Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin & George Floyd

by Tamice Spencer Helms

Since the near accident with the “GOD IS REAL” car, I’d always felt close to God, but they told me he was far away from me. They said my name couldn’t be in the book until I repented of my sins and accepted Jesus. They said that though I had thought I was following God, I was really following something called my “flesh” the whole time. They told me God killed Jesus. What did Jesus even do to deserve that? I thought Jesus was a good guy. Why did God kill him? They told me it was because of me. They told me I had to identify as a sinner and admit that’s who I was at my core. This was news to me. My parents named me after themselves and my grandmothers. My father, Thomas, and my mother, whose middle name is Michelle, combined their names to make my first name, Tamice. And my middle name, Namae, is a combination of the middle names of my grandmothers: Leah Naomi and Dorothy Mae. Names are important to my family and testify to where I come from and who I am. But after meeting White Jesus, I wasn’t Tamice. I was a sinner. I wasn’t distinct. I wasn’t special. I wasn’t anything really apart from sin. It confused me because White Jesus was adamant about my name on the golden stairs, and now I was finding out that he had no use for who I was as an individual.