Jury duty
The Jury Duty Notice
Today I went and got my mail.
Between the junk and the bills was a card from Marion County. Jury duty.
I stared at it. Two years ago, mail from the court meant something different. It meant warrants. It meant “failure to appear.” It meant another hearing where I’d sit with my hands shaking, wondering if this was the one that would send me away. I had issues with the law. I had court dates I wanted to forget. I was the one being judged.
Today, they’re asking me to be the judge.
That’s how far I have come on my own — with guidance from God.
I hit rock bottom. Not the kind you read about in poems. The real kind. Unhoused. Criminalized for being sick. Grieving my mother. Grieving myself. A biracial woman who was too Black for some, too white for others, and too broken for everyone. I lost everything except the breath in my lungs, and some days I wasn’t sure I wanted that.
But I rebuilt. Piece by piece. Handling issues that many people would break under. Eviction. Mental health breakdowns. Family that used God as a weapon. Men who were pretty but not real. Systems that punished me for being in pain. I carried it. I carry it.
I get down sometimes. I am human. There are mornings the cocoon feels like a grave and not a rebirth. There are nights I look around and realize I did all this alone — no father, no partner, no one to tag in when I’m tired. Just me. And Him.
Because faith keeps me going. Not the religion that burned me. Not the church that told me to pray away my trauma. The God I found after I walked away from all that. The God who sat with me in the car I was sleeping in. The God who didn’t leave when the court left, when the family left, when the man left.
Guidance from God doesn’t always look like a miracle. Sometimes it looks like getting out of bed. Like paying the bill. Like showing up to court when you’re not the defendant. Like opening a mailbox and seeing your name called to serve instead of being served.
I know that through the rough periods I can rise. Not because I’m special. Because I had to. Because the alternative was death, and I chose not to die. One day at a time. One piece of mail at a time. One step out of the ashes at a time.
I was the woman with issues with the law. Now I’m the citizen they trust with justice.
I was the woman in the ashes. Now I’m in the cocoon, and I can feel wings.
I don’t know if I’ll get picked for that jury. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll sit in that box and listen and decide, and nobody in that room will know what it took for me to get there. They won’t know about the nights in the shelter. The hearings. The meds. The prayers that sounded like screaming.
But I’ll know.
And God will know.
I have come so far. On my own. With Him.
From defendant to juror. From ashes to butterfly.
And I’m still rising.
