Speak Broke Over My Life

There is a box at my door when I get home.There is almost always a box at my door when I get home.It’s a lamp today. It was a pan yesterday. The day before that, it was a set of sheets from a woman two states over. Someone I’ve never met. Some stranger who sent me that box because I said out loud, in a video, that I had been sleeping on the floor in Queens.Someone else saw the same video and sent me a voucher worth a thousand dollars for my living space.A thousand dollars.From a video.That’s how my entire apartment came to be. Box by box. Person by person.I did not buy the couch I’m sitting on as I type this. It was bought for me. I came to this city with almost nothing in my pockets, and things began showing up quietly while I was sleeping.I want to tell you it feels like grace.It does.It also feels like drowning.Both. At once.Because there’s a voice in the back of my head, and the voice tells me:You should not be here.You should not have to talk about any of this.A true nigga should have manifested better.Don’t speak broke energy over yourself, king.It’s just a season.It’s just God doing a new thing.Yep.Okay.Well.I am broke.The rent is paid, but it takes a lot of money for New York City to give you shelter, and everything else becomes an expensive fight over what remains.Food.Transportation.Being alive in New York.I qualify for food stamps. I need more work. I need somebody with tools to assemble everything that arrived in those boxes, because the boxes themselves are beginning to feel heavy.Not metaphorically.Not a season of pruning.Not just God doing a new thing.Just money. More work. Food. And somebody to actually do the assembly.I’m not supposed to say that.I’m not supposed to mention it.The Gospel of SilenceThat’s the first thing you learn here.There’s a whole religion built around not talking about lack.Watch your words.What you say creates your reality.Don’t claim that you’re broke.Raise your vibration.Shift your mindset.Don’t lower your frequency.Your money has already arrived.You just have a block.Believe like you already have it.You’ll attract it.It’s everywhere.Every timeline. Every comment section. Every guy trying to sell you something.Do not speak broke energy over your life.As if the problem with my bank account is my choice of words.Let me explain why this doesn’t work.I’ve heard this gospel before.I have delivered that gospel myself.I grew up in Word of Faith, and before I turned twenty, I was already delivering this message. I stood in front of audiences and talked about speaking life over my circumstances.“The joy of the Lord is my strength,” I used to tell people. “I don’t have to rely on what I feel. I draw from the Lord and speak life.”I am not broke.I am waiting for my season.I am manifesting abundance.I am blessed so I can become a blessing.I am not sick.I am healed. I just haven’t received it yet.I am in my healing process.That kind of s**t.I believed in that gospel. I lived it for years.So when the manifesters arrive, I recognize the voice immediately because that voice used to be mine.Same message. Just without Jesus.Word of Faith for the gym crowd.Now it’s a webinar instead of a sermon. Instead of an altar call, there’s a checkout button at the end.They didn’t even need to reinvent the wheel.They stole my content.It wasn’t just abundance, either. They stole the whole thing, including the struggle.They tell people not only to deny lack, but to believe struggle itself has value. God put you in it for a reason. The universe is building something inside you while you’re there.Take any situation, any struggle, any difficult season, and turn it into a sermon about what God is teaching you.I delivered both messages.Deny the struggle or sanctify it.Both cons have verses they rely on.Mine had the widow.The WidowYou know the widow.She’s the poor woman who gives her last two coins in the temple. Jesus watches her and tells everyone that she has given more than anybody else. They gave out of their abundance. She gave out of her need.We interpret the passage as a lesson about giving everything to God.None of the sermons I preached ever mentioned the most obvious fact.The woman left the temple with absolutely nothing.We admired her generosity.None of us offered her bread.Nobody told her to put the money back in her pocket.We praised the act of giving while ignoring the woman herself and what she needed.Spiritualize poverty so you never have to do anything about it.And I’m not just a recipient of that gospel.I preached it myself.Offerings weren’t a special occasion. They happened during every service.Mine too.And you want to know what I did during mine?Yes.I used the widow.Again.I preached it a hundred times.This woman gave from her need, folks. Not her leftovers. She gave it all.I let that message sink into the room and watched people reach into their purses to give more than they originally intended.And I felt God bless me because I was getting high from people’s money.Even now, I remember an older woman sitting in the back, her purse resting on her lap, searching for the last dollar she had and preparing to give it to me.I thought it was nobility.That’s what I fear now.I had heard stories of people giving their electric-bill money because God would bless them tenfold. I had witnessed Giving Sundays where the congregation rejoiced over the hundreds of thousands of dollars God had provided.I knew firsthand that it was all the same story.People had needs.Preachers had sermons.And