Category: life

life

Begin Again

Omowunmi

Since April of 2023, it has felt like someone took the air out of my tires. Prior to that, I was silently grieving losing community with women I had loved for six years. It was two major transitions stacked on top of one another – a transition out of women’s ministry just a few months before permanently transitioning out of the practice of law. I have navigated these changes by leaning on my spiritual disciplines with the Lord and leaning heavily on my support system. Soon, I hope to finish unpacking these transitions with the help of a trained counselor.

Prior to these changes, I was silently grieving the changing dynamics of my relationship with women I had proudly called my sisters. My life was in flux. Just as it had been when I had to move suddenly in 2020. And again in 2022, when we left our neighborhood and city behind. Watching my children lose the childhood friendships they cultivated from preschool to second grade was a hard pill to swallow.

I thought when I finally accepted God’s nudging to step into His plan for my life as a woman who ministers to women, the path before me was clear. My natural abilities for oratory expression, my spiritual gift of teaching, and my heart to see God’s daughters walking in their freedom and deliverance combined beautifully with my passion for writing (books, blogs, devotionals). I knew I was called to women. And I knew exactly how the Lord wanted to use my gifts to reach them.

Hosting virtual conferences, in-person book readings, fireside chats, bible studies, prayer, and even going “live” online to talk candidly with women in a closed community all flowed naturally for me. And in the midst of a global pandemic, I found myself thriving in my God given lane and blossoming beautifully in my gifts. That was the story of 2019 through 2021.

In 2021, some of the women whose love and encouragement fanned the flames of my spiritual gifts became the voices the enemy used to plant doubt in my mind regarding my place among God’s daughters. I knew I was called, but more often than not, I began to hear that it was ‘safer’ to be quiet. As I voiced concerns about the ways I was being wounded by what should have been a safe place, the messaging was the same – your wounds are your responsibility. No one owes you safety. Cultivate it yourself. For almost two years, I spoke less and less and felt myself shrinking small enough to be safe and accepted among women who once celebrated my boldness. Even if I was wounded, as long as I was quiet about it, I would not risk being pushed out for being a leader who was “bleeding all over people.”

I thought leaving one’s women’s ministry (because it closed down) would simply release me for the next assignment that the Lord had for me as it pertains to His daughters. But in all honesty, the season after this ministry closure has found me grappling. Blueprints, ideas, visions, and messages the Lord has given me to walk His daughters to deliverance lay dormant, confined in the safe pages of my journals and in the document drafts on my computer. Unexecuted, but unforgotten.

I caught a fresh wind on January 2025 and was excited to take new territory in the new year. I wrote three books within a few months and envisioned myself taking my place once again as a woman who used her gifts to minister to other women. The year did not go as planned. Instead, the next several months of 2025 have been spent in survival mode. Outside of my husband and two best friends, no one else knew how hard this year has been for me. I found myself crying tears of disappointment and bewilderment on many occasions, struggling to understand how the year unraveled so quickly and why at the age of forty-two it felt like I was starting over (spiritually, financially, career-wise) with nothing.

I have tip-toed in and out of social media and my genuine interest in cultivating an online community of like-minded women of faith. I started in 2019 then stopped and started again at various points over the last six years. A part of me is embarrassed to start again. Because, it feels like my inconsistency has become a brand identity, and what an unfortunate thing to be known for.

Today, in the midst of what is still one of the hardest years of my life, I felt the Lord’s nudging to start again. For the last few months, prayer, bible study, stillness, and communion with the Lord have been a struggle. More often than not, I am fighting to make it through it each day because I feel so depleted. Pushing back against hopelessness is a daily battle that requires spiritual warfare and intentionality. So, in a small act of faith, I went on a walk/jog after abandoning all my wellness practices for the last two or three months. Today, I have spent time in worship after months of feeling disconnected from God. And when I logged on to Facebook to connect with loved ones, I felt the Lord’s nudge to write something meaningful and encouraging to my audience.

This blog is my response to that nudging.

To anyone who has been navigating the valleys of life due to grief, loss, identity shifts, or the challenges of life, I pray that you will find the courage to reach for the Lord and try again. There is grace for the pivot.

Begin again.

life

The Great Surrender of 2024

Omowunmi

The way my life has been set up for the last two years or so can only be titled “the great undoing” – shout out to my sister Dr. Gabrielle Gibson who introduced me to the concept of “undoing to become.”

Here is a quick recap of my life in case you are new here. The most significant shift of my life started in February 2021 when I went through my first time of deliverance through the ministry, Restoring the Foundations. It was three days and fifteen hours of ministry time that went into the very foundations of my life and restored me to God’s original intent for my identity. After that life-changing time, I went through a deliverance “tune-up” in December 2022 and received even more freedom. I eventually became a certified deliverance minister in February 2023 and was trained to use the same tools that brought me to freedom to minister deliverance to others by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I expected that becoming “freer than the day before” and now certified to minister deliverance to others would make this walk of freedom easier. Instead, the last 22 months since I became a deliverance minister have been filled with a shaking like I could not have imagined. I knew something was brewing as I came up on my 40th birthday in 2023 but I could not have anticipated what the year would bring.

