JustSyai

  If you haven't heard by now the blog is now a PODCAST!! I am so excited to bring you the news and I pray that you are able to take a listen.  Godfidentiality with Just Syai is available on YouTube, Spotify, Anchor, Amazon, Google, Apple Podcasts, Audible, IHeart, and any other place you listen to podcasts. I look forward to sharing this new part of the journey with you all.  Click the link below to listen to the latest episode and catch up on all the previous episodes of Godfidentiality with Just Syai.  https://linktr.ee/JustSyai I love you ALL to wholeness and remember, JUST BREATHE! Syai

Hello Loves! This past month has been like nothing I could have ever thought or wanted to experience. If you would have told me in November that in December I would be COVID tested twice a week, every week, and I would be wearing scrubs, a surgeon's gown, a face shield and goggles to work everyday, I would have laughed, but here I am and I am tired. After this past month, I made a promise to myself that I would be more diligent in the matters of my business, my hobbies, my creativeness and most of all, ME. I made a promise to myself a long time ago to stop making New Year's resolutions and start making life goals. No one keeps resolutions, EVER! I know I don't keep them and truth be told neither do you. But goals, we do our best to reach them, no matter if they are short term or long term because short term goals lead to long term results. We are in the last week of this year, going on to a new year with new mercies, so lets make some goals together! Goal #1 - Remove toxic...

Hello Lovely People! I know it is has been a while but let me catch you up on life! I have returned to the workforce and it has been a doozy. I work in the healthcare field and even though I am not a direct care employee, my days can be very long. Sometimes I get home with just enough energy to ask the kids and husband how their days were, prepare and eat dinner, clean up and spend time with the husband before I knock all the way out for the night. My time has been so stretched and some days I don't know if I am coming or going. This pandemic doesn't make it any better as I have been homesick for the past 6 months.  I made the tough decision to not only go back to work but to send my children back to school, face to face. It was one of the hardest decisions my husband and I had to make and I literally cried over it. Since I was back to work and my husband working full-time from home (literally on zoom calls all day until maybe 6 or 7 every evening) we would be up until 9pm some...

Tired, fatigued and overwhelmed! Those were some of the physical and emotional feelings I was dealing with in 2018 going into 2019. I would have episodes where I could barely move because my body would shut down and I couldn't move for a day, I would have migraines more often than usual because I was stressing over deadlines and commitments. With all of this still, I continued to stretch myself thin and say yes to projects that I shouldn’t have, do favors for people I shouldn't have, work a 9-5 job, try to start a business, be a mom, a wife and many other hats that I should have left at the altar. I ended up having a come to Jesus moment with myself in the car one day. I was weeping to God for me not to be tired, for him to give me more energy, more time to do the things I had committed to do. The answer I received in that moment shocked me but gave me clarity beyond measure.  God told me NO. He told me no, he would not give me strength to continue to hurt myself. I was not tak...

Have you ever been told something that has stuck with you longer than it should have? Were you ever told something repeatedly as a child or even as an adult and it affected you mentally, emotionally or spiritually? Growing up I would hear kids say, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". Honestly, this couldn't be further from the truth as words hurt more than sticks and stones, their wounds take longer to heal because they cut deep. For years I endured hearing negative things about myself in a hurtful marriage that ended in divorce. Those words affected me and I carried them into my current marriage. I can now say that those words have no power over me, I have been doing the work to ensure that I no longer believe them. How about you? Words once said can never be taken back, they hurt as they pierce through a person's integrity, their being and mental thoughts to be processed. Once words are taken in and ran through the mind over and ove...

  Have you ever struggled with your appearance? Like really struggled? I struggled for years with my outward appearance. I never really considered myself a great looking person, the picture above does not tell the tale, and the truth is, I pushed through this photo shoot with the help of a great friend. I was the ugly duckling for years. I was the darkest, the tallest, the skinniest, girl with the roughest hair texture. Go ahead and add in that I loved school, reading books and had a small group of friends who I only saw at school, didn’t help at all. Growing up around my family that was lighter than me, had some meat on them bones and flowing hair was not easy. I always felt like an outcast, the black sheep of the family and ugly. My upbringing and adding a very hard first marriage should have shattered me to pieces, truth be told, it did. I have slowly, with the help of the Lord, my wonderful husband, and trusted friends, began to build up the confidence to say I AM BEAUTIFUL! ...

