When We Talk to God

Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay with Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to our podcast. Our guest today is actually one of our ministry team members, Sharifa Stevens. And today she is the one being interviewed rather than just one of our team members. So, Sharifa, it’s so great to see you as always.

Sharifa >> It’s always a pleasure to see you, Kay.

Kay >> Now, Sharifa, according to her book, Sharifa is a writer, a poet, a speaker, and a singer. And it’s all true.

Sharifa >> It’s true.

This is going to be so fun!

Kay >> I don’t know… I’m not quite sure why you think this is so funny. That’s the wonderful things that you are.

Sharifa >> It is. It’s wonderful.

Kay >> She looks so sad.

Sharifa >> I’m so sorry. I’m not. I’m so happy.

Kay >> Anyway, we won’t talk about you anymore if it’ll make you feel better.

Sharifa >> Okay.

Kay >> You can read Sharifa’s entire bio on our site BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. So today we are talking to Sharifa because she has a book, and it is beautiful. It is one of the prettiest books I’ve ever seen. And it is When We Talk to God: Prayers and Poems for Black Women.

So Sharifa, actually, I was just really blown away by your book, by the beauty of it, by so many of the poems and prayers in it.

It just really touched my heart in a lot of ways. It reminded me a lot of the psalms, which mean a whole lot to me, because you had a lot of raw emotion in there like the psalmist, and it all came from your heart. And there’s no doubt about it. That kind of expressed your deepest thoughts. And, you know, just like the Psalms that give us words to pray when we don’t know what to say to God.

I see your book is doing that for a lot of people there. There will be a lot of poems and prayers in here that will be very dear to many women who will read them and pray them over and over. I think, just like the Psalms, it will help people when they face difficulties be anchored in the Word when that happens.

Thank you for doing this.

Sharifa >> Thank you for those affirming words. And I am especially honored that you would draw a parallel to the Psalms because that was my goal. And I see the Bible as being so vivid and rich with emotional depth that it’s not just an intellectual exercise to read the Bible. It is spiritual, and it’s also emotional, and it reflects the fullness of God’s love and of our humanity.

And so in the book, I wanted to reflect some of that back to the frankness and intimacy of the Psalms and the prophetic voice of the prophets, and the thirst for justice that echoes throughout the prophetic books, and also the playfulness of the Song of Solomon. They’re just different beats in the Bible. There’s history, there’s lamentation, there’s so much praise, and there is a connection that’s really highlighted in the incarnation of Jesus, a connection of God with humanity.

And it’s gritty and tactile and real and a woman’s life is pretty and tactile and real. And I just noticed that there are a lot of beautiful, beautiful works that are geared toward women, spiritual lives, but not all of them talk about things that happen uniquely to women. And so I wanted to address those with care and humor and lamentation. But I wanted to address them.

Kay >> And so I think that that all of that purpose is what was behind the book.

Sharifa >> Yes, all of that.

Kay >> Yeah. So how did the book come to be?

Sharifa >> Well, the book came to be because it was it was something needed. There were a few things that happened. I was presented with the opportunity to write a book and I wanted to write to black women specifically because the cultural landscape tends to forget about us sometimes when it comes to our spiritual journey.

And it’s a mixed bag for black women a lot of times. We, just like women overall, are over half the church. And a lot of church support comes from the unpaid labor of black women—as well as the paid labor. But I don’t believe that the church could exist the way it does without the devotion of women.

But to be a woman in the church can be a complicated thing.

To be a black woman in some churches can be an extra complicated thing. But this specific cultural landscape can be really hostile towards black women. And so I wanted to remind us that God created us in his beautiful image, that we are also the children of God, that we are worthy, that we are valued, that Christ died and lives for us. And not to buy a narrative that would say that our presence, our bodies don’t count as much as another’s.

Kay >> Well, I felt like in reading through it, that it helped me understand a little bit more about what it feels like to be a black woman because you put that emotion in. So thank you for doing that.

And one of the questions I was going to ask is I know it was written for black women, but how do you see women of other backgrounds connect to it? And but I’ve just told you that I did. But you might have other reasons or other thoughts on that.

