Deborah G. McBride-Lewis

It's a word, it's called grace. It's just having the favor of being in the right place, at the right time, with the right people, and things just miraculously transpire. It's about wanting to be where you are. Wherever you are called to be, that's where you're supposed to be at the time of your development. It's part of growing, it's part of being stretched, it's part of being enhanced. So I don't look at any place that I have been as insignificant. Wherever you are, look at it as this is where you need to be so that you can develop, your eyes of understanding can really be enlightened, because you begin to start seeing things from different vantage points. You move out of the places of familiarity, and you start seeing the beauty of diversity, the beauty of people. They may not look like me, they may not talk like me, but they're still people, and they just need to know that they matter. So that's my advice. Where you're called to be, that's where you're supposed to be, so embrace it.

Never stop. It's not an option. Keep going. And I went through a lot of obstacles, but I kept going. There are three things that helped me get to this point where I am, and I will say with all integrity and humility, unstoppable: resilience, restoration, and staying ready. Because I heard the voice saying keep going. Doesn't matter if you fall. If you fall and you can get up, maybe you may need a week, or a month, or a year to get up, but don't stop. Keep going. That has brought me to the place where I've engaged in a journey all the way through my doctoral studies and have been able to travel and interact with women of great diversity and children in that regard as well. And it's all based upon what I heard from my own mother: keep going.

You have to know who you are. Not based upon someone else's descriptions, not based upon someone else's expectation, not even someone else's portfolio. You have to know in your heart who you are. And when you can tap into the realness, the essence of who you are as a woman of greatness, not just moving forward, but progress, graces, and unstoppable gifts of just shedding that love and creating life-changing moments wherever you go. It's life-changing, but you have to know who you are. And it's through the obstacles, it's not through watching someone on TV. It's through your own journey of your own obstacles and your difficulties and your hardships that bring you face-to-face with introspection. You look at yourself in the mirror and say, I'm great! I am a great woman! I am an influencer, because the power of influence begins with me.

One of the biggest challenges I face is being in arenas where I feel, am I supposed to be here? The fact that you think you are supposed to be there, but how am I going to make some impact with the circle of people who are looking at me kind of under-eyed, or looking at me like I don't belong there? I just got out of a local church where the pastor thought I was trying to undermine the integrity of the ministry, and I'm like, no, I just asked relevant questions to have a greater understanding, because if you don't ask questions, then you find yourself moving in a state of darkness because you don't know where you're going. The biggest thing that I deal with is men accepting me, Deborah G. McBride-Lewis, for who I am. I have studied for many years, continue to study. I love education, I love learning, I love being in different contexts with different people, different countries, and I just have a wider grasp for how things are instead of how things should be according to your doctrinal statement. I have the biggest challenges in local churches where I thought I could have the greatest impact or the greatest footing. Most of those entities are heavily dominated by males. For them to have a female personality that has had some of the privileges that I've been blessed to have and could bring things to them in a new and a refreshing way that could just illuminate and open up their understanding so badly, but the pastors wouldn't condition those minds. My biggest challenge is my male counterparts, finding one who really sees me for me. It's very challenging, but it doesn't stop me from being me. It just opens up my eye to be a little bit more understanding of the realities that in these many male-dominated situations, it's not that they don't like you, it's just maybe they're a little misunderstanding because they don't know, they don't want to know. Right now, I'm spending some time on writing this piece about the intersectionality between womanhood, sisterhood, and motherhood as part of my work on Divine Femininity.

Love. You have to have passion. Because passion is going to push you beyond limits. Passion is going to enable you to keep going. So you have to have passion, because it's through the pain of all the things that we deal with, circumstances, obstacles, hardships. It's through that pain that the passion becomes much more evident, because it becomes much more visible when you begin to interact and then you begin to have your conversation with other people who may need your assistance. Maybe they may not need nothing more than just the energy that exudes from you, because you got a passion and a love to see people thrive.