While serving on a mission trip to Rwanda, I wrote the affirmations contained in this book. It was my first time to the continent, on the heels of a broken relationship. As I watched the people of the land, I noticed something peculiar. It was gratitude. A radical and divine idea occurred to me in that moment. I am loved, I am ordained and I belong on this planet at this time. A lifetime of seeking to prove I belong had distracted me from that realization.

This heart offering...seeks to reconcile texture and tactile, shades of brown and light, origin of the human race and the base of it. Mother of all DNA, know who you are, before you have proof. And if only what is real persists, than I humbly submit that you persist. And you have arrived, at the full circle of having suffered, been submitted, been submerged and emerge remembering that the only acceptance, celebration, and embrace comes from within. And was never without. That being seen is to be admired and to be held is to bewilder.

When you know who you are, you find it easier, and quite amusing to see the attempts of humans, to demand you bow your head, and bend your knee. Then with awareness and with no threat to your heritage, you humbly, submit.