Tag: christianity

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Henry Box Brown – He Mailed Himself To Freedom

Posted in inspiration, money, relationships, God, cancer, faith, Black History MonthTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

In 1849, an enslaved man in Virginia made one of the most daring escapes in American history. His name was Henry Box Brown.

Born around 1815 in Louisa County, Virginia, Brown was enslaved by John Barret, a former mayor of Richmond. After Barret’s death, Brown was sent to Richmond and hired out to work in a tobacco warehouse. He married while enslaved. He had children.

In 1848, his wife and children were sold to a plantation in North Carolina. That loss changed everything.

On March 23, 1849, Brown arranged an extraordinary plan with the help of free Black and white abolitionists. He had himself sealed inside a wooden crate measuring approximately three feet long, two feet wide, and two and a half feet deep. The box was labeled “Dry Goods.”

It was shipped from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, via Adams Express Company. The journey lasted 27 hours. The crate traveled by wagon, railroad, steamboat, and carriage. At times it was placed upside down. Brown later wrote that blood rushed to his head and he feared suffocation. To steady himself, he sang hymns.

When the box was opened in Philadelphia at the Anti-Slavery Office, Brown stepped out alive and reportedly greeted the astonished men in the room with calm composure.
His escape was immediate national news.

After gaining freedom, Brown became an abolitionist lecturer. He traveled throughout the Northern states, speaking about slavery and reenacting his escape by climbing into a replica box during performances.

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which increased the risk of capture even in free states, Brown moved to England. He remained there for more than two decades, performing as a speaker, showman, and later as a magician, continuing to tell his story.

He eventually returned to the United States later in life and remained a public performer until his death, believed to have occurred in 1897.

Henry Box Brown did not wait for rescue.
He engineered it. He endured confinement to secure freedom. He turned survival into testimony. He transformed a shipping crate into a symbol of resistance.

His story remains one of the most vivid examples of self-emancipation in American history.

Psalm 18:19
“He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”


CARRY THIS WITH YOU
Freedom sometimes requires courage that feels impossible. Do not underestimate what can happen when resolve meets faith.


BREADCRUMB
When systems close in, imagination becomes strategy. When doors are locked, courage builds another exit. History remembers those who refused to accept chains as final.


SALUTE
We honor Henry Box Brown, whose 27-hour journey inside a wooden crate became a permanent witness to the will to be free.
We salute the man who trusted movement over fear, faith over despair, and action over surrender.

Your box became a doorway.
Your confinement became testimony.
Your name remains a symbol of self-determined freedom.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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Pauli Murray – She Was The Blueprint

Posted in Black History Month, faith, God, inspiration, law, relationships, Uncategorized, workTagged , , , , Leave a comment

Before the Supreme Court corrected segregation, before women stood firmly in constitutional protection, before pulpits widened for Black women Pauli Murray had already written the argument.

At Howard University School of Law in the 1940s, she challenged the foundation of “separate but equal.” While others argued for better facilities, Murray insisted segregation itself violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Her professors thought it too bold.

Years later, that reasoning formed the backbone of Brown v. Board of Education. Thurgood Marshall reportedly called her earlier research “the Bible” of the civil rights movement. She was not the headline.
She was the framework.

In 1965, she co-authored a groundbreaking paper arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited discrimination based on sex. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg later argued landmark gender equality cases, she cited Murray’s work directly.
Again — blueprint.

In 1966, she helped co-found the National Organization for Women, shaping modern women’s advocacy.

And in 1940, long before Rosa Parks became a household name, Murray was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus. Her resistance was deliberate and strategic.

Then came the church.
In 1977, she became the first Black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest. The ceremony took place in the same chapel where her grandmother, born into slavery, had once been baptized. The descendant of the enslaved stood at the altar as clergy.

History does not always move through loud voices. Sometimes it moves through disciplined minds and stubborn faith.

Murray battled depression. She navigated belonging in spaces slow to affirm her. She lived at intersections the world had not yet learned to name. But she did not step away.
She studied. She wrote. She organized. She stayed.