April 2023 met me releasing the one career path that I had laid out for myself since the age of three. I surrendered the title of ‘attorney’ along with any intention to return to the practice of law. I closed my law practice in February 2019 so one would assume that formally walking away from a legal career in 2023 would have given me ample time (four years) to adjust to life after law. But what met me in the wake of my decision was a wave of grief like nothing I could have anticipated. I kept brushing off the grief, telling myself it did not matter. I had already decided years ago that legal practice was not for me. I gave law my best shot (was it really my best?) and all I had received in return was a growing sense of imposter syndrome that eventually gave way to mental health crises and panic attacks.

Try as I may, I could not shake the grief that I had “lost” something by giving up my legal career. Eventually, I stopped trying to “push through” and decided to acknowledge my grief. The sense of loss I was carrying was because being a lawyer had given me a well-defined understanding of what my career identity would entail for all of my adult life until the age of 39. Without law as even a possibility, I was faced with reinventing myself at 40.

At a time when my colleagues from law school were collecting accolades for fifteen years of experience as legal practitioners, experts, judges, and industry movers and shakers – I was starting all over. The waves of grief came in pulses. Many days and weeks, I would be filled with hopeful optimism at a future that looked wide open, and other days I would lament the thought of having to be an “entry-level professional” almost 20 years after entering law school.

I spent the rest of 2023 processing my grief and sense of loss. The Lord was kind in meeting me wherever I found myself. As I entered 2024, I kept asking the Lord what was next. I got my answer in February of 2024 and began carving out my next path towards a meaningful career. I enrolled in a grueling certificate program to learn a new industry. It took me seven months and three weeks to complete my six-month certificate, but I persevered. Through serious illnesses, multiple hospital stays, and a terrifying week in the children’s hospital, I eventually completed my certificate in September of 2024.

Enrolling in and completing that certificate program was an act of surrender. It meant that I was ready for the Lord to lead me down a different path than the one I had carved out for almost 20 years.

I was optimistic about the future once again.

But this new place of promise has also been filled with familiar giants and new opposition. The imposter syndrome that paralyzed me at various points in my twenties has once again raised its ugly head. Every day is a decision to contend against the lies that undermine my dreams. The sense of inadequacy and unworthiness that plagued me when I was out of work have become familiar tools that the accuser wields against me in this current season.

But I remind myself that I am not the same woman I was ten years ago. In 2014, as a new wife and mom, the enemy found a gaping hole of insecurity in my identity as a wife and mom whose primary role was at home and outside of the marketplace. My lack of salary convinced me back then that I had little worth to my husband and my family. I have since healed my understanding of my identity, my worth, and my indispensability inside of my home. The enemy was trying old doors to see if I had changed the locks or if they would continue to yield him access. It is an honor to be equipped to pull down imaginations and everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ in my identity.

My surrender in 2024 is to the God who can make beautiful things out of the ashes of my life. Mourning the loss of my career from 2023 into 2024 reminded of King David of the Bible when the child he bore in adultery with Bathsheba was sick. David lamented as the child struggled to live. One would have thought that David himself would die with the child. But when the child finally passed, King David got up, washed his face, ate, and continued on with the business of serving the Lord and ruling as king. I was afraid to mourn my career loss because I thought if I started, I would never stop. And grieving so vehemently over something that the Lord had allowed seemed sinful. But the Lord Himself showed me that if I did not grieve properly, I would not heal. There was a way to grieve my sense of loss that honored my humanity and yet did not dishonor my God.

So, that is what I did. Grieving well allowed me to see the way forward when the Lord said to embark on a brand-new career in which I have no experience whatsoever.

I am still on this journey, believing the Lord for something glorious in the unknown of the future after relinquishing the familiar past. The testimonies that come after obedience are not yet fully manifested in this new lane. I am still waiting, trusting, and applying for my first big break in a new career. But I trust God to complete the good work He has started. The great surrender of 2024 may well continue into 2025, but I trust the God who caused me to defeat the lion and bear in the wilderness that He will bring down whatever giant stands in the way of His plans for my life in the new year.

life

Little By Little: A Deliverance Story (Possessing the Land of My LIfe Through Deliverance Ministry)

Omowunmi

2022 was a year of lament for me. At the beginning of the year, we moved out of our apartment home into a new house that would be my family’s forever home. The transition should have been a joyous one. Unfortunately for me, our family had just moved twice in the previous sixteen months. I lamented losing a sense of normalcy for myself and our children. It seemed no matter how hard I tried, I could not find my feet again after so many drastic changes.

We had left our first home behind, the dream home we purchased for our little family of four. The home that held all my children’s formative memories between the ages of one and three was no longer ours. The school and neighborhood where they had cultivated friendships and community connections for almost three years were now relics of the past. We left that home suddenly after it was attacked by gun violence and moved into an apartment. Then, we sold the house less than three months later.

My head was spinning from all the changes. And my heart broke more than a little bit once the house was officially no longer ours.

In our apartment, I had fought hard to make the rented space feel like our own. It started feeling like “home” to us around the fall of 2021, exactly one year after we moved in. I anticipated spending at least another six months to a year acclimating to our new reality before we would be ready to be home buyers again.

