seminar
this i believe.let it be
I used to think my mother knew a song that related to every situation. It is hard to convince her that she is no Beyoncé as she croons out tunes of different meanings, messages, and melodies. “Que sera sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que sera sera.”—my mother found favor in this song in particular. She was always singing it and as a child I would hear the words and sing along, but I never truly understood the meaning. That was, unfortunately, until the day I sat in the cold courtroom surrounded by my five siblings, as we watched our mother get convicted and wrongly sentenced to eighty-seven months in a federal facility.
The moment the verdict rang “guilty,” my eldest sister and brother sprang from their seats in fury and shock at the terrible mistake the jury made. No matter how loud they screamed and cried out, "She's INNOCENT!" the verdict would not be erased and they were escorted from the courtroom. After months of a trial full of lies and deceit, my mother was condemned to nearly seven years away from the six children.
One can imagine this took a serious toll on the family and as the melody proclaims, “the future’s not ours to see.” No one saw this coming in the future of our household, and it took some time to realize we could not fight fire with fire but instead, with faith. My mother was released from custody in September of 2012 after serving six years. As unfortunate as this story may seem, it turns out to be a miraculous and prosperous story underneath all of
the suffering the family has endured. Without growing in faith and turning to God when the legal system let us down, my mother would have not survived years in prison alone.
When I speak to my mother now versus before she was taken away, I hear a newfound sense of spirituality and strength within her. There have been tribulations throughout this journey that I do not believe our family would have made it through without surrendering our situation to a Higher Power.
I believe that as humans, we may not always have complete control over our situations—but we can always have complete control over our faith and how we handle our situations. At times we undergo circumstances that are beyond our understanding, but it is our job as warriors to not let these circumstances defeat us. Over the past years it would have been easy to just give up at times, but as a family we stayed strong and we even through physical separation, we remain together mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.