And because she stayed, the law shifted.
Because she wrote, others argued and won.
Because she persisted, doors opened wider than they had ever been before.

Prophetic work is not always applause.
Sometimes it is architecture.

Isaiah 1:17
“Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.”


CARRY THIS WITH YOU
You may not be the headline.
But you might be the hinge.
Build anyway.
Stay steady.
History often rests on frameworks laid by those who refuse to quit.

BREADCRUMB
Sometimes the victory is not in the spotlight but in the structure. Sometimes the reward is not applause but impact. Write the argument. Lay the foundation. Stay in the room.


SALUTE
We honor Pauli Murray — legal architect, movement strategist, priest, and prophet.
We salute the mind that shaped arguments before the nation was ready to hear them.
We salute the courage that resisted before resistance was popular. We salute the faith that answered a call even when institutions hesitated.

Your blueprint stands.
Your work endures.
Your name is not a footnote.

Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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Prathia Hall — The Woman Who Put the Dream in the Air

Posted in Black History Month, faith, God, inspiration, relationships, workTagged , , , , Leave a comment

Prathia Hall was a preacher—and I don’t mean honorary, invited-once-a-year preacher. I mean called, trained, Scripture-handling, fire-in-her-bones preacher. That alone put her at odds with the world she was born into.
She came up in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, not watching it on television, but working it. Organizing. Marching. Preaching. Sitting in mass meetings where faith wasn’t decoration—it was fuel.


And Prathia knew words mattered.
She preached with rhythm and Scripture braided together. Not shouting just to shout. Not performing. She preached like someone who believed God was actually listening—and that people were, too.


One night, after a church had been bombed, Prathia stood in the rubble and began to pray out loud. And as she prayed, she kept saying a phrase again and again:
“I have a dream…”
Not as a speech.
As a prayer.


That cadence—the hope, the structure, the repetition—later showed up on a much bigger stage through Dr. King. History remembers the microphone. It often forgets the woman who helped tune the sound.


Prathia Hall kept preaching anyway.
She worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), helped train young leaders, and taught theology that didn’t separate heaven from justice. She believed faith was supposed to interrupt oppression, not soothe it.
She didn’t chase credit.
She chased truth.

“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” — Romans 10:17


SIT WITH THIS
Who taught you how to speak hope before the world was ready to hear it? And where might God be asking you to keep saying the thing—even if someone else gets the credit later?


BREADCRUMB
Some words don’t echo right away.
They wait—until the world is ready to hear them.

We see you, Prathia Hall — for preaching freedom into the air before it had a stage.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.


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Susie King Taylor: She Served Anyway

Posted in Black History Month, faith, God, health, inspiration, love, relationships, selfhelp, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment



Susie King Taylor was born enslaved in Georgia in 1848, in a world where teaching Black people to read was a crime and Black women’s labor was expected but never honored.


From a young age, Susie learned to read and write in secret. She was taught quietly, moving from place to place so no one would notice. Knowledge, for her, was not just education—it was resistance.


When the Civil War came, Susie did not wait to be invited into history.


She followed Union troops, and at just fourteen years old, she began teaching formerly enslaved soldiers and children how to read. She became the first Black woman known to openly teach formerly enslaved people in a Union camp.


She did not stop there.
Susie served as a teacher, a nurse, a laundress, and a caregiver to wounded Black soldiers. She worked in field hospitals. She tended infections. She cleaned wounds. She buried the dead. She did the work that kept soldiers alive long enough to keep fighting.


She did this without rank.
Without formal pay.
Without protection.
Without promise of recognition.
And when the war ended, the men she served alongside received pensions.
Susie did not.


Her body carried the cost of years of labor and exposure. Her hands had held dying boys. Her back bore the weight of war. Yet the government decided her service did not count.
She was victorious without reward.


In 1902, Susie King Taylor published Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops—one of the only Civil War memoirs written by a Black woman.

She wrote because she knew that if she did not tell the story, it would be told wrong—or not at all.