Sharifa >> Yes. I think that the I center black women in the book explicitly, and I think that women can relate to menstruation or motherhood or miscarriage or impostor syndrome. I think that black women are human, and these are human experiences. And so other humans will be able to connect to the themes.

I think there are some things that are so unique to black women that to read them would be to be informed about your sibling. Even if it’s not if it’s not about you, that doesn’t mean you know, when you’re in a family, you want to know what’s going on with your siblings, even though you’re not identical it. So I think that there’s a lot of commonality in the book. I wouldn’t say if you’re not a black woman then just leave this book alone.

I would say yes, this book is centering the experiences of black women, and any good sibling would be interested in knowing what’s going on with their sisters.

Kay >> Absolutely. And I really loved the book. I mean, even though, yes, there were some of the poems or some of the things that you wrote about the prayers that I don’t personally identify with as much as I did others. But for the most part I identified with almost everything in the book. What would you hope that black women of faith would take from your book?

Sharifa >> I hope that this book is a love letter. I hope that they feel loved. I hope to reinforce the message that God loves them fiercely and that they do not have to fear talking to God. God adores honesty and open communication. And I keep going back to the incarnation of Jesus and how Jesus said, “I came here not to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved.”

That’s what He said. And He said, I came to seek and save those who are lost. And so I think that there are a lot of prohibitive messages that come at so many of us, that there are so many like you black women, you can’t come. You can’t come to God unless you get this, this, this and this together.

And that’s a lie. You can talk to God and God will listen because God cares about God’s children.

Kay >> And I think you almost specifically say in there that nothing in your life is off limits to you to talk to God about. Yeah, I have found that attitude to be difficult for women in general.

Sharifa >> Yes.

Kay >> That they don’t feel worthy, that they—I don’t know, there’s some sort of fear often of just really opening up to God. They don’t seem to feel worthy, worthy to do so.

Sharifa >> I think there are a lot of messages that we receive, some explicit and some just implied that our spirituality is not the same. We are the daughters of Eve, and Eve is the person who was deceived and set the world into, hurled the world into sin and death.

Kay >> Right.

Sharifa >> How do we move forward confidently with that on our shoulders unless we know that there is well, first of all, that Adam ate that fruit as well. Yeah, first of all, but and that’s a whole other ball of wax.

But also we are, if we are told more about how dangerous we are, how we are temptress, how we cannot be trusted with the gospel. Or if we’re told these things incessantly. If we’re told that our only good comes from who, what man we’re connected to and how many children we bear, well, of course we’re going to have a warped sense of spirituality.

But when Jesus came and when he sacrificed his life for all of us, it is finished. So these warped ways of viewing women are finished. They’re finished. And he made sure to put an exclamation point on that. And we had Jennifer McNutt come in here and talk about Mary Magdalene. He entrusted women from the womb to after the tomb and said to Mary Magdalene, “You can be trusted with the gospel.”

Well, we need reminders because I don’t think women are getting the message enough that we are also entrusted, that Jesus trust us with this good news. That we can talk to God, we can talk to God and God will talk back. And if he doesn’t wait to talk to us, depending on whether we’re married or whether we stopped whatever cycle of sin or shame we’re in, he does, he wants to talk.

He just he wants his children to have a relationship with him. That’s what he wants.

And this is what we see in the movement of the Bible. This is all that God goes through to reconcile us is great love, not fear that wins the day it’s great love. And at the end in the new Jerusalem, when time is no more it’s love, not fear.

That will be the constant chorus. And so anyway, obviously I’m passionate about this.

Kay >> Yeah, you’re preaching.

Sharifa >> And so, yeah, but and that’s why I think people, when they open the book, they might be surprised at some of the prayers that are inside. And they might say, oh, why this? Why we. And it’s because I, I well, I want people to survive and be reconciled to God, number one. And number two, I don’t want people to think, well, this is a thing that’s a bridge too far for me to talk to God now if a thief on a cross was not a bridge too far, there is no use anyway.

So I feel like God is generous and in love and I’m trying to communicate that.

