I'm A Promoter of the Goodness of God

I think I’ve been one all my life.

I just didn’t have a name for it.

In elementary school, I was usually the first one with my hand up when the teacher asked a question. I’d be finished with my assignment while everybody else was still working.

That could sound competitive if you only looked at the outside of it.

But that wasn’t really what was happening.

I was curious. I wanted to know. I wanted to figure things out.

And I was always watching people, too.

I remember coming home and telling my mother about my friends.

“Ma, you should see how so-and-so decorated her room. She is SO good at picking colors for her canopy bed.”

Or I’d tell her about somebody who could cook right alongside her mother in the kitchen, moving around like she had been doing it forever.

I wasn’t coming home wishing I were them.

I was coming home because I had seen something beautiful in somebody and wanted my mother to see it too.

But before I could finish telling the story, I’d hear:

“But you can do that too.”

And after hearing it enough times, I stopped telling her.

It took me years to understand why.

I wasn’t comparing myself to anybody.

I wasn’t making a list of what they had that I didn’t.

I was giving people their flowers.

I noticed what they did well. I noticed what came naturally to them. I noticed the little things other people might overlook.

And when I saw it, I wanted to say, “Look at you. Do you know what you can do?”

That has been in me for a long time.

Long before I knew what to call it.

Long before I understood where it came from.

Then I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and something that had been moving through my life without a name began to make sense to me.

I started seeing the connection.

God is good.

And I have always had a thing for pointing out His goodness when I see it.

Sometimes it looks like telling somebody they have a gift they haven't recognized yet.

Sometimes it looks like encouraging somebody to take the class.

Go for the relationship.

Try again.

Sing the song.

Make the thing.

Open the door.

Believe there might be something on the other side of that fear.

And eventually, people started saying it back to me.

“Kashmire, you encouraged me to take that class.”

“You encouraged me to go for that relationship.”

“You encouraged me to give my marriage another shot.”

People from different parts of my life. Different places. Different seasons.

And I began to realize something:

This wasn’t something I had picked up along the way.

This was already me.

I just didn't know it had a name.

There was a time when I didn’t fully trust that part of myself. When something hasn't been recognized or encouraged, you can learn to second-guess it. You can have a gift in your hands and still wonder if you're imagining the whole thing.

But I'm not wondering anymore.

I know what I do.

I see goodness in people.

I see possibility.

I see the thing someone is doing that they may have dismissed because it comes too easily to them.

And I want them to see it too.

That is part of my shine.

I am a promoter of the goodness of God.

Not because I walk around trying to convince people.

Not because I have all the answers.

But because I have spent my whole life noticing what is beautiful, what is possible, what is still alive in somebody and wanting to point to it.

Maybe you have something like that in you.

Something you've always done without thinking much about it.

Something people keep coming to you for.

Something you may have stopped doing because somebody once waved it off, misunderstood it, or never knew what to call it.

Pay attention to that.

Because sometimes the thing that feels the most natural to you is the very thing you've been carrying all along.

You don't always recognize your gift when you're holding it.

Sometimes you recognize it by the trail of light it leaves on other people.