She documented unequal treatment, exhaustion, racism within the Union Army, and the quiet strength required to keep serving anyway.


Recognition did not follow.
She died poor.
Her contributions remained footnotes.
Her name was largely absent from textbooks.


And yet, without women like Susie King Taylor, the war would not have been survivable for Black soldiers.


Susie King Taylor teaches us that some people do the work because it needs doing, not because they expect to be thanked.
She was not disguised like Cathay Williams.
She was not sidelined like Claudette Colvin.
She was fully visible—and still denied.


“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” — Colossians 3:23


If you have ever done essential work no one wanted to name, given care without credentials, served faithfully while others were promoted, or known your contribution mattered even when systems said it didn’t—Susie King Taylor stands with you.
She served anyway.
History followed later.


We see you, Susie.
We honor you now.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.
Love, Chelle

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My Survivor Song Knows My Name.

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I was listening to one of my favorite songs—“He Knows My Name”—and my emotions spilled out before I could stop them.
It happens like that sometimes.
After a rough moment.
After allowing myself—again—to be hurt by someone who never really took the time to know me.
Not my heart.
Not my story.
Not the way I learned to survive.


I didn’t even realize how much I was carrying until that song started playing.
And suddenly, there it was—grief, relief, truth—all at once.


Because here’s the greatest thing about God:
He knows my name.
And not just my name—He knows my nickname too.
The one spoken by people who love me.
The one I only answer to when I feel safe.


He knows me with the mask—the strong one, the capable one, the superhero version that keeps showing up.


And He knows me without it—the tired, tender, still-hoping version I don’t always let the world see.


The real me.
Not the performance.
Not the usefulness.
Not the resilience résumé.


This song reminds me that I don’t confuse God.
I don’t disappoint Him by being human.
I don’t have to explain myself into being worthy of love.
It’s my Survivor Song because it tells the truth I forget when I’m hurting:
I am already known.
Already named.
Already held.
And when I rest in His arms, I don’t need armor.
I don’t need a script.
I don’t need to be brave for one more minute.
I am safe.


With and without the mask.
With and without the cape.
Somewhere along the way, I learned to confuse being needed with being known.
But God never made that mistake.


So today, if you’re feeling unseen—
if you’re nursing the quiet ache of being misunderstood—
let the reminder rise up like a song in your chest.
You are known by name.
You are held without pretending.
You are safe in His arms.
And sometimes… surviving looks like letting yourself be known—first by God, and then by yourself.
“I have called you by name; you are Mine.” — Isaiah 43:1


Love, Chelle





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Powder, Not Prison (and Apparently Winter Storms Have Names Now)

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So here’s something I learned this week:
winter storms have names.
I was today-years-old when I found out they name winter storms the same way they name summer hurricanes. And wouldn’t you know it—the one that iced me into my house and blocked me from my greenhouse was named Fern.
Fern.
A plant name.
A green thing.
A symbol of life.
Make it make sense.
Winter Storm Fern didn’t just bring cold—she brought audacity. It was so cold one day that my front door wouldn’t even open. Not stuck—sealed. As if the house itself said, “Nope. You live here now.”
When the door finally did open the next day, I stepped outside and immediately thought,
“Oh. I was happier not knowing.”
That kind of cold doesn’t invite you out.
It humbles you back inside.
Now here we are again. More snow coming Saturday—and again on Wednesday. But this time, they’re calling for powder, not ice.
And apparently, there’s a difference.
Ice traps you.
Powder covers you.
Ice shuts doors.
Powder rests gently on what’s still alive underneath.
Some seasons don’t stop growth—they insulate it.
Under the white blanket, the soil is still breathing. Roots haven’t resigned. Seeds aren’t panicking. They know winter may come labeled and official, but it never gets the final word.
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines… yet I will rejoice in the Lord.”
— Habakkuk 3:17–18
Faith isn’t pretending winter isn’t winter.
It’s recognizing the difference between what freezes you and what simply passes through.
Winter Storm Fern may have sealed my door for a day.
She may have iced the path to the greenhouse.
But she didn’t cancel the harvest.
Dead and dormant are not the same.
Covered and defeated are not synonyms.
Spring is not offended by powder.
And I’ve learned not to argue with doors God temporarily keeps shut.