We did not get a second year in the apartment. Fifteen months into our life as renters, my husband informed me that we were moving into and purchasing his family home. His parents had it listed on the market, and the house was perfect for our rambunctious boys who desperately needed a yard of their own.

We left our apartment in January and were completely moved out by February 1st. A new home in a new city also meant a new school for our children. More changes led to more grieving; my poor heart could not seem to catch a break.

“I do not feel like myself.” These words escaped my lips time and again, throughout the year 2022. I leaned into my community, taking refuge in the sisterhoods that had been with me for all of my transitions. As my family life was changing, so were my friendships.

The connections that once acted as a place of refuge for me began to feel more like business transactions. It seemed I was only acceptable when I was on my “A-game.” For someone who was dealing with multiple curve balls in her life, my A-game was laughable at best. 2022 became the year of intentionally and continuously contending for my joy because so many things were determined to steal it.

By the end of 2022, I had spent several months feeling “unsafe” in previously close relationships. Consequently, I submitted myself for deliverance through the Issue-Focused Ministry offered by RTF. No matter how often I had prayed or tried to process my emotions with trusted friends, the feeling of being “terrorized” inside of my own skin had not yielded. It was time for more deliverance.

In those three hours with the Lord and my ministers, the Lord bulldozed every foundation that had been laid by fear, grief, and an orphan lifestyle. Word curses uttered by well-intentioned leaders in my life were replaced by God’s truth concerning me and my held-in fear. The freedom I had received in my time in Thorough Format had given me my voice back in a mighty way, but newly inflicted wounds told me that being muted was safer than saying the wrong thing. The Lord entered my story once again on December 14, 2022, and He revealed how committed He was to my continuous freedom. Even in the places I had deemed healed, the Lord showed me how much more healing He could accomplish on my behalf. As the weight of the grief I had carried dissipated, the Lord instead gave me boundless joy and feet that danced unashamed in His presence. 

Coming out of my time in issue-focused ministry felt like I could breathe again. I had held my breath for months in my life, unsure if it was safe to release what was pent up on the inside of me. As I received ministry for those areas of my life that held new wounding, the muzzle placed on my identity by fear was removed. I found my voice again. Thank you, Jesus!

In the months between my time in Thorough Format and my tune-up via Issue-Focused Ministry, the Lord began to press upon my heart this burden to be accredited to minister to wounded women. I started researching Christian counseling programs around me, but none were a good fit. I did not want to go back to school for another degree, but I had the desire to be properly trained to minister to women. Fortunately for me, God had a solution in progress already.

I never knew that I would get my opportunity to become a minister almost immediately after receiving ministry myself. Less than two weeks after my issue-focused ministry time, I expressed my desire to train to become an RTF minister to Pastor Pauline Ezell, who had ministered to me through both my RTF sessions. Before the end of the month, I had passed the online training for new prospective RTF ministers, and a week later I was registered to attend the in-person training and activation. 

I had prepared myself for my journey to becoming an RTF issue-focused minister to take upwards of three months. The Lord took me from being an IFM receiver to becoming a prospective minister within 23 days. 

By the time I attended the in-person training and activation on February 2nd through the 4th, I was still within the first 60 days of walking out my new healing and deliverance. I did not realize that the Lord intended to give me more land to possess so quickly in my journey to total freedom.

My time in training was nothing short of supernatural. The Lord met me personally in surprising and miraculous ways. He even sent a snowstorm to ensure that I would have the opportunity to be in the ministry room with just the right people. My small group partner and I ministered freedom to one another in ways neither of us expected. For me, I walked away even freer from the spirit of performance and fear that had almost rendered me ineffective. I stood up, settled in my emotions, and bold in my identity. I went home with eyes that see clearly and assurance of my place in God and His family.  

Finding out I had passed my training to become an RTF Minister was simply icing on the cake. By the time my weekend in Nashville was over, I was floating on air. The things that previously weighed me down had no hold on me. I was living in the afterglow of being with The Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. 

The joy of knowing that I get to partner with God to do for others what He has done for me through the ministry of Restoring The Foundations is a joy I cannot fully describe. I am called to women, and being able to join hands with them as they walk into more profound healing and freedom is an honor. 

Once again, I am living in the aftermath of ground that has been newly leveled. High places built in memorium of the pain of my past have been turned to rubble before the Almighty God. After spending years in turmoil, just dealing with the pain of brokenness, the Lord broke up the fallow ground of my life to reveal rich, fruitful soil that can bear good seeds for His kingdom. Pain and trauma that once devoured God’s promises from the ground of my life have lost all dominion over me. I am free to become everything the Lord desires for me to be. My heart is purified and my hands are clear to carry any and all assignments the Lord chooses to place in them.

Coming out of three rounds of deliverance ministry has armed me with the tools to deliver myself from the clutches of hell, and to ask for help when I need reinforcement. The ground under my feet feels like I am planted on the Solid Rock once again. I will not be shaken. Thanks to my new tools, I can see with clarity all the places where the enemy had stolen territory from the promised land of my life. Betrayals, traumas, word curses, soul-ties, and partial forgiveness all left me living at the mercy of demonic trespassers who played freely in my emotions…until deliverance came knocking.

