That girl Filoe

I grew up in a beautiful home, filled with laughter and Bible verses. My single mother epitomized everything I want to be when I grow up. She built a house that was a home to my siblings and I. She taught us to pray and to refuse to be sick. Life outside of home was even more interesting. Living in an upcoming urban area meant learning to succumb to patterns and lifestyle choices that made me comfortable, accepted and well, ordinary.
School has always been the highlight of my experience. From learning a language to challenging opponents right through to even familiarizing myself to even the teacher's characteristics was and still is a beautiful mystery in my eyes. To me, the virtue of growth is discovery. Been afforded countless opportunities to find something that was there long before I was, to scrutinize and evaluate it and to end up mastering it strikes me as the master of all rewards. Especially because no one is born deserving of the opportunity of learning, but by God's positioning each child gets served their portion.
I'm of the deepest conviction that from the home setup, to the classroom and even to the maternity ward, the essence of life comes in the most pleasant and most excruciatingly bitter doses. I say this now because the first 19 years of my life prepared my for a ride on a fierce and rowdy whirlwind.
I can't fathom the agony of an everlasting wound that doesn't heal even though time is moving. Hence I'm writing this post. Shortly after I turned 19 I was brutally attacked, kidnapped and gang raped by three vicious men. My wound is healing. From the home my mother built, to the eloquent speaker my English teacher brewed to the street smart urban babe my peers groomed, I found myself in an emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual cal-de-sack.
Life as I knew it changed. Totally and drastically. Hatred tasted as real as course sea salt on a sensitive pallet.
Breaking free from the pain meant killing myself. Escaping the reality of been tortured so brutally and mercilessly simply and clearly meant to end my life. It was that way or no other way. Face it to live or end it by dying I preached to myself for the first 6 months preceding that disastrous night. When your body goes through a certain amount of pain that you feel as though life itself is rejecting you, that's the very point of surrender.
Its been 4 years and 8months and I can't help but smile through the tears. I was a victim. Then a survivor. Then a patient. Then a medical experiment. Then a case study. Then a statistic. Then a student. Now an ambassador. All because of surrender. The type of surrender that benefits you.
Oftentimes I sit and recall it all, and I realize that the grander scheme of purposeful existence, is passion. For life through pain, or numbness through death. We are presented with that choice each day. Feel the tension, pressure and strain through the liveliness of your young body OR not, by seizing to feel or respond to anything. Being raped not only meant I'd hate men, it meant I couldn't escape them. I wake up everyday and CHOOSE to love, respect, honor and pray for them.
At19, life had not "begun". But mine did that night. See, its difficult. Tough. Strenuous. Really just an uphill battle. There is not a time when life makes precise sense in our own human understanding from that type of assault. A phoenix is said to rise from ashes. I grew up in a beautiful home, neighborhood, school system, church, family......
Today I am a phoenix.
I did not rise from that furnace to be a sex, rape and abuse celeb, I rose up to pull out other phoenix' still buried in ash.
My getting raped could have symbolized an unfair God to the world but it symbolized purpose to me.
A week into my quest, I am reflecting on the goodness and character of the God my mother still teaches and testifies to me about.
A week into this birth I can already see the labor of love and the fruits of sacrifice that are going to be the pillars to this building.
A week into it and I know, I was called for this battle. The call had to be as real as the pain I'd felt. The call had to be as vivid as the reality of my ordeal. The call had to be as relevant as the current statistics stand.
From a victim to an ambassador.
I am boldly confessing to the world that part of my live's purpose and another reason for my existence is to be an advocate for healing. I have been trained to empower the discouraged, to set a courageous example with my own life and to aid the corner of the world where God has strategically placed me to groom a new generation of men and women that serve each other, protect, assist and bend backwards for each other's sanity and well-being.
Is it fun or easy? Far from that. But oh so worthy. Won't I cry out and scream? Trust me, I might. This journey is in it, to win me. Yes!
You may have noticed on my social feeds. But a week into it, I can smell fresh ash, forming into healed women and a community engaging in a battle for freedom. Take notice and stay with me.
It is called WAR against Rape n Abuse @WAR_RnA #Warsp2014

His Kiss

Song of Solomon 1:2 says Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth- for your love is better than wine.
Tonight, I am celebrating, this is my 69th soon to be 70th post in the 11 months I've been blogging and off cause I will celebrate it with my favorite topic: LOVE. Here is a beautiful piece to warm your heart. From mine to yours, thank you for giving me moments of your life to share what's on my mind and heart. I love you.