Love, Chelle

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When the Tool Ate the Manuscript (and Almost My Heart)

Posted in cancer, cancer, chemotherapy, christmas, faith, food, God, health, inspiration, love, money, relationships, selfhelp, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Let me tell you what almost took me out.

For weeks—WEEKS—I have been doing the holy, unglamorous work of editing and reorganizing a soon-to-be book.
Moving chapters.
Fixing commas that think they run things.
Re-threading stories.
Listening for where God was nudging—and where I was just rambling.

This was faithful work. Quiet work.
The kind nobody claps for.

And then…
The tool I use to assist and “catch mistakes” decided to eat my manuscript.

Not nibble.
Not misplace a paragraph.
Eat it.

I have survived cancer, grief, caregiving, deadlines, and ice storms—but watching weeks of careful labor vanish off a screen?
That will make your chest tighten and your salvation flicker for a hot second.

I sat there spiraling:
Did I just lose half a book?
Am I behind now?
Did I just waste weeks of my life arguing with chapter headings?

Cue the dramatic sigh.
Cue me talking to my laptop like it had personally betrayed the family.

And then—grace, wearing sneakers—slid in sideways and whispered:

Your work is not gone.
You are not behind.
We did not lose half a book.

Because real work doesn’t live only in files.
It lives in muscle memory, lived experience, and a heart that’s been steeped in the message.

And Scripture backs this up.

“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…”
— Joel 2:25

God restores years, not just results.
Restoration doesn’t always look like retrieval.
What God restores often comes back stronger.

So breathe.
Roll your shoulders.
Open a new document.

The words still know how to find you.
And the story is very much alive.

Love, Chelle
defygravitywithoutwings.com

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Let Peace Come (Even When the World Says “What’s the Point

Posted in cancer, faith, God, health, inspiration, love, relationships, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

As I write this, Tibetan monks are walking the East Coast on a pilgrimage for peace. Step by step. Mile by mile. No microphones. No arguments. Just feet on pavement and the quiet conviction that peace is still worth walking toward.
When I shared a simple prayer online — yes, let peace come — another believer replied,
“What’s the point? The Bible says the bad things must happen.”
It stopped me for a moment.
Yes, Scripture tells us the world will groan. It speaks honestly about deception, division, and heartbreak. The Bible doesn’t deny the mess we’re living in.
But it also never tells us to stop praying.
It never tells us to stop loving.
And it never tells us to stop showing up.
Through the prophet Isaiah, God gives us a picture that still steadies me:
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace.” (Isaiah 52:7)
Isaiah praises feet — not arguments, not timelines, not predictions.
Peace, in Scripture, is not passive.
It walks.
Somewhere along the way, religion replaced relationship and politics fractured fellowship. Both young and old are left confused — unsure what to believe or whether prayer still matters.
Here’s what I still believe:
Hope is not denial.
Hope is obedience.
Jesus never told us to love only when it fixes everything. He told us to love because that is who we are — even while we wait, even while the world aches.
So when someone asks, “What’s the point?”
This is my quiet answer:
Love still matters.
Prayer still matters.
Peace is never pointless.
Waiting for Jesus does not mean standing still.
It means walking faithfully — even now.
And if monks can walk for peace knowing the world is broken,
surely we can still pray for it.
Yes, Lord.
Let peace come.


Love, Chelle

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The Woman At The Table

Posted in cancer, cancer, chemotherapy, christmas, faith, food, God, health, inspiration, love, money, relationships, selfhelp, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sometimes I miss the house in the middle of the corn fields with no indoor plumbing.
The pot-belly stove that decided when we were warm enough.
The way night fell heavy and close, and everyone settled where they could—sharing rooms, beds, blankets, breath.