Today and forevermore, I am recovering every bit of the promised land of my life by the grace of God. Hell cannot have another piece of me. Not now. And not ever again. 

life

Lament

Omowunmi

Last October, I asked a question. “Whose responsibility is it for you to feel safe? Yours or those you feel unsafe around?”

The answer was that it was my own responsibility if the places I once deemed safe began to feel unsafe. So, I took the responsibility of narrowing down what made me feel unsafe.

It turns out that what created the lack of safety for me was behavior that reminded me of childhood wounds – people withdrawing from me without explanation. Because this behavior was typically followed by abuse. Lack of emotional intimacy was my indication that the person involved no longer loved me, and people who used to love me and no longer did were dangerous.

As I lamented (again) the loss of community I thought I would have forever, I took note when relationships went from warm, to nonchalant, to icy. A part of me was grasping for solutions to get to a place where my relationships felt warm and life-giving again. But nothing I came up with felt genuine. It all felt performative – like I was trying to earn the approval of people who had already dismissed me from their lives.

So, I retreated. I watched from a safe distance while women I once trusted with my life went on with business as usual without me. Feeling safe is my own responsibility. So I got quiet. Speaking from a place of wounding was frowned upon so I learned to stop sharing my pain.

“Stop bleeding all over people,” said a word curse that had to be broken over me.

“You’re a leader, you’re supposed to know better,” another one told me my emotions would be demonized if expressed.

I lamented in the safety of my home, sharing only bits and pieces of what I carried, convinced that my full weight did not have a place, at least not with a group of women who demonized deep grief that wasn’t tied to physical death. My soul lamented that a place that once brought me such joy and healing would be a place where old wounds were violently reopened. The worst part of bleeding here is having the people holding the knife tell you that you did it to yourself.

Their nonchalance to my pain shook me. I needed deliverance. So, I took hold of some. Freedom came and along with it, reminders from the throne of heaven that I am not what some have made me feel like.

Being fully accepted in one season and then slowly rejected in the others by the same people fed me a lie – “It’s only a matter of time before people no longer want anything to do with you. Just wait.”

I come out of agreement with every lie of rejection and expected rejection and I take hold of the truth that I am wholly and completely accepted and beloved by my Father in Heaven and those He has placed in my life. I am precious to Him, and He is only surrounding me with those who see me as He does.

I pour out my complaint before the Lord and tell Him all my troubles. The words that I had been too afraid to utter because they felt too sinful to accuse others of wounding me to this extent, the Lord was big enough to take. It didn’t change how He felt about me. He did not treat me like a leper that could not be touched. He never demonized my emotions. No matter the depth of my grief, He was big enough to take it.

So, after my lament, I was free to get up, wash my face, and eat. The “baby” (relationship) born from this community had died and I had opened my hands to return it to our Maker.

My lament was over. As I make room for joy, restoration of peace, and a growing sureness in my identity, I shed the lies that my previous pain told me. I cling to the truth of God’s word and His character.

God would never allow me to suffer just for suffering sake. Even pain caused by the sin of others can and will bend to His eternal plan and purpose for my life.

“Before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now I keep your word….it was good for me to have been afflicted (Psalm 119:67 and 71).

The night is over; it is morning. Take off your sackcloth. Anoint yourself with oil. It is time to dance!

life

The Journey of 2023

Omowunmi

This year is the year of my 40th birthday. For more than a few reasons, I am very excited about what 2023 has in store for me. Although the last four years of my life have been the most fruitful and productive times of my life, they have also been the hardest seasons I have ever navigated.

Since 2019, I have been on a journey of deeper healing. Four years ago, I started unearthing my voice and discovering what God intended for me to do with my words, my influence, and my storytelling. Some of you may remember that this blog got a facelift around that time and I started offering more creative writings and short stories along with my blogs on life and faith.

2019 was also the year of the panic attack that sent me running for therapy for the first time in my life. The next thirteen months of my life were filled with moments of sheer terror (anxiety really tried to end my life) as well as moments of triumphant victories. I fought my battles in therapy, prayer, community, and deliverance and I won. Conquering paralyzing anxiety attacks gave me the confidence I needed to step out into even deeper waters. I embraced my calling as a woman who leads other women into new life, healing, and wholeness; I began taking up more space online and in person.

As I learned my voice, I stepped into a deeper understanding of my identity. I started moving through the world just like the women I had always admired from afar – polished but natural, joyful, confident, fashionable, and outgoing. Because it turns out that we are equals. My old mindset had me convinced that beautiful, confident, godly women were somehow better than me. But in my healing, I realized that we had the same resources; I was simply neglecting mine. So, I began to show up in the world as my best self. I dared to do the things I had always put off as “someday” goals.

It has been a beautiful time of growth. This does not mean there were no setbacks. Our first home suffered a traumatizing attack of gun violence. We moved three times within eighteen months before finally closing on our dream home.

I was navigating a career crisis (someone stole my identity and hijacked my law license) while also having the most fruitful time of my life.

