Dreaming My Home Into Being

HABITS ARE FORMED in response to contextual cues. The stronger the cue, the harder it is for our minds to access alternative responses.

We just spent four years resisting. We became experts at pushing back, filling public squares, locking arms. Some of us also built habits of self-care. We would receive the cue for a big justice push and, without thinking, plan a day of hibernation on the other side. These habits were (and are) beautiful and necessary. But now we live in a new context. The old cues that triggered those habits will come less and less frequently. It is entirely possible that a year from now we could find ourselves coasting on autopilot rather than establishing new habits of dreaming and building what we dream.

By the end of the Civil War, 4 million enslaved people of African descent were sustaining themselves with survival habits cultivated and passed down over the course of 250 years. They found themselves in a brand-new context on April 10, 1865. Survival was no longer the highest goal. Now they were free to dream.

Dream they did. Over the next decade, formerly enslaved peoples dreamed and built the infrastructure of African American community life. We dreamt the Freedman’s Bureau, Howard University, women’s and men’s societies, and church denominations. More than 1,000 Black people dreamed of leadership and ran for public office—and won!

Not every dream is meant to be lived, but we can’t find God’s dream for us until we allow ourselves to think beyond the possible. For example, I never thought I could own a home, but I was inspired by a story I learned while researching my family for my next book. My great-grandfather Hiram Lawrence’s family had been chased out of Kentucky by the Klan. He moved to Philadelphia and bought a block of homes in a neighborhood called Elmwood, renting them during the 1940s to African Americans streaming north in the Great Migration. Then the city of Philadelphia claimed his land by eminent domain. Now it rests under I-95, adjacent to the Philadelphia airport.

I had shut out the dream of owning my own home. It seemed beyond my paycheck. Then one day I was examining a map, trying to find the land where Hiram had lived. I found it, but also noticed numbers all over the map. It turned out to be a Zillow real estate map. I couldn’t believe how affordable the homes were. I searched in my grandmother’s neighborhood close by and found the same situation—affordable, renovated homes. I set up accounts with Zillow and Realtor.com. I contacted a real estate agent. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I was willing to dream. The process of searching released me from my own survival mentality, helping me to see beyond the possible.

Now, I live in my dream home—literally. I live one block from where my grandparents and great-grandparents owned homes. I’ve returned to the old neighborhood, called to seek its peace.

It is time to build new habits for a new context. What would goodness look like in your life? In your family? In your community? In our nation? Dare to dream it. Then build it.