I’ve often shared that in January 2013, the month after I returned home from undergrad, a close minister acquaintance of our family told me to begin a journal so that I could always reflect on what I asked God for and what he’s done. Although I’m not the best with keeping up with it consistently, the heaviest moments tend to find their way in there. This entry is from the day after I moved.

I knew that I wanted to go to graduate school. I applied to, and was accepted into, the Howard University School of Divinity for the Fall 2013 semester. There were several factors that halted that move. I could not financially sustain that, and I could not consciously leave home knowing that my terminally ill grandmother needed assistance.

As 2014 settled in, I began thinking about next steps again. My grandmother began to seriously talk about what I needed to do once she transitioned, and although it was a difficult conversation, it was a necessary reality. She did all that she could to make sure that she gave me what I needed to go forward. Unfortunately, that was met with opposition. As she began to enter the final stages of her sickness, she diligently worked on making sure that she left things and those closest to her as she wished. I tried to assure her that no matter the outcome of her efforts, I would be fine.

Fast forward to July 2014. This was it. The woman, the myth, the legend Jessie Mae Rogers Patterson had slipped into extremis. In some ways, I felt as though I had failed her. She remained worried about things that were beyond either of our control, and there was really nothing that could be done. Decline took its natural course, and she ended up at my mother’s house, slowly transitioning in my mother’s bedroom; directly across the hall from mine.

While this is not what I wish to detail, one part of that process that lasted just over a week remains with me in such a poignant way. My grandma would begin to moan in the middle of the night, and just before day one morning, she asked for one of her close friends who is a minister. She continued moaning in pain, and her friend showed up within a few minutes. I listened. The moaning began to fade, and a song was rising up from underneath it. Her friend was singing:

You don’t have to worry, and don’t you be afraid. Joy comes in the morning. Troubles they don’t last always. For there’s a friend in Jesus who will wipe your tears away. And if your heart is broken, just lift your hands and say, “I know that I can make it. I know that I can stand. No matter what may come my way, my life is in Your hands.”

Let’s move this story forward as fast as I can…

I had one more iron in the fire, and I didn’t even know how it would work. I majored in Mass Communication with a concentration in Print Journalism in undergrad. I knew that communications was something that I could do with no worries. Washington, DC offers an abundance of opportunities in that space. I saw that Bowie State University had an Organizational Communications program that was affordable. I applied and had gotten accepted. I had two conversations of assurance with my grandmother as she laid on the bed in which she would die. One of which, I will not detail on this blog, but the first is very much relative. I took the letter into the room, and as one of her best friends sat there talking to her (she would mostly just look at us), I told her that I’d gotten accepted to graduate school and that I was going to go. I didn’t know who, what, when, where, why or how, but I told her what I knew she wanted to know, “I will be okay.”

Fast forward again, my grandma passed away on July 18th. Life felt very odd following that because I’d devoted the entire year and a half prior to being her hands and feet. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how I would get out of Hemingway. Beyond school, I needed a place to stay and I needed finances to sustain me until I could get a financial aid refund.

Eventually, I gave up, and I wouldn’t mention it. I was in a group chat with some friends the week before, and one of them inquired about my pending move. I told her that I didn’t have the finances to go and I would not be going. Another friend asked how much I needed. I’d found a boarding house to live in near the school, and I needed $600 upfront. No further questions asked, although there was initial rebuttal from my ego, he fronted me the money.

A few close folks gave me some sustenance money, and since my mother had totaled my car, she allowed me to use an extra vehicle in the yard to leave. With about 8 or 900 dollars to my name, on September 1, 2014, I drove away to Bowie, MD to begin the next chapter.

There is so much I can share about this period, but I’ve wearied you long enough I’m sure. I’ll summarize as much as possible.

My landlord allowed me to wait on my school refund to pay him for the rent for two months because it did not come until October. At the same time that my refund was about to come, I got a call that some money that was held up from a car accident that I had been in some 3 and a half years prior was about to be released. I got that and paid my friend and landlord back. I had enough money to carry me through the end of 2014.