It is dawning on me that the enemy intended for those years to be years of bondage for me but the Lord determined that I would experience increase and breakthrough even as I was in the fight of my life.

It reminds me of Jeremiah 29:4-14 where the Lord told the children of Israel to settle down in Babylon where they were being held captive because He would increase them in that land until He brings them back to their native home. Even though it felt like anxiety had me paralyzed in that season, I was not crippled to the point of ineffectiveness. The Lord kept sending me lifelines – people to remind me that my battle with fear and anxiety was temporary and would soon dissipate.

For me, my 40th year of life represents a new chapter in a book that feels brand new as well. I am entering my fourth decade more healed, more clear, and more excited about life than ever. I can clearly remember being 33 or 34 and absolutely petrified that I would leave my thirties with no accomplishments, no goals achieved, and nothing to show for all the long-held dreams in my heart.

By God’s grace, that is not my story.

My thirties have been the best decade of my life. I have served God faithfully in this decade. I married the love of my life and gave birth in this decade. I lost friends but gained lifelong sisters in this decade. I encountered healing, deliverance, and astronomical personal growth in this decade. My standing is sure and steady for the long haul because my thirties have prepared me well. Nothing has been wasted in my thirties.

My twenties were a mixed bag, with the majority of those years spent in bondage to sin. I did not escape the clutches of hell until I turned 26.

Now, less than seven months from my next milestone and over thirteen years since I gave God a full yes, I can honestly declare that my best years are ahead of me.

In 2023, by God’s grace, I will finish my next book. I will mentor and disciple women. I will give birth to business ideas, and I will make an impact for God’s kingdom here on earth.

I will disciple my children and continue to love my husband unabashedly.

My identity has been unleashed over the last four years. I plan to take new ground as I discover more fully who God had in mind when He created me.

In 2023, I pray to be more of who I am.

I pray the same for you.

life

Confronting My Shadows

Omowunmi

It has been almost nine months exactly since I went through deliverance for every long-standing issue that has hindered me, lied to me, or stunted my growth in one way or another. The freedom on the other side of that process has been mind-blowing. Now that I have experienced deliverance in all four seasons (winter, spring, summer, and fall), it is time for a tune-up.

My first post-deliverance maintenance happened almost immediately. I needed to lay down some false responsibilities I had been carrying around after confessing a sinful mindset to my accountability group. The days and weeks following that confession were rough. Over and over again, thoughts about how negatively I would be viewed, perceived or treated tried to torment me. Thankfully, I had the tools to cast each one down and the presence of mind to continue to submit myself to the process of self-deliverance. The fear of rejection and feelings of inadequacy had me fighting for my life and my identity for a while. But I won.

In the last month, rejection shape-shifted and came for me yet again. Where it had been easy to spot the temptation to give in to the spirit of rejection when I am dealing with an ongoing conflict with the same people, or feeling ostracized where I had once been accepted – this time the demonic opportunity came in a more nuanced form.

A part of me had assumed that because I was loved and accepted by those that I also love, I would always be included. When I began to recognize that being loved and accepted by people did not equate to having unfettered access to them, emotionally, it bothered me to no end and I could not understand why.

I have developed good boundaries over the last few years of growing in emotional wholeness.

I knew that not everyone had to like me and I had found peace and freedom in that truth.

Why could I not let go of this grief of knowing that even the people who loved me would not allow me into certain areas of their lives?

[Unbeknownst to me, the lie I was telling myself internally was that being excluded in any regard by people I love was proof positive that they did not love me like I thought they did.]

A part of me had assumed (incorrectly) that all I had to do was prove myself worthy of their trust and surely, they would open more and more of their lives to me. After years of walking in integrity, sowing good seeds, and being a faithful sister, surely I had earned my place in the corners of their hearts that had once been closed off?

I waffled between anger, resentment, and sadness for days, unable to pinpoint why I was feeling what I was feeling.

Eventually, the Lord confronted my negative emotions head-on and gave them a name. The deadlock I was experiencing was actually another battle with an old foe – rejection. The spirit of rejection was having a field day in my thoughts and emotions because being held at what felt like arm’s length by people I have grown to love reminded me vividly of being rejected by the church community I once called my safe place. The reality that the people I loved had parts of their hearts reserved for others and simultaneously withheld from me had all the “danger” alarm bells ringing in my feelings.

“They don’t really love you. They don’t really accept you. You will never belong. You will always be on the outside looking in. You are only as good as your gifts. Nobody wants anything to do with you outside of what you can provide.”

On and on the lies poured in. The enemy had taken a pinhole and brute-forced it into a floodgate. I sat in the rising waters of my emotions for what felt like an eternity (it was likely a few hours or a day). I knew better than to let the old, stagnant, putrid water of bondage drown me. February’s deliverance sessions equipped me with new tools, godly beliefs, generational blessings, and soul-spirit healing that were divinely designed to bring me out of any chains the enemy would try to wrap around my throat.

“I am not rejected. I am accepted – fully known, fully seen, and fully loved.”

“No one owes me anything, but the Lord has already given me everything I need, including godly, safe, and intimate sisterhood.”

