“You matter.”
Those two simple words echoed in my spirit as I listened to Iyanla Vanzant share her spotlight moment on Oprah’s SuperSoul.TV. Her voice carried more than wisdom that day — it carried a generational cry. You could feel it. Her story wasn’t just told through her words; it was revealed through her scars. Scars that weren’t even originally hers, but her grandmother’s.
Iyanla shared how her grandmother grew up on farmland with invisible lines drawn in the dirt — lines she was never supposed to cross. Yet at nine years old, her grandmother crossed those lines and was raped by the sharecropper’s son. The most painful part wasn’t just the assault; it was her father’s reaction. Instead of protecting her, he beat her — worried more about losing his job than his daughter’s innocence.
That moment communicated a message that was louder than words: You don’t matter.
And that lie was passed down through generations, quietly replayed in patterns, choices, and self-worth.
That same message has echoed in many of our lives, hasn’t it?
I’ve had to face that same question myself. What were the lines drawn in the sands of my own generations? What boundaries did pain and shame create before I even knew they existed? What was I robbed of — not physically, but emotionally, spiritually — that shaped how I saw myself and how I believed others saw me?
For me, that message came early.
My mother had four children. By the time I was nine years old, I believed my mother didn’t love me — because she never wanted four children. And I was the fourth. That seed of rejection took root so deeply that it started shaping how I saw God. I thought, If my mother couldn’t love me because she had too many children, how could God love me when He has the whole world to take care of?
That was the question of my little heart. And it was a question I carried quietly for years.
But I’ve learned something since then — something the enemy never wanted me to discover: the truth that I matter.
Every scar, every tear, every “why me” moment — God was using it to rewrite the message that had been passed down to me. What the enemy meant to use as rejection, God turned into redirection. The same lines that were meant to define my limits became the place where I met His grace.
And that’s what I want you to hear today: You matter.
You matter even if your beginnings were broken.
You matter even if your story started in pain.
You matter even if you were made to believe you were unwanted, unseen, or unloved.
Don’t carry the wounds that were never yours to hold. Don’t let generational pain define who you are. Let God show you how to cross those lines in the sand and step into the place where His love meets your healing.
Someone is waiting on the other side of your testimony to hear that same message — from your voice, from your healing, from your deliverance.
Tell them the truth:
You matter.