Kay >> Yeah. And I could see that because some of the topics will be a little bit challenging for some people, I think, because they don’t know that they can talk to God about those things, right? They don’t know that you should be talking to God about those things.

Sharifa >> And I put it there for the people who need it.

Kay>> Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, this book exposes so much vulnerability in you. And I just, you know, you must have had to relive some very difficult times in your life as you wrote it. How did you go through that? How did that work?

Sharifa >> I’m still going through it. I feel like I went through it the first time with writing it. And I know you know that sometimes when you write things, you have to live them first. It’s not true for all of the prayers. But as I was writing, I was diagnosed with two forms of hair loss, and I have a lot of hair.

So it was just a shift in identity. And then I became like perimenopausal. And now I just was like, What is going on in my body? I experienced the unexpected deaths of friends and family. And I would have preferred not to have to walk through some of the things that I wrote about. But that’s not life. Life is walking through it. And I feel like I’m walking through it again now that it’s been released and my words are no longer just mine. They are vulnerable to the interpretation of others.

If it’s an exercise for me to have the boundary line now that this is now not just my words for me and my little circle, but it’s being given to others. And some people will use the words and some will abuse the words. And I still belong to God.

Kay >> You just have to entrust it to God.

Sharifa >> Yes.

Kay >> You know.

Sharifa >> So it’s an act of faith.

Kay >> Absolutely. What can you share a favorite poem or prayer from the book?

Sharifa >> No.

Kay >> And would you read something to us? This really look like.

Sharifa >> You and really hard, like “Which child is your favorite child, Sharifa?”

Kay >> I know. I mean, I was trying to find my favorite and I had a hard time and I thought I’m not going to do that.

Sharifa >> Well, it would have been so much easier if you did.

I think, oh, this is perfect. It’s not even long. My favorite right now is “Moving On Up,” which is a Psalm 121 re- mix.

“I’m down here where the earth cracks too hot and tired where you can’t get caught slipping where money is protected but people disposable. I am looking up.

“I want to see you Maybe if we lock eyes, you will come down and change things here. I know you haven’t fallen asleep on the job, right? You stay woke.

“Can you move me up a little higher? I want to look at your face. Higher up your face shines.

“I know who you are. Maker of the air I breathe and the land I tread upon. Maker of me, of us.

“I know what you’ve done. You’ve kept me.

“Nights we would have starved You fed us.

“You have delivered us into days we thought we wouldn’t live to see, here where the politics are dirty and the guns plentiful, Here where love is fickle and therapy unattainable

“Here your watch for love will be a covering of supernatural safety

“Lift us, move us up to a safe harbor.

“Expand your loving attentiveness over me and over us today tomorrow and for life.”

Kay >> Beautiful

Sharifa >> Thank you.

Kay >> And where did that come from? Was there any particular event, any particular feeling that you had?

Sharifa >> That came from reading Psalm 121 and feeling the timelessness of it. And I wanted to build on what the psalmist wrote in order to express my own frustration with living in a time where guns are plentiful, and therapy is unattainable.

Kay >> I love that well, thank you, Sharifa. Thank you for writing this book. Thank you for entrusting your emotions to God and letting him use them in the lives of other people.

So you can get Sharifa’s book off Amazon.

Sharifa >> Or bookshop.org or Barnes & Noble.

Kay >> Absolutely. When We Talk to God: Prayers and Poems for Black Women.

Sharifa >> Yes.

Kay >> And I would like as well to go to our website BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. We have many resources. You can go to the dropdown menu at the top and the resources and browse there.

You can also search for Sharifa’s name because she has done other podcast episodes for us. In fact, she has actually spoken at some of them, not just interviewed other people, but when she does interview other people she has a lot of really good things to say, so I think you’d be interested in those as well.

So I hope that you will check those out, and we have some other prayer episodes as well. If you’re interested in prayer, you can search our website for those.

So until next time. Thank you. Thank you, Sharifa.

Sharifa >> Thank you Kay, it was so wonderful to talk to you.

Kay >> It’s great to talk to you. And I just know that God’s going to use this.

And so until next time, I’m Kay Daigle. Thank you for joining us.