“I belong in Christ, and because Christ loves me, it is His good pleasure to plant me in a community that loves me like He loves me and has His heart for me.”

“I am not responsible for other people’s emotions, or their reactions to what I share. My task is to speak what the Lord has asked me to speak, how He directed me to say it, and when He tells me to speak it.”

Over and over again, I drowned out the enemy’s lies with God’s truth. I committed to my daily time of worship and prayer and began to find myself in God’s word in a new way. There were no “new tricks” with God. What worked was what has always worked – dedicated time in the presence of my Heavenly Father. Laying my head in God’s lap allowed Him to reaffirm my identity, comfort my heart, and confront my brokenness.

I have been walking this new dedicated walk with the Lord for eleven years, two months, twenty days, and twelve hours (and counting). Sometimes, it feels like I should be passed certain struggles. Rejection was something I battled in year one. Surely, I should have grown past that by now? But I know the enemy has no new tricks; he will try to use what has always worked in the past.

However, he is not dealing with the same Omowunmi.

I am equipped differently. I have matured differently, and most importantly, I am #healedDifferent than the previous versions of me. Confronting my shadows still comes with the temptation to give way to shame (“How can you call yourself a Christian and be thinking/feeling like that?”), but I know who I am and I know WHOSE I am. Shame does not get to have a voice in the process that God is using to ensure that His daughter remains freer than the day before.

Deliverance is the children’s bread. I fully intend to feast for the rest of my life.

life

A Love Letter To The Past

Omowunmi

Dear Omowunmi,

You did it. It has been five years and five months since you had your second son and I just want to let you know that you did it. You found the pace of grace in motherhood and your children are thriving. Every day is no longer a struggle and there are stretches of deep joy and loud belly laughs in your family. Each day has its own challenges but none of the hard days have outnumbered the wonderful ones. You are doing it, mama. And your family is grateful.

It has been nine years since those word curses released over you told you that you would be a hindrance to your husband, and I am just here to report that you uprooted the demonic assignment those words were meant to complete. You escaped from under the weight of the spirit of inadequacy.

It has been fourteen years since the fear of failure kept you stuck in a life and career that felt like you were failing yourself with every year spent racking up losses instead of employment. I am just here to let you know that you are two years removed from walking away from those dead ends. You did it. You built a life that is brimming over with meaning in every aspect – spiritually, relationally, and even financially.

It has been nine years since those friendships you thought were lifetime connections fell apart. It has been seven years since you mourned them; it has been five years since you stopped reaching back for something that was never yours to begin with. I am just here to let you know that you did it. You healed from the trauma of losing your community. You did it. You did not allow the bitterness to swallow you whole. You opened your heart to sisterhood again and you have created deep and lasting friendships with women who see you as you are and love you without measure. You did it. You healed!

It has been almost five years since that argument with your husband had you questioning your ability and your worth as a wife. I just want to let you know that you did it. You broke free from the torment of the orphan spirit that had you feeling inadequate and rejected at every turn. You did it – you built a friendship with your husband that is not poisoned by your once secret fear that he did not actually love you. You did it! You matured into a wife who is secured in her husband’s love because she is secured in God’s love for her and secured in her own worth.

The last twelve years of your new life in Christ have been filled with all manners of adventures (both good and not-so-great), but I just wanted to let you know that you fought for deliverance on every aspect of your life and the Lord won the battle for you. You are no longer a people pleaser. You no longer bear false responsibilities for how others mishandled you. You are no longer afraid of money. You broke free from the curse of poverty. You are no longer a walking collection of other people’s sins against you. You are a healed and whole woman. You walk tall as a wife and a mother and you embrace your calling as a woman of influence and wisdom.

You did it. You healed. And I am so grateful.

life

“Even If He Doesn’t…” – Trusting God In The Impossible

Omowunmi

Two years ago anxiety tried to take my life. I had such a severe panic attack, the thoughts that raced through my mind to find relief could only be described as demonic. Since then, every major life change, unfavorable circumstance, or health scare has done its best to bring back those terrifying feelings of drowning in the air.

In February of this year, I went through an intense and purposeful weekend of healing to attend to everything that has contributed to this life that was previously lived in fear. Since that memorable weekend, it has been a journey of walking out my freedom daily. Recently, I got an email that sent me down what could have been the deep and dark spiral of panic. The familiar feelings of unease came over me. I instantly lost both my appetite and my peace. My mind took off racing as if someone yelled “GO!”

Then all of a sudden, a thought interrupted all the other fearful ones.

You’re not who you were. You have more control over your emotions. You know how to persevere. You do not have to allow your feelings to take you into darkness.”

And just like that, there was a great calm. And a new thought followed.

What if my healing and deliverance from anxiety and fear is not erasing fearfulness forever?

What if my healing from anxiety means that when the ground is shaken beneath my feet, the fear may come, but I allow the work that the Lord has already done in my heart and mind to fight against the wiles of the enemy?

So, it is likely that being healed from crippling anxiety and panic attacks does not mean I will never be triggered by anything ever again. It may actually mean that when old and new triggers rear their heads, I decide on a different reaction. Even if my heart races and my knees buckle at the thought of unseen threats that appear fifty feet tall, maybe my healing looks like taking a deep breath, looking them square in the face and asking – “so what happens if my worst fears are materialized?”

