Transformation in Small Spirit Led Steps
Renae Miller
If someone had asked me 5 years ago if I would be working out of a hospital-based program to counsel victims of violent crime in the most underserved parts of Peoria, I would probably have looked at you funny. Then, I wouldn’t have been aware enough of my own privilege to know how privileged I was to work my part-time hours in a group private practice with people who could well afford my psychotherapy services. There is a place for that work, but I was soon to learn that there are other needs that need to be met for justice to get a little closer.
But I think that God had plans, way back then, to do a work in me so that I could be more of what people the people I counsel now need me to be. When I think about it, it kind of blows my mind that God puts all of these small steps together to create beautiful purpose in our lives.
You would think that I would have been more aware of privilege on the basis of race than I was. My family had the privilege to adopt a little boy who was five weeks old when we met him- his birth mom was white and his birth dad was black. I knew about individual racism, because I experienced some of it being in close proximity to my brother, but I had not really acknowledged the reality of systemic racism at work in our world today.
In 2016, I ran across the video of Philandro Castile’s last moments in this world and it changed me on a visceral level. For me, that was a pivotal moment where I felt God doing something new in me- no idea where it would lead. In fact, it didn’t lead anywhere at all immediately. During this time, I was part of a women’s group at Imago where Miley Potter suggested that we dig into Be the Bridge to Racial Reconciliation material and invited me to join the group- I began learning so much from POC about how my actions, political and social, made an impact- either to maintain white supremacy or to work on tearing it down. I learned about how racialized violence wasn’t limited to the media portrayals that just happened to be filmed- it has been going on for a long time and continues. I’m so grateful for those early learning experiences.
In 2017, I had the privilege of getting trained in EMDR- a therapy that helps people heal from trauma, something I had wanted for a long time.. In 2018 I heard about Representative Jehan Gordon-Booth’s work to get a trauma recovery center funded through the State of Illinois which would provide trauma recovery psychotherapy for people heavily affected by violence who previously had little access to these services, which eventually ended up at OSF. God stirred my heart- I want to be a part of that. The model came out of some successful trauma-informed work out of San Francisco. I applied for the position in 2018, but that full-time position wasn’t the right time then for me or my family.
In early 2019 I applied for a part-time position again and this time it was the right time. I look back at my work over the past year and I think about how every little step of experience, learning, nudging and prompting of the Holy Spirit led to where I am now. I couldn’t take the step to jump into my hospital job right after the first experience- I wasn’t ready. I needed more learning, more space to process, more skills, and more repentance in my own heart. I needed to listen to and read many stories of people tell their experiences of racialized violence, microaggressions, etc for me to be able to hold those narratives from my clients without my white fragility rearing its ugly head, defending or disputing or some other such B.S.
I’m still learning and repenting- but I’m more of who my clients need me to be today because of the work that God started at least 4 years ago. Last month I opened my own part-time private practice- now I get to serve in both places, continually amazed at the way that God leads me in small steps towards the person He wants me to become, and the person His people need me to be. I hope to continue to grow in anti-racist work personally as I respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit: in the way I raise my children, the friendships I pursue, the way I leverage my prvilege to advocate for those marginalized on the basis of race, the purchases I make, the way I vote, and the way I share what I have learned with others who haven’t had the opportunity yet.
I encourage anyone who feels like learning more about the suffering in the world is too hard because it can lead to a sense of powerlessness to lean into where the Holy Spirit is prompting you now. What does the Spirit say? What is the next small step towards a more just and merciful life? How does the last few years of prompting add up to a direction of where the Spirit wants you to go?
Renae is a wife to one, mother to two, and part-time mental health therapist to many at a private practice in Peoria, specializing in anxiety disorders and OCD. She has attended Imago since the 2nd Sunday it has been in existence and loves the church and its people deeply. She sings in the Peoria Area Civic Chorale and kickboxes for fun. She has ridden over 220 different rollercoasters and continues to love traveling to different theme parks to increase that number. She has been excited to join the Leadership Team at Imago to add this to her list of adventures.