Sarah Jakes Roberts

I think that if you're in a season right now where you feel like this moment is going to define me forever, I think that you should figure out how it is defining you now, that you should study that definition and then see where you want to make edits and amendments.

I think sometimes the resistance of letting it define us has more stress than just embracing that this is now a part of my identity.

This is a part of who I am now.

I spent so long trying to not be a teen mom with a baby on my hip.

You know, trying to not be the girl who went through the divorce while going through the divorce.

Because I felt like I don't want to be who other people think I am because of what has happened to me.

But this is a part of my truth.

And so I have to embrace it and I have to let it change me.

And then I have to figure out who do I want to become based off of what I have left.

And part of my belief is that there are things that can be made out of leftovers.

Listen, my parents grew up on government cheese.

Okay.

I was raised, my parents were on welfare.

We know a thing or two about taking what looks like leftovers and making incredible meals.

It's in the culture of how I've grown up.

I think the same thing applies to our life experiences.

We may have nothing but broken pieces left and we can look at that and think to ourselves, there's nothing that can be made out of these broken pieces.

Or we can dare to believe that there is a mosaic that maybe has never been seen before.

Maybe that we could not create in our own imagination.

but that they really can all work together to produce something that looks like good and looks like God.