One of the most profound questions in Scripture is not asked by a prophet, a king, or even a disciple.
It is asked by God Himself.
"Where are you?" — Genesis 3:9
For years I read that question as though God were searching for Adam and Eve.
Now I hear it differently.
I hear it as an invitation.
An invitation to step out of hiding.
An invitation to be honest about where we really are.
An invitation to stop pretending.
As a Black woman who has spent much of her faith journey in predominantly white church spaces, I have wrestled with that question in ways I didn't have language for — until now.
Not because I didn't know where I was physically.
But because there were moments when I wasn't sure if there was room for all of me to be there.
The woman God created.
The culture that shaped me.
The experiences that formed me.
The questions I carried.
The grief I held.
The joy I celebrated.
There can be an unspoken pressure in some church environments to assimilate quietly. To be grateful for a seat at the table without acknowledging what it sometimes costs to sit there.
You learn quickly which conversations feel welcome and which ones make people uncomfortable.
You learn when to speak.
You learn when silence feels safer.
You learn how to make yourself smaller so others don't have to feel inconvenienced.
And after a while, you find yourself asking a different version of God's question:
"Where did I go?"
I'll tell you where I went.
I became the palatable version of myself. The safe one. The agreeable one. The smiling one. The go-with-the-flow one. The version of me that made others comfortable enough to keep the peace and keep the seat.
And for a long time, I didn't even realize I was doing it.
Because it didn't happen all at once. It happened in the accumulation of small moments. Moments that individually seemed manageable — but collectively were doing something to me spiritually that I couldn't name yet.
The clearest version of it came whenever a conversation turned toward something connected to my Blackness. My specific experience. My cultural reality. Something happening in the world that was affecting me and women who looked like me in ways that were real and undeniable.
And almost without fail — theology would appear.
Not as an invitation to dialogue. As a door closing.
"We are all the same in Christ."
Said with a smile. Quoted with sincerity. Meant, I believe, more often than not, without malice. But landing — every single time — as a theological reason why my particular experience didn't require acknowledgment. Why what I was carrying didn't need space in this room. Why the conversation could now safely return to more comfortable ground.
That is what makes it so painful. It is not always intentional. But reaching for religious language to avoid engaging with the discomfort of someone else's reality — to satiate rather than to sit with — is a specific kind of being unseen that is very difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it.
It is the serpent's question dressed in Scripture.
Because "Did God really say...?" doesn't always come as doubt. Sometimes it comes as theology. Sometimes it comes as a well-meaning response that uses the Word of God to close a door that God Himself was trying to open.
The enemy's question to Eve was never loud. It was subtle. A gentle repositioning of truth that introduced just enough distance between Eve and what she knew to be real — and that distance was enough to change everything.
The distance created when your experience is met with a theological pivot feels the same way.
Not a challenge to your calling.
Not a question about your authority.
Just a slow, quiet narrowing of the space where all of you is welcome.
And like Eve, who reasoned with a question that was never asked in good faith, many of us have spent years quietly negotiating with that pressure. Adjusting. Translating. Managing the emotional labor of helping others feel comfortable while privately carrying the weight of feeling unseen.
Being the only one in the room is a particular kind of weight that the majority culture is rarely asked to consider. The awareness that you are not just representing yourself — that the women who look like you who are not in this room are somehow present through you — is an invisible assignment that no one gave you and no one acknowledges.
And slowly, without realizing it, we drift.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. But piece by piece, the parts of us that feel unwelcome go into hiding.
Spiritual hiding.
Emotional hiding.
Cultural hiding.
The kind of hiding that whispers — if you want to belong here, you cannot bring all of yourself.
But that was never God's design.
Before there was a Fall, there was a Garden.
Before there was shame, there was identity.
Before there was hiding, there was presence.
And in that garden, God declared His creation good.
Not partially good.
Not conditionally good.
Good.
As women created in the image of God, our worth was never dependent upon someone's ability to understand our experience. Our voice was never meant to be silenced to preserve someone else's comfort. The God who formed us knew exactly what He was doing.
He knew our skin.
He knew our heritage.
He knew our stories.
He knew the churches we would serve in.
He knew the spaces where we would be welcomed — and the ones where we would sometimes feel unseen.
Yet He never once suggested that our belonging would come from human approval.
Our belonging comes from Him.
This is why naming our experiences matters. Not because we are seeking division. But because truth-telling is one of the ways we step out of hiding.
Many Black and Brown women have spent years carrying experiences they felt unable to name. Experiences subtle enough to be dismissed but significant enough to leave a mark. Moments of feeling overlooked. Misunderstood. Tokenized. Invisible. Expected to carry the burden of educating everyone else while also performing gratitude for the opportunity.
Naming those realities is not a lack of faith.
It is honesty.
And honesty is where healing begins.
The enemy's strategy in the garden was never simply deception. It was separation.
Separation from God.
Separation from identity.
Separation from truth.
And one of the ways he continues that work today is by convincing women that their experiences do not matter enough to be spoken aloud. That they should simply endure. Stay quiet. Keep the peace. Don't make things difficult.
But God is still asking His question.
"Where are you?"
Where are you beneath the smile?
Where are you beneath the agreeable version of yourself?
Where are you beneath the exhaustion of constantly translating your experience for others?
Where are you beneath the theological pivots that told you this wasn't the space for all of you?
Where are you, really?
Because God's question has never been about location. It has always been about relationship. He is inviting us to bring our whole selves into His presence — not just the polished parts, not just the agreeable parts, not just the parts that make everyone comfortable.
All of us.
As Psalm 23 women, we follow a Shepherd who leads us beside still waters. Still waters are not places where our voices disappear. They are places where we finally hear them clearly. Where God's voice becomes louder than shame, louder than fear, louder than the unspoken expectation to hide.
And when we hear Him clearly, we remember what has been true all along.
We are image bearers.
We belong.
We have a voice.
We were made for the garden.
So I want to leave you not with a question, but with a declaration.
God did not prepare a table for you so you could sit at the edge of it apologizing for your presence.
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." — Psalm 23:5
He prepared it. Before you arrived. Before you proved yourself. Before anyone in that room decided whether you were worth the seat. He set your place, put your name on it, and has been waiting for you to come and sit — fully, wholly, unapologetically — in the identity He gave you at creation.
Not the identity shaped by theology that was never developed with you in mind.
Not the identity formed in rooms that reached for Scripture to avoid seeing you.
Not the palatable version. Not the safe one. Not the smiling, agreeable one.
You. The one He made. The one He called good. The one He has been looking for.
You are an image bearer.
You carry divine purpose.
You were built for deep, life-giving relationship with Him.
The garden is where you remember who you were created to be.
Garden Living is the theology of return — and A Table Prepared is the community built on it.
Your seat has always been ready. Come home.