I’m a stubborn woman; but, I’m quiet about it, so you might not know just how set I am on not being swayed.

If there’s something I believe, you can be sure I believe it with all I got.

I won’t believe because someone told me to believe, demanded I consider their perspective and accept their truth.

It’ll be because I’ve pondered and decided it is true and I’m better for its knowledge.

Too many times at the hands of too many people was my body demanded of and my thoughts, my beliefs coerced.

Years ago, I was chastised by a teacher. Told something akin to never being as good as you can be until you read your Bible every day.

Naturally, I resisted. “She’s not telling me what to do.”

When they’d ask for record keeping sake, “How many daily Bible readers do we have?” the number never matched the room and in silence, eyes scanned the semicircle set of chairs, I suppose they wondered who.

If they’d asked, I would have owned up and said why.

 I came to it on my own, eventually and unforced. I admit she was right, I only wish I’d come sooner and it been more peaceably presented.

My Bible is my place of learning, of comfort, of finding the scoundrels and the stubborn who finally gave up control and said,

“Okay, I believe despite question. I believe because you’ve shown me reason to believe.”

So, I journal. I read. I pray. I tell little Instagram stories of my God moments and I tell them quietly; hopefully, bravely enough to bend a listening ear, a searching eye, a longing heart.

Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what He has done for my soul. Psalm 66:16

Far be it from me to make tremendous claims or to attempt to convince another as if I’m soothsayer or savant.

Certainly not saint.

I pray I not become boastful, pompous or judgemental.

I pray I only share with clarity my life with God and for the sake of humble remembering, my life before.

May I, every morning attempt to set the direction of my day in knowing more of God through his word and then saying “Okay, I see. I trust. I understand now.” because I stored up a word, an account of something similar and its unraveling from God’s perspective.

Mostly, though, I just hope to keep getting closer to who I say I am, a woman quietly confident in God.

Not what I write, a piece of art or a position in community.

Rather, a woman who God sees when I fall face down to pray and when I smile silently and contentedly as

October sunbeams fall sweetly across the pages of my Bible.

A woman who sees God so clearly others do too.

And discover for themselves, the poetry, love and lessons of their own Holy Bible.