Romans 8:28 has followed me for years like a drumbeat under every verse of my life: “All things work together for good…” For a long time, I believed it in theory. I thought it was the way you believe an old hymn. You know the words, but you haven’t really lived them yet.

This past year, I lived them.

Losing my partner was already a heartbreak I didn’t know how to translate into words. And then, only seven months later, losing my sister felt like the ground opened beneath me. Grief came in waves: loud, crashing, unpredictable. People who loved me sat with me, prayed with me, texted me, and checked on me. Their support mattered deeply, but I still felt like I needed something that went beyond talking. Something that let me sit with God, not just with my feelings.

So I returned to the place where I’ve always met Him most honestly: my journal.

It’s funny. Sister Margaret Sullivan looked at my notebook one day, smiled, and said, “Your journaling will one day become your ministry.” I had no idea what she meant. I wasn’t a writer. I  was just a math teacher scribbling thoughts, questions, prayers, and pieces of myself I wasn’t ready to say out loud.

But now? Now I see it clearly. Sister Margaret wasn’t predicting a hobby. She was speaking into my calling. And this year, the calling showed up like a remix I wasn’t expecting.

When the Page Became My Lifeline

At first, I journaled just to breathe. I wrote to survive the grief, to keep myself grounded when the world felt heavy. But slowly, something shifted on the page. The journal entries stopped being only about loss… and started revealing how God was stitching my heart back together.

One line turned into a reflection. A reflection turned into a blog post. And a blog post turned into a desire to share my whole journey: faith, grief, recovery, neurodiversity, purpose, and the rhythm of my life through a voice that has shaped so much of who I am: hip-hop.

That’s when the remix started.

I didn’t choose a ministry. A ministry grew out of the ashes and chose me.

Hip-Hop, Scripture, and the God Who Remixes Broken Verses

People are often surprised when I connect Scripture to hip-hop. But both hold the raw truth. Both speak from broken places. Both honor survival. And both have taught me how God works through unexpected detours.

Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” has a line that hits different when life falls apart:

“Snap back to reality…”

Reality did snap back for me. Hard. But instead of ending the story, God used the impact to redirect it. Just like a producer takes an old sample and transforms it into something new, God took my grief and remixed it into purpose.

I didn’t know that losing two people I loved would bring me back to the notebook Sister Margaret blessed decades ago. I didn’t know grief would become the doorway to rediscovering my passion for writing. I didn’t know that writing would become the language of my healing, and now, the language of my ministry.

Romans 8:28 isn’t passive. It doesn’t promise that everything is good. It promises that God can take anything—pain, loss, detours, dead ends—and work it into something good.

That’s the remix.

This Time, I’m Writing Out Loud

Blogging isn’t just journaling with an audience. It’s me showing up with the faith that nothing I’ve been through is wasted. Every loss, every joy, every setback, every lesson, I’m handing it all back to God and watching Him turn it into something that helps someone else feel less alone.

Sister Margaret saw this before I did.
She saw the ministry in the margin notes.
She saw the calling in the scribbles.

And now, with every post I write, I feel myself stepping into what she was trying to tell me: This is the time. This is the ministry. This is the verse God rewrote for me. Grief tried to silence me. But God handed me the pen again.

And this time, I’m not losing the moment.

Watch Eminem – “Lose Yourself” 

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