I applied for jobs here, there and everywhere. I finally got hired at a call center in January 2015 through a temp agency. That would help me to pick up where the refund and settlement money were ending.

I HATED that job, but I knew that I needed income. After training, I found out that I would probably have to quit school in order to work. I came here for two specific reasons, to go to school and to begin my professional career in the communications field. Plus, did I mention that I HATED that job? Long story short, I went to lunch one day, and as far as anyone knows, I’m still at lunch.

That same day, I went home, sat in bed and began to apply for internships. I had never been successful with Indeed jobs, but what the heck? Within two weeks, I received  a response from a healthcare nonprofit agency in Washington, DC. A month from me walking off of the call center job, I was a Communications Intern in DC, making more than I was making at the call center. I was also able to go to school.

I found favor at that place and was allowed to stay through my allotted time as I job hunted. I ended up being hired at a civil rights nonprofit in DC as the Communications Assistant.

I may as well fast forward again because it’s time to wrap this thing up. A few months ago, my senior supervisor resigned. The young lady who manages me moved up, and I found favor again. I was promoted to Communications Coordinator at the organization.

I do this story no favors by skipping pieces although I was trying to keep it short. Everything is not meant for the microwave, so this is the truth of the matter. I was on food stamps when I moved here, and although I’d typically get by, there was a time when I ran out of food. I sat in my bed and thought, “Lord, I have never been hungry. This is different.” One of the ladies boarding in the house knocked on my door.”

“Josh, do you eat Progresso soup? I bought the wrong kind, and I have a few cans.”

You don’t have to worry.

There was also the time when I was running out of gas money. Didn’t know how I was gonna get to school. My aunt randomly called me and said, “Me and your uncle are gonna send you some money.”

And don’t you be afraid.

How about when my prepaid phone was about to be cut off because I didn’t have enough money to renew it? A friend called me on that day and said, “I’m sending you $50.”

Joy comes in the morning.

Also, the house I was initially living in was for all intents and purposes, a trap house. I found it on CraigsList. Drugs were being sold out of it, and the area was dangerous. I remember calling one of my friends one night as I laid on the floor in my room because shots were being fired outside.

Troubles, they don’t last always.

For there’s a friend in Jesus.

I found myself questioning the very nature of God during my most turbulent times, but I could never doubt his existence. I knew that he had been with me in the past, and that he was continuing to be with me.

Who will wipe your tears away.

I had never felt more broken in my entire life than when my grandma died. It was strange. When my brother died, I was in a state of shock and thought I could not find a deeper level of grief. They were equally painful but differently hurtful. Whoopi Goldberg articulated it when speaking on her mother’s death, “It’s like you know, no one will ever love you quite like that again.”

While I’d been close to my great grandma my whole life, I came in later life to understand my grandma in a way that was almost like having a friend 50 years older than me. I came up to school still shattered. If I may be honest, I remember sitting in my car one night in front of my house with beer bottles all over the floor. I had cried just about all one could possibly cry. Something came over me. It was like a clear voice that said, “You’re gonna have to say what’s wrong. You have to say it.”

I said, “My heart hurts.”

Around this time, I’d been laying in bed all day most days. I had to ask my professor to excuse me from class and I had to pull things back together.

Do you know what song would randomly come on every time I was up here and I felt like I was about to quit? “My Life is In Your Hands,” It even came on one day as I was laying aimlessly in my room in my pajamas. If you’ve read thoroughly, you’ve caught the correlation.

And if your heart is broken

Just lift your hands and say, “I know that I can make it. I know that I can stand. No matter what may come my way…”

I do realize this is getting really long. Reeling it in now. I just wanted to testify to the power of God. There have been really good days, and there have been really bad days. Today is a really good day which is why I’m reflecting. In just a few hours, I will receive my Masters of Arts in Communications from Bowie State University. Never one to share my GPA and such, I want to speak well of God here and not of me. He allowed me to finish with a 3.8 while working full time. I am by no means done…

My life is in your hands.