The past two weeks in my house have been a bit hectic and the old saying when it rains it pours has never rang so true to me. It is hard to imagine that just 3 weeks ago we were on a beautiful vacation (quarantine style) spending quality time with each other and relaxing away the worries of a pandemic. Upon arriving back home from our vacation our dishwasher broke and had been leaking. We made some calls, got someone here to look at it, and tell us what the issue was but that it would take 2 weeks to get the part delivered due to Corona. Needless to say, a childhood steeped in washing dishes by hand came in handy and we began to manage the dishes to avoid overflow. Who would have known that this was the beginning of what I see now as Rain.   Just the next week, our water heater pipe burst and water was leaking again!!!! The water heater is in the attic and my husband and I had to again make some phone calls and get someone out here to fix it. This took longer than expected and ...

I was picking up my children from their after school program one day and there was a mom getting in the car next to me and I heard, "put your seatbelts on", "stop fighting", "be nice to your brother" and it made me smile. Truth be told, I was a bit happy and excited to know that I am not the only mom who says these lines up to twenty times a day! But, I could hear God saying, you are not the only one. In my spirit, I prayed to myself, THANK YOU JESUS!     Often times we think that we are the only ones dealing with our situation, that no one understands the hurt, the struggle, the pain that we are feeling. That there is no one that can truly understand what we are dealing with and the burdens that we are carrying. God brought to my remembrance the story of Elijah after he heard from Jezebel about Ahab slaying all the prophets with his sword. In his attempt to stay alive, Elijah ended up in a cave. It was there that Elijah heard the Lord's voice aski...

Shame, something we feel when we are powerless or exposed. Have you ever felt this way before? I felt like that in a group chat with my friends, I felt shamed for having a failed marriage. I was told those years of marriage don't count, only my years of my current healthy marriage was what counted. While it may not have been the intentions, as we were joking and laughing within the text string, nevertheless, I was hurt….those years no matter how hard they were, counted to me. Those years, no matter how unhealthy, produced a wonderful and beautiful child and taught me what I deserved, wanted and needed from a man I would call my husband. Those years taught me about ME.   I wondered and thought about my feelings of why I was hurt, hurt that someone felt that something outside of my control was thought of as not counting. That period in my life I can't change but it does count. Just like a career, your experience in a particular field does count, no matter how many jobs you ha...

I was talking to another mom one day while picking my daughter up from school (before Corona) and she said, sometimes she feels bad because she is not the perfect mom. I said to her none of us are, we all make mistakes and do things a way that can sometimes be wrong, but it all works out for greatness somehow. Then when I got home, the Lord kept telling me perfection is not a necessity. Why do we have this fascination with being perfect? I have gone through it myself many times. I can't tell you how often I have unraveled a completed project because I messed up, decided not to wear a particular outfit or completely redid my hair because it wasn't perfect.  Christians often feel that they have to be perfect in the eyes of the church to be used or hold office,  unbelievers say "I have to get myself right before I come to the Lord" as if they can become a vision of perfection on their own.  Let's be clear, there is no one perfect besides Christ , not even me.   ...

I know we are all TIRED of being in the house, ready to go out into the world and be with our family and other loved ones. I know that for me being home has gotten a bit harder and I have had to dig deep to find some outlets that helped me cope with being home. One of the main things has been disconnecting from news and some other media outlets for a couple of hours or even days at a time. It has helped me to refocus, re-energize and calibrate my emotions. I urge you to take a break from the news and focus on yourself or your family, it helps to calm your spirit more than you think.  Here are a couple of other things that I have been doing to keep me sane during this quarantine.   Reading - I love a good book and can read a good book in one day. I subscribe to Bookbub  to get a daily update on free and low priced books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple and Google websites. I cuddle up in the recliner or in the bed with a hot cup of my favorite tea of the week and dig...

