As the numbers rolled in on the television screen - red, red, red - the pit of our stomachs dropped. With every tally, the dream we had prayed for, worked for, and believed in slipped further out of reach. November 5, 2024, marked a rupture many of us are still reckoning with.

I wrote this essay a few months into 2025. I was coming out of months of depression and grief, just like so many others, after the reality check settled in that America, as we had hoped, was not quite able to live up to our expectations. I went through the five emotions of grief like the rest of us. Something happened after acceptance…I finally woke up.

This essay is still as relevant today as it was over a year ago, except that over this past year, we’ve watched smokescreens removed, veils be snatched down, and rose-colored lenses be cracked and removed. The underbelly truths of America were no longer whispered in Evangelical and white primary spaces anymore. They were being thrust into the greatest public power grabs of our country, and there was no longer anyone to keep us lulled.

This New Year’s morning, I sat up in my bed and wondered why I hadn’t received my ‘word’ for the new year. I usually have it the week leading up to the new year, or at least the eve of, but this year, I only received a scripture as I started 2026 awake and aware of my surroundings. It was from this scripture that I understood my assignment for this year.

Last year was about unlearning—U.N.M.A.S.K. This year is about survival: learning how to live faithfully, build wisely, and remain human in a hostile environment.

Jeremiah 29 verses 4-7:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (NRSV)

After the reality settled into our “new normal” in America, it took months for me to realize that we were being forced into victimization. Women. Marginalized communities. Immigrants. Children. Liberals. Those who worship differently.

I am reawakening this essay to remind you all that there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus (see Romans 8:1). If we are truly living by, for, and through Christ - the actual Jesus that we come to know through God’s Word and His Spirit – then we are not victims. No matter how chaotic and offensive it may get. We are called to live as reflections and conduits of the Father’s Kingdom. We are joint heirs with Christ as He sits on the right hand of the Father. (see Romans 8:17)

I believe Holy Spirit was telling me with this scripture that we are to keep on living and living unapologetically by faith and not by sight. She is telling us to remember who we are. We are oppressed, but we are not without the Hand of God as our Avenger.

Sacred Resistance means to allow not just our morals, ethics, and knowledge to drive our resistance, but more importantly, our faith, our surrender to the Divine ways, our loyalty to the One who refused to bow to Empire and still does to this day.

I encourage you to “wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14)

Continue to live, to build, to love, to sow, to reap, to serve, to work, to increase and expand, to pray for our nation that His will be done and no one else’s, even if He has to use those on the other side to do so. Let’s trust Him that “the last will be first, and the first will be last”. (see Matthew 20:16)

We will do more than survive…we will thrive and teach the generations to come to not shrink and bow to counterfeit kingdoms but stand unapologetically for the Kingdom of All.

In solidarity with you and Christ,

Nikki