Your greater than your past. Your stronger than any moment of failure. You can rise like smoke up a chimney. You were meant to spiral to the sky. All the chilling drafts of broken promises should not deny you the gift of life. Never forget that you are alive-sometimes weak, sometimes strong, but alive. You will be right some days and wrong some nights, but don't stop waking up in the morning. The morning is God's gift of another chance to pass the exam.

He has kissed you gently, tenderly but definitely. It's not the urgent kiss of a desperate lover who makes demands in the night. He has kissed you with the gentle kiss of a Father's favour whose tenderness would shield you from the trauma of the past. You have been touched, blessed, kissed. One smooch, gently delivered from heaven's lips to human pain. You have been kissed by the Father himself. No wonder Satan has failed to destroy in the night what God had prepared in the light. You have been kissed.

This is what you have to know if you are to withstand the darkness. This is what you must rehearse against the goblins of old images and past memories that would assault your dreams and turn them into nightmares. Just as sure as a Father's kiss would ease the nervous child trying to rest in a strange place, God's kiss is a sedative for you. No matter how foreign this place in your life may seem, you must  know that He prepared you for it. When he kissed her you, He shielded you, and you are His. Safe and secure, you may rest in the sanctity and safety of arms that will not fail you. A kiss goodnight is His way of sealing you till morning. And it will come, it will not tarry. The morning is yours. Spend it well. Use it sparingly.

The morning is for the hopeful not the regretful. It is expectations. It is wet dew moistening dry ground. Greater still, it is the future lying naked before you. Daybreak is stretching in the fresh hours of a new opportunity just created. It is an empty tomb and a filled manger. It is life, love and hope. Never forget about the breaking of day. It will come. Nights will pass, tears will dry and enemies will leave. But you will rise in the morning.

To daddy's kiss.

This was written by an awesome writer and speaker,Pastor TD JAKES.

Love letter to LOVE

It seemed like an impenetrable wall, the concept of who you are or what your not. Somehow between then and now, you patiently made me realize how it was the most permeable of all subjects. You are simply love.
 You don't have to make sense. You are passion leading logic. You are God by yourself. But erasing my sin with your own death, now that. That I applaud. See, I love you. Its a knowing now, not a feeling. You ooze of grace, an immeasurable supply of the most un merited of all favors.
Your so gracious, it made my doubts to shrink into knots. Your the most amazing of all lovers. So excellent in all you do. I don't always understand you. When I try, I weaken myself trying to make sense of a being so perfect. Never changing.

Unending. Magnificent. See, its true. Its so true that if I searched anywhere else but in creation first, I would have gotten more lost than darkness in the presence of light. The clouds spread out to worship you.
The textures of butterfly wings are as soft as your voice in my ear. Your breeze of peace is gentler than that of the majestic seas. Your love falls on my skin like soft summer raindrops.
That rainbow! They can't argue. When earth, moon, sun and stars don't question but worship and depend on you. I didn't think you would, a doubtful and critical person as myself, so helplessly inlove with a being I've never seen! But you did it, you won my heart, mind, spirit and soul.
 Effortlessly. By just being you. Unashamedly and relentlessly pursuing and convincing me, proving your goodness and healing my doubt into seeing the person your molding me to be. Before I was born, I sat at your feet and you narrated your life plan for my stay on earth.

 Honestly, I forgot it all after my birth. Now, I'll spend eternity, going back to our eternal beginning daddy. You are called so many fancy words, in all languages, accents and variations. To me you are LOVE.
It seemed like an impenetrable wall, the concept of who you are or what your not. Somehow between then and now, you patiently made me realize how it was the most permeable of all subjects. You are simply love.