In the beginning of the pandemic, I was full of emotions, I was nervous, a little worried and anxious. I had just been laid off, my job became looking for a job and my kids were home for spring break. I allowed my children to have their time with me and I wanted them to enjoy every minute of it. Then the schools closed and I said okay, I can home school for the next 2 weeks, no problem. Then the news that school would be closed for the rest of the year came and I was...... devastated. I had to remove myself from being around my children because I could feel those emotions I had bottled up rising to the top. I was going to burst and the last thing I wanted was for my children to worry about me or be afraid of what was to come.   My emotions were mainly anger and worry. I was angry that this was happening, I didn’t sign up to home school my children, that is why I sent them to school in the first place! I knew my limit for patience and it was not as high as it should be to teach ...

I will never forget when I was modeling and I was out to eat with some friends afterwards and one of them said, " You look like a whole different person, I almost didn't recognize you"! That didn't sit well with me. I don't want to look like someone else, I want to look like me. I am glad that I don't look like some of the things that I have been through and I still look young enough for people to think my youngest and oldest daughters and I are sisters. They can't stand that! Truth be told, I LOVE IT!!!   Sometimes as women in Christ we feel as though we have to have the outward appearance on point at all times to ensure we look Holy and all put together. Then on the inside we are dying, crying, broken, begging and pleading for help. Afraid to ask people to pray for us and not wanting to pray for ourselves because that would make it real. Why do we continue to live this beautiful lie? To please people in the church? To have people thinking we got it a...

Today was a rough day, rougher than my normal day. I had the urge today to want to socialize and be around good people, laugh, have intellectual discussions, eat good food and just not be in the house. Today I missed my family and close friends who I have not been able to see since the pandemic started. Today was rough day and I admitted to myself that I was not okay today. Just recently I took a test that confirmed, I am an ambivert. I am okay with being home and isolated like most introverts, a good book or a ball of yarn, hook and movie has been doing me great. Today that extroverted side of me was calling for attention. I wanted to be around people so bad, to the point that I was willing to wear a mask and gloves in ninety degree weather, just to fulfill that urge. However, I decided to come home, why you ask? Because, I am a mom and a wife and as much as the extrovert in me wanted to be out and about, my home and the care of it comes first.     I have been trying my bes...

The news of another black man being killed by the police (George Floyd) is all over the headlines and people like me are understandably angry, hurt and just   frustrated. I have had to explain to my children the careless and insensitive actions of others and again talk about how they should interact when they are in the presence of a police officer, how they should walk in the neighborhood we live in, toys they can and cannot play with, clothing they can and cannot wear and the talking goes on and on and on. My son asks "Mommy, what can we do"? My response, "Son we are believers in Christ so we pray".   People who don't see through our scope of lens may ask why are we frustrated, what have you really gone through to make you mad. I cannot speak for everyone, however being an Afro-Latina, I often have been met with racist comments and actions. For example, I have been told, you don't look like you have Puerto Rican in you, are you sure you weren't ado...

Hello Loves! Let me take this opportunity to introduce myself and welcome you all to my blog. I am so thankful that you stopped by. My name is Syaidah, just like the famous singer-songwriter Siedah Garret, but you can call me Syai (pronounced Sigh). I am a Christian, a wife, a mother of 3 children, a lover of all things fabric, yarn and music, lastly but certainly not least, I am a writer.   I have been writing for years, it started as journaling and slowly turned into mini articles. I would start to write about my feelings, prayers and the Lord would give me scriptures to add in. Then I would be in church listening to the word, suddenly I would get a download from heaven and I would quickly jot it down so I could write about it when I got home. The urge to write would burn in my mind, flow in my thoughts or replay over and over at the most inopportune times, until I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. The name Just Syai came forth because I found that I was losing myself....