With God, I’d learned, it was okay to be vulnerable. God had given me permission to soften my hard exterior and let the world know about my pain and my trials, in hopes that those who’d suffered might know that God waited for us on the other side. I had encountered God as a whisper or a mystery, and I longed to explore that. I needed to talk to him about the things I had seen and experienced. I needed to ask God in front of the world to help me make sense of Black suffering.
