or mad or down on myself or hating other people for not loving me how I want to be.

This year, the year of “even the more” I desire to finally be all that I see and more. To help all that I can and more. To be who I am. And more. In Christ.

And that begins with me choosing God’s way.