Stepping into freedom and the truest version of myself

Hi dearest friends!

So, I am going to try and explain in the best way I can the transformation and major shift that occurred in me the week I fondly refer to as HOLY SHIFT week (aka week of Oct 27-Nov 2, 2019). 

Just for some context, the new class/ freshman class for this past semester named themselves “Holy Shift.” So, they basically prophesied this shift into existence by declaring this over themselves and all of us interns experienced a shift in some way this week. However, I will expound on my personal shift as that’s all I can attest to 😉 

Behind the scenes: 

Our Senior Class (STUPID DEEP) decided on the Friday prior to focus on loving the freshman class better and speaking life into them. So, we each individually and in our separate houses made a conscious effort to love on the freshmen and step it up a level.  This helped pave the way for the Shift that occurred later as we focused not on ourselves but on loving them. We as a Senior class had gotten so focused on the “What’s next” and figuring out where to live and with whom after G42 that we had not prioritized loving on and fighting for our amazing freshmen right in front of us. During the week, we spoke life into them in our houses and fought for them in prayer as a senior class during our weekly Senior meeting instead of figuring out logistics or praying for ourselves. God met us in this and the day we prayed over them before class (Oct 30), major healing and transformation occurred during class that day, literally minutes after we had prayed for them specifically and taken our eyes off ourselves. It was as if God was waiting on us to take action and then He just SHOWED UP. 

This same day, Wednesday Oct 30, was potentially the BEST DAY OF MY LIFE thus far.  Official class started after we prayed over the freshmen in our Senior meeting. However, “The Man, the Myth, the Legend” Andrew Shearman was teaching that week and it was straight fire. He was so passionate and so Holy-Spirit led. He read the room and we just went for it and didn’t even have class for the entire morning and just were led by the Spirit and declared things and prophesied and people confessed things and got healing and people we had prayed for an hour before were getting major healing of their hearts right before our very eyes. It was unreal and so powerful and God was moving in a clear way. 

I was full of Holy Spirit like never before in my life and could hear His voice so clearly. I felt led to prophesy over a classmate and I waited my turn as others spoke life into him and encouraged him. However, after hearing 5-10 people, I was champing at the bit to say my word.  At this point, I was casually standing on a chair (ya girl is short and there wasn’t room in the huddle on the floor so like Zacchaeus I got where I could see) in my girl Alisha’s coral skirt (she’s pure Fierceness and amazing), beyond ready to say my piece. Finally, I get my chance and I take it, you better believe it. I declare some pretty powerful things more confidently and boldly than I’ve ever done before at G42 and this is month 8, y’all. Afterwards, my teacher Gary says something like, “It’s when the quiet ones speak up that everything shifts and Holy Spirit moves.” And, I was like, “Okay, Gary. I know, I know.”  

I wasn’t really my full free crazy Raina for most of G42 until this point so no one knew the fullest version of me, not even myself.  And, now, just like that, here she was on display. No more insecurity, comparison, meekness, or unworthiness. Just Me. Raina. In all her glory. The slow, pain-staking work God was doing in my heart finally reached a pivotal point and I was back, more fully me than ever before. I like to refer to this transformation as going from Raina 2.0 to Raina 7.0 (7 = number of completion). THE LORD IS GOOD and SO INCREDIBLY FAITHFUL. 

The Lord gave me a picture for this radical shift. He showed me that just as an arrow must be pulled back before it is released, so I had to be pulled back into my old wounds (which I thought I had already healed from and overcome) so that I could get full healing.  You see, I had constantly compared myself to my old self and the Raina from the Race who was so free and fun and wild.  I felt like I had regressed and was back in high school again dealing with feeling left out, that I don’t belong, that I don’t bring anything to the table, and that I’m not qualified to be here or be a leader. I was lacking in my usual confidence, boldness, and freedom. I was ashamed to share my testimony and didn’t speak up in class and felt my voice didn’t matter. Imagine me, loquacious fast-talker Raina, being quiet and withdrawn and shy. It’s hard for me to even picture now but I would label myself as a “quiet extrovert” because I’d almost forgotten how I truly was underneath it all because I was constantly in large groups where I felt I had to compete to be heard and I would shut down. However, the Lord didn’t see my struggle as regression but just deeper healing and peeling back more layers of hurt and brokenness so I could be more free and alive and whole. 

I was so grateful to finally be me again, even though I knowwww, I was really me all along, just hidden under a lot of lies and wounds. So, something shifted in me that day and I was fully activated in Holy Spirit. I felt like I had been blind before and now I could see. Everywhere I looked, I found Jesus and Kingdom. I could hear His voice more clearly than ever before.  Everything in my surroundings was no longer just physical, it was spiritual. I started to joke that I could make any statement or item into a metaphor for the Kingdom or get a word from the Lord from it. And, I was mostly serious because that’s how constantly and clearly the Lord was speaking to me. 

I believe He has always been speaking to me the same but now I could hear him and my ears were stopped up no longer. I was blind but now I see, deaf but now I hear. I started to physically sway back and forth when I was filled with Holy Spirit. The more confusing thing at first was this fluttery, dull sensation I felt in my stomach like I was nervous but I had no reason to be nervous and it usually is very rare for me to get butterflies in my stomach. I wasn’t sure if I was picking up on other people’s nerves or if it was me at first because it was a foreign sensation. I eventually realized that it was stronger when I was full of Holy Spirit and faint or not there at all when I wasn’t. It was present almost all the time the first week but since then, it only comes up occasionally. I’ve heard people say you feel things in your gut and have a “gut reaction” but I never experienced that in relation to God before. It was weird but thrilling at the same time. 

I literally felt like a “new creation.”  It was a “whole new world” as my girl Jasmine says and I was filled with childlike wonder, joy, passion, boldness, peace, confidence, love, empathy, and freedom. I was radiant, a little ball of sunshine. And I loved it.  It was encouraging that everyone else at G42 noticed it too as it was a definite, fairly dramatic, change in my personality and how I presented myself. I thought, “Finally, y’all can see the real me. I’ve missed her.”  

All that to say, I don’t regret any of the things I had to walk through and struggle through the first 8 months at G42 because it helped me address wounds I’d let fester from years past that I wasn’t aware of and the Lord patiently walked me through healing over the course of those 8 months and He chose this specific week to put the cherry-on-top of the finished product. Of course, I am still very much a work in progress. But, as I’ve been told in various prophecies, I don’t EVER plan on dimming my light again or receding into my shell as I and the world deserve full, free, unapologetic Raina and that’s what I will forever be. No going back. Free to set others free. Healed to give away healing. Amen.