I say my room, but that’s a loose word.
Privacy was a luxury we didn’t own.
Still, there was one place that felt like mine:
the narrow view through the keyhole.

Almost every night, after the fires were dampened and the house full of children finally stilled, I would watch my grandmother at her writing table. Her hands folded. Her Bible open. A pen moving slowly, deliberately.

Women of the Bible were her favorite.
Deborah. Ruth. Esther. Mary.
Women who listened closely and lived bravely.

She wrote sermons—real ones. Thoughtful. Scripturally sound. Insightful in ways people did not expect from a woman in those days. Especially a woman who cleaned other people’s houses for a living.

But it was her prayer ritual that marked me.

She prayed in whispers—not because God was quiet, but because love was.
She didn’t want to wake a house full of children.
Except, apparently, the little girl at the keyhole.

I couldn’t hear the words.
But I could see her face.

Sometimes she smiled.
Sometimes she laughed—like she and God shared a private joke.
Sometimes she cried. The kind of crying that doesn’t fall apart, just falls down.

And as I watched—hidden, still, unnoticed—I was learning.
Learning how faith looks when no one is applauding.
Learning that prayer does not need volume to have weight.
Learning that God listens closely to whispers.

When she finished praying, she always reached for the same thing.

A small plastic bread loaf.
One of those coin banks from organizations that fed “poor kids in Africa.”

She would slip a coin inside.
Sometimes a dollar.
Hard-earned. Scrubbed-for. Long-hours-standing money.

Money from a woman the world might have called poor—
but who never believed she was exempt from generosity.

I didn’t understand it then.
But I do now.

That table was a pulpit.
That whispering was power.
That plastic loaf was faith that refused to shrink.
And that keyhole?
It was my first seminary.

And that little girl at the keyhole?
She’s still watching.
Still learning how to pray without performing.
Still believing a few faithful offerings can touch a wide world.

“She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” — Proverbs 31:26
“Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” — Matthew 6:6

Some of the strongest sermons are whispered after bedtime, preached without microphones, and learned by children watching through keyholes.

Love, Chelle



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Porch Prayers & Weather-Wise Faith

Posted in cancer, cancer, faith, food, God, health, inspiration, love, money, relationships, Uncategorized, workTagged , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

On days like these, my mother would stand on the porch and ask for a Bermuda High to come down and turn the snow and ice away.


In the thick, sticky heat of summer, she’d pray for a Canadian Low to sweep through and cool the air.


She didn’t call it meteorology.
She called it faith.
And more often than not, the weather shifted.


When I got older, some of my friends picked up the same habit. We didn’t have robes or titles—just house shoes, coffee cups, and enough sense to know the porch was close enough to heaven for our prayers to travel. We called ourselves the Porch-Praying Sisters.


We prayed about the weather, yes—but also about children, marriages, money, bodies that wouldn’t cooperate, and news reports that made our stomachs knot. We spoke our requests into the open air like God might just be passing by and decide to stop and listen.


Today, we’re in the middle of a Virginia ice storm.
Freezing temperatures.
Sleet tapping the windows.
The quiet, low-grade anxiety of Will we lose power? humming beneath everything else.


And maybe that’s what storms still do best.
They set the altar.


They slow us down, pull us inward, strip away noise and options until all that’s left is warmth, breath, and the remembering that we are not in control—but we are not alone either.

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you… when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.” (Isaiah 43:2)


Over the years, we drifted. Life scattered us. Jobs, moves, losses, disagreements, silence. That happens.
But in this current environment—
with ice on the ground, tension in the air, and uncertainty pressing in—
I find myself praying again.
Not polished prayers.
Porch prayers.


The kind that believe faith doesn’t have to be loud to be effective. The kind that remember Jesus said even “faith as small as a mustard seed” can speak to what feels immovable and tell it to move. (Matthew 17:20)


Maybe the weather won’t always change.
Maybe the power will flicker.
Maybe the storm will linger longer than we’d like.
But when a storm sets the altar,
something always moves.
And sometimes…
that something is us.


— Love,  Chelle