What happens if this is just as terrible as I thought it would be?

The answer?

The same God who protected me from armed robbery, car accidents, unfavorable health during my pregnancies, witchcraft, and occultist powers – and ensured that they could not accomplish the evil that the enemy desired – will protect me against these new weapons that are being formed.

God is able to keep every evil from manifesting in and over my life. The God of Heaven who created me for good works, who promised that my life is in His hands, who said He knew me before I was formed in my mother’s womb is powerful enough to keep me from all evil.

But when the enemy retorts “Well, He did not prevent those bad things from happening in the past, so why would He prevent this one?” – I have an answer for that as well.

He doesn’t have to prevent it if He has the power to redeem it.

I would prefer that the Lord keeps the enemy hundreds of miles away from me, never even allowing him to breathe in my direction. But when the devil brings the fight to my doorstep, I have to rest assured that I serve a God who remains God, no matter how hellish my circumstances.

God does not lose His sovereignty because my situation looks dire or beyond repair.

God is no less the Almighty because it seems that the will of the enemy is overtaking me.

God is no less a healer when sickness tries to ravage my body.

God is no less my Father when I feel desperately isolated and unloved in the valley of my brokenness.

God is no less my keeper because it seems that the arrows of the enemy keep finding their way to my house.

God is no less my deliverer because it seems that the chains of bondage have found their way around my hands and feet.

He is God all by Himself.

The same God who told Israel to make a life, build houses, give their children in marriage, and thrive while they were in Babylon because He would rescue them at the appointed time still reigns today.

It does not matter what my circumstances look like.

It does not matter what anxiety and fear try to tell me.

It does not matter how the enemy tries to terrify me. Even in the darkest of moments, my God does not change. What He does not prevent, He will redeem. He will bring me out. I will not be consumed.

So I say to fear and anxiety, again, if the God I serve exists, then He can rescue me from the furnace of crippling anxiety and panic attacks, and He can rescue me from the power of you, you Strongman of fear. But even if He does not rescue me, I want you, powers and principalities, to know that I will never serve your gods or worship the idol of worry you have set up in this earth (paraphrased from Daniel 3:16-18, HCSB).

God can and God will rescue me from every anxiety and panic. God can and God will rescue me from the paralyzing symptoms of anxiety attacks. God can and God will rescue me from every unfavorable situation that the enemy designed to destroy me.

… but even if He doesn’t, I will not bow.

life

Unbroken: Retrieving the pieces of my identity and finding my way to wholeness

Omowunmi

For the last four years, I have been on this intentional journey of undoing what trauma has done to me. It started in 2017 with understanding how my fear of failure and fear of success had robbed me of the opportunity and wealth that God wanted to bestow on us. It continued with deconstructing my poverty mindset and limited understanding of money and wealth and their roles in the life of a follower of Christ.

To give you the cliff’s notes version – fear had me convinced that God could not do much with my life because inadequacy kept telling me the same lies – you are not smart enough or qualified for the positions that can move you out of poverty and lack. God has shot those lies down and I now understand that I am uniquely equipped for all things that God has put in my hands and through Him I have the power to make wealth.

As I was flourishing in the truth that God has blessed me with every spiritual blessing and has also given me the power to make wealth, I hit another previously broken piece of my identity: anxiety/panic attacks. After a traumatizing event in 2019, my previously calm demeanor vanished and I became a quaking shell of my former self. For several months (February through September 2019) I was harassed by a fear that manifested into physical symptoms. As I experienced insomnia, paralyzing panic attacks, racing thoughts, and what I can only describe as demonic oppression set against my mental health, I sought God in therapy, in prayer, and in community, for deeper answers beyond coping mechanisms. What God revealed was how fear and trauma had set me up for a life built primarily on worry rather than the goodness and trustworthiness of God. He also revealed the extent to which I had allowed a borrowed title to define my entire identity when WHO I am in Christ cannot be quantified by what I do for a living.

Since February 2019, the Lord’s primary concern has been building in me a DEEP and unshakeable understanding of who I am and what He had in mind when He created me. Since then, I have been purposefully challenging myself to uncover undiscovered parts of identity, the parts of myself that I have neglected or allowed pain and trauma to bury or misshape. For example, because of my previous loss of fellowship and sisterhood, it took me a while to understand that the Lord created me to champion and provide a godly community for other women. The depth of my pain in that area of my life was actually a clue as to what I was called to be – a champion of sisterhood, godly accountability, and community for women.

In February 2020, almost a year to the date of my most traumatic adult life event, I shared my newest book with a room full of women who love, support, and believe in the work of the Lord in my life. The moment was deeply healing and absolutely God-ordained. For the last year, I have been on the journey of uncovering what it looks like for me to walk fully in this lane as a woman with a voice, a story, and a heart for healing other women. There have been both strides and hiccups. I have seen triumphs and I have encountered triggers. As I took 100 steps forward in growth, I would periodically find myself walking backward as triggers and old soul wounds exploded on the scene like grenades – and attempt to decimate all of my growth and healing.

