Taking Brave Steps Toward Racial Healing: Listening and Aligning to God's Dream

By Lucretia Carter Berry, PhD

God's Brave Women - Lucretia's Story

She was like a blessing chasing me down, pressing her way through the crowd of women to catch up to me. Though I flowed along in the sea of sisters attending the women’s conference, I was a wave that stood out. I am 5’9, deep brown, with gravity-defying, big, bronze-highlighted locks that surround my head like a crown. She reached out and grabbed me.

“Hi,” she said. “While you were praying in the chapel, God prompted me to tell you something. But you left while I was praying for someone else, so I had to come find you.”

At that point I was a good distance from the chapel, which meant she had run a ways to chase me down. She paused to catch her breath. We stood sideways so as not to impede the flow of women moving from one session to the next. We stood like two pebbles forcing the stream to move around us.

“God wants you to do something big!” she said. I gave her a smile. I felt she was right, in the general sense that God wants us all to do “something.” And “big” is relative.

“Do you know what it is?” she asked. I shook my head, looking up and searching my mind as if I might find the answer in a distant memory.

“No,” I said with authentic cluelessness.

She seemed a little surprised that I didn’t know. She paused in anticipation of the Holy Spirit’s next instruction for me. “Write!” she said. “Do you write?”