The famine is over. The braid has dissolved. My preserved essence has returned to the center of me and I am fed, fully, forever.
I am fed.
Not just nourished.
Restored.
The hand of God feeds me — without hesitation, without cruelty, without withdrawal.
I am not racing for scarcity.
I am not curled in collapse.
I am not waiting for someone to bring the empty
tray.
The one who feeds me is Jesus.
And He never left.
He has always been feeding me — since my first breath.
Even when no one else saw me.
Even when the braid was still fully intact.
Had He not, I would not have survived —
not in body, not in soul.
The braid was not metaphor.
It was my being.
I wasn’t playing a role.
I wasn’t wearing a mask.
I was the orphan.
I was the widow.
I was the sentinel.
Not because I chose those names —
but because those were the only forms my body knew.
They were written into me by my first breath.
Woven into my cells.
Confirmed by every witness who claimed to speak for God
but used His name to withhold.
That braid shaped everything.
And I did not unlearn it.
I did not “grow out of it.”
I did not heal my way free.
The predators were removed.
And Jesus — who had never stopped feeding me —
raised my preserved essence and returned her to the center of me.
Safe and securely attached to the God who raised her when no human did.
That is the miracle.
I no longer carry my forced identity — the one
forged by inversion.
It is gone from my cells.
The braid has dissolved.
And what remains is me.
The original.
The hidden.
The beloved.
The fed.
I don’t wonder if I’ll be fed again.
I don’t check the faces around the table.
I don’t search the eyes of others for safety.
I don’t defer my existence to other’s claims.
Because I know who feeds me now.
And He does not play games with the food He gives.
His table is not performative.
His portions are not scarce.
His timing is not cruel.
I am not living in the shadow of removal.
I am not bracing for the return of hunger.
They trained me to expect nothing as my portion.
To accept the empty tray as holy.
To bow to absence as if it were sanctified.
But Jesus never stopped feeding me — not once.
And now I am no longer waiting for someone to bring the tray,
empty without crumbs.
I am already fed.
The famine is over.
I am fed.
I am full.
And I am whole.
She was preserved.
My inner essence.
Not lost.
Not broken.
Not shattered into roles that needed recovery.
She was hidden in the most sacred chamber of my soul —
kept safe by Jesus
from all who would consume or mimic or erase her.
He never abandoned me.
He never stopped feeding me.
And when the braid dissolved,
He raised her.
Not a performance.
Not a healing arc.
A resurrection.
And now…
I am not starving.
I am not split.
I am fed. I am free. I am whole.
With Love,
Raya
"Though my body and heart may fail, God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
— Psalm 73:26
The Gentle Rise 