It is only fitting that in this month of February of 2021, the Lord decided on the anniversary of my book launch to catapult me into the stratosphere of healing, wholeness, and full deliverance. For three days, I had the opportunity to partner with and submit to the Holy Spirit as my Heavenly Father showed me in real time who I am – without the false lenses of old traumas, false identity, and past wounding. It felt like God Himself stepped into the room, scalpel in hand, and performed the most precise open heart surgery ever attempted in the history of medical science. He knew exactly which valves and vessels needed His touch. Imagine God reconstructing a new heart for me, one piece at a time until the new heart looks nothing like the old one. Yet, this new heart is so perfectly suited to the body it inhabits, it is as if the old heart had been returned to perfect health and re-implanted in the same body – same DNA, perfect shape, and size, without all the sickness and disease.

I told my sisters that this new life and level of freedom is so foreign; it is reminiscent of being a baby learning to walk. Everything feels wildly different from this position of healing. I am learning a new way of thinking, operating, and viewing myself and the world. I question my thoughts more than I have ever done (is this true or is this my wounding trying to impose an ungodly belief on me/what does God say about this thought I have about myself/how did Jesus meet me in this past painful memory?).

I am doing a lot more of taking thoughts captive and forcing them to submit to Christ than I have done in my thirty-seven years. But, it is strangely freeing – this new habit of questioning and examining every single thought before agreeing with it. I am shedding layers of triggered and traumatized behavior and coping mechanisms. I am undoing decades of the enemy’s attempts to keep me captive – in Christ but unable to flourish, free-ish rather than free indeed.

Wholeness has been the fight of my life. With each new painful experience, the enemy added new levels to the tower he constructed as an altar to my pain. Each soul wounding beckons me to worship my pain, rather than fixing my eyes on Jesus. A genuine relationship with Christ provided my first fighting chance at freedom. Continual self-reflection, submission to the Holy Spirit, and godly accountability allowed me to put my feet to my prayers for soul healing. Therapy, confession, and repentance ushered me to a new level of growth and maturity in this journey to freedom. But these three days, at the foot of the cross, with the help of capable and equipped deliverance ministers have catapulted me past any level of freedom the old me could ever hope to reach.

I am living in the aftermath of ground that has been newly leveled. Every altar built to pain, trauma, and wounding has been blown to smithereens. Every ground, hardened in the comfortability of “just dealing with the pain” has been tilled and tilled again, broken up until the soft, fruitful soil of an unhindered heart has been revealed. My life is good soil, waiting to receive the seeds that God has been scattering for 37 years with mixed results – because pain and trauma like hungry birds would often devour God’s truth before it could bear good fruit.

Armed with the knowledge of where the enemy has stolen vital pieces of my identity (every childhood and adulthood trauma, every betrayal, every giving away of myself in hopes of receiving love, every curse uttered from my lips or those of others that became self-fulfilling prophecies), I am on the offense to pursue, overtake, and recover ALL from the enemy. Hell cannot have one piece of me. Not now. And not ever again.

life

Raising Myself

Omowunmi

Untitled Design (2)

I always assumed that motherhood itself would teach me what I needed to know once I started having children. I did not come in with any preconceived notions about who my children were going to be. I knew I would have to discover and nurture their individuality for myself. What I did not anticipate was how often I would be parenting my children the way that I was parented, even when I see that it is not working.

My parents did an amazing job; I honestly believed they did their very best for me as parents. But even their best efforts left me lacking in fundamentals that I believe are vital to development into whole, functional adulthood. As an adult, I have been faithfully filling in the gaps by the grace of God to ensure that I am not experiencing the world from a place of wounding, but rather a place of wholeness.

I see a lot of myself in my oldest son and it is disconcerting. We are both highly sensitive to harsh words, failures and punishment. We both have a deep desire to be seen, acknowledged and loved in overt ways. But even with that knowledge, I find myself raising him the way that I was raised even though many of my childhood experiences that are tied to the techniques I am repeating were not pleasant. Being punished (to inflict pain and humiliation) rather than disciplined (to correct and impart a lesson) had me convinced that my family hated me when I was much younger.

I see the same inclinations in my son. Yet I find myself defaulting to the mindset that demands unquestioned obedience from my children and brings the hammer down on any semblance of defiance, no matter how small. Because a disobedient child is the shame of any parent. Even if it’s just a developmental phase. Even if he’s only a toddler. I was programmed a long time ago that your children are yours to command and control and if they do not fall in line, you must break their will and build them back up.

But is that really what God has called me to do as a mother in the lives of my children? Break them down to build them back up? And in whose image? Because if I am more committed to raising “good kids” than helping them become who God called them to be then I am surely raising them into idolatry – creating them to look more like my own ideas so I can show the world that I am a good mother.

As I continue in this journey as a mom, I find myself not only raising my kids, but raising myself. Reparenting myself away from my own traumas and wounded inner-child and doing my very best to model wholeness to my offsprings rather than looking to them to heal me. It is not my children’s job to complete me. I need to do that work outside of them so that they can reap the benefit of a whole mother who loves securely.

Who knew at the age of thirty-six that I would be raising myself?