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.
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?”
That question sent me back to Genesis 3. And what I found there cracked something open in me.
The enemy's question to Eve was subtle. Unassuming. It didn't come as a direct attack on her identity or her authority. It came as a gentle repositioning of truth.
It wasn't loud. It didn't have to be. It simply introduced just enough distance between Eve and what she knew to be true — and that distance was enough to change everything. I recognized that.
The experience of a Black or Brown woman in a predominantly white faith space is rarely loud. It is rarely a direct challenge to your calling or your theology. It is more nuanced than that. It is the keen awareness that the theological lens being offered was not developed with your experience in mind. It is sitting in a room where the majority culture is so comfortable in its own framework that the discomfort of those outside it goes unnoticed — not always out of malice, but out of an absence of awareness that can feel just as isolating.
It is being the only one in the room and carrying the unspoken weight of representing everyone who looks like you who is not there. It is understanding, without anyone saying it directly, that full belonging may require leaving parts of yourself at the door.
That is the serpent's question in a different form. Not “did God really say you were called?” but a slow, ambient pressure that makes you wonder whether the God being presented in this space fully sees you. Whether the theology being taught accounts for your story. Whether you have to choose between your faith and your full self.
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.
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.
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 — especially women of color — 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 the question.
“Where are you?”
Where are you beneath the smile? Where are you beneath the role? Where are you beneath the code switching, beneath the pressure to fit in? Where are you beneath the exhaustion of constantly translating your experience for others?
Where are you, really?
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.
Our whole self.
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 stereotypes and labels, louder than fear, louder than the unspoken biases. 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.
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 forgot to include you. Not the identity formed in rooms that overlooked you or created an environment that required you to shrink yourself to be accepted — but the one He spoke over you before the foundation of the world.
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.