the people with needs weren’t going to get anything.Because that preacher was me too.I preached this message. I took people’s last pennies and told them heaven was watching.And that was my problem.Not that I knew I was conning them.That I believed I loved them.That was the con we inherited.Spiritualize poverty so we never have to fix it.Sanctified and StuckThis is the same principle as “don’t speak broke energy.”It’s just packaged differently.Both require the same thing from us.Silence.Because the moment you speak lack out loud, you are no longer an inspirational story.You are broke.You need help.And somebody in the room may have to deal with that.Lack spoken aloud demands something from other people.Lack kept silent asks nothing of anyone.That man suffered quietly. He made sure his pain never disturbed the comfort of the people around him.But when the silence breaks because you have become too broke to hide it, when denial no longer works, another message is waiting for you.God is teaching you something through this situation.Don’t interrupt Him.It is both comfort and prison.Now seeking help is not only weakness. It is interrupting the lesson.So you don’t reach out. You don’t let the lack affect anybody else. You believe God is shaping you into somebody strong enough to withstand it.Sanctified and stuck.For years, I delivered my sermons, looked at the widow, and admired her faith.I thought I would never be her.But this is who I became.Now it’s me with only two coins.The widow.Me, being told to drop them quietly and let people admire how strong I am for never mentioning that I need help.I used to take people’s last pennies and tell them God was watching.Now I’m the one leaving the temple with nothing while everybody nods approvingly at how well I’m handling it.The woman in that passage was not just a spiritual message.She was a woman nobody helped.We turned her into a sermon because a sermon demanded less from us than feeding a hungry woman.Now I know that from the inside.What Abundance Actually Looks LikeSo what did I try instead?I said it out loud.On camera. In DMs. To my brother. To whoever else was around.I was broke.I was sleeping on the floor.I needed help building a life in New York.And guess what?Here is what abundance actually looked like:Boxes on my doorstep.Another pan. Another lamp. More clothes. A woman two states over sending me sheets because I said out loud that I had been sleeping on the floor.No shifting vibrations.No raising frequencies.I spoke my lack, and people responded.People helped me. Most of them gave whatever they had available to give.This wasn’t the silence of my old sermons. Nobody was being promised a miracle in exchange for their suffering. The money and resources were being transferred directly to where the need was.Somebody recognized the need and responded to it.Community is what manifestation preachers are pretending to be.What helped me was not changing the words in my mouth.It was the reaction of other people.And this is where I could stop.The triumphant ending.Healing. Growth. I finally learned how to receive.Except.The words come easily now.I can say, “I’m broke.”I can say, “I need help.”The problem is that I still don’t know how to be helped without feeling indebted.Because every gift arrives carrying the weight of a debt.Everything is coming in boxes, and while every box contains kindness, every box also feels like a record of something somebody has done for me.Something I owe them.Because theology is not the only thing I carry.Some lessons came from experience.An open hand is still capable of grabbing you.I used to preach sermons about speaking life.Now here I am, speaking brokenness over my circumstances.Speaking it loudly. Speaking it publicly. Without hesitation.Broke.I said it.The sky didn’t fall.The money didn’t run away.Boxes came.The AppAnd this is the part I can’t gloss over.There are boxes all over my apartment right now. Half-finished furniture sitting wherever it was delivered.I have a voucher worth a thousand dollars.I also have an app on my phone that could send somebody to assemble everything, remove what I don’t need, and leave the apartment finished while I’m gone.I could come home and find a perfectly furnished room without lifting a finger.And I didn’t open the app.The problem is not only that receiving help makes me feel indebted.There is still a preacher inside me who believes I am supposed to remain in the struggle.That I am supposed to learn something here.That a life created for me without my suffering or participation cannot really belong to me.Days passed.I kept intending to click the app.I would look at the boxes, look at my phone, and just…not do it.Until I found myself sitting on the floor among them.And I saw it.While I was pretending I had to build everything alone, people were already reaching toward me.Strangers. Friends. People I never would have thought to ask.Nobody expected anything from me.Except this:That I say I needed help.So I said it.The help is already here.And only now, as I type this and think through all of it, am I opening the app.It still takes effort to place the order.I still hesitate.Part of me still feels like I’m cheating God.I understand.I am clicking anyway.Send this to somebody who knows how to suffer in silence.Subscribe for essays about faith, masculinity, relationships, culture, and the parts of ourselves we were taught to hide. Get full access to Amen. Aśe. And All That S**t. at amenaseandall.substack.com/subscribe