I’d argue I’ve lived a pretty interesting life so far. Not many normal people can say they’ve lived in shelters, slept in abandoned buildings, and jumped off yachts around the world—and have all three belong to the same life story. Part of why I don’t talk about much of it is that PTSD is a MFer, and there are entire stretches of my life my brain has apparently locked in a password-protected folder. But I’ve also always been outrageously dreamy, sharp, empathetic, and ambitious as hell, and somewhere along the way I was crowned the “golden child,” largely because of the grit, hustle, and sheer willpower I could summon when life got very ugly.
In my twenties and early thirties, Big Lex [Lexapro] helped me through some uncomfortable seasons. The panic attacks still occasionally try me, but these days I know how to ground myself and get back to living my beautiful life. I’m no Prodigy, just a continued work in progress forty-something years into this experiment.
Religion is a more complicated conversation, but I’ve always believed in the Word of God. So when TikTok kept serving me something called the removal prayer, I paid attention. Maybe it isn’t new, and the algorithm simply clocked my proximity to church, but the premise is simple: ask God to remove anything from your life that no longer aligns with where you’re meant to be going.
That “anything” can be people, habits, jobs, relationships, opportunities, attachments, desires, and even versions of yourself. A few times this year, I was at my wit’s end with A LOT and needed relief, so I figured, all right then, remove it. And baby, He spared no expense. A massive amount of student-loan debt was discharged. Obstacles were removed. Debilitating relationships were exposed and removed. Frenemies disappeared. Secrets came into the light. Some physical aches eased. Jobs and life plans I thought I needed were canceled. Meanwhile, opportunities—big ones, small ones, random ones, perfectly timed ones—started falling into my lap.
Apparently, I asked for removal, and God heard demolition.
The funny thing about a removal prayer is that we tend to imagine God will remove only what we already know is bad for us. We picture the annoying boss, the stressful situation, the bill, the obvious obstacle. We rarely imagine that the answer might include something we loved to death, something we worked hard for, something we prayed for five years ago, something attached to our identity, something that looks impressive on LinkedIn, or someone we still desperately want to be who we imagined them to be. That is where removal gets uncomfortable, because sometimes the thing holding you back doesn’t look like dysfunction.
Sometimes it looks like success.
A prestigious job can hold you back if keeping it means abandoning yourself. A friendship can hold you back if your primary responsibility is to make yourself smaller so someone else feels comfortable. A relationship can hold you back even when love exists, because love and alignment are not the same. A habit can hold you back even when it once helped you survive. A city can hold you back. A title can hold you back. A lifestyle can hold you back. Even ambition can become dead weight when you never stop long enough to ask whether the person chasing the goal is still the one who wants it.
That last one is especially dangerous for high-functioning people because we are very good at dragging dead things forward and rebranding the labor. We call it loyalty, love, discipline, or “seeing things through,” while quietly exhausting ourselves by carrying relationships, expectations, careers, identities, and obligations whose expiration dates passed three seasons ago. Black folks, in particular, are often taught to worship endurance: be twice as good, keep going, pray about it, make it work, don’t quit, don’t give them the satisfaction, push through. Perseverance is dignity, of course, and our survival is evidence of that, but sometimes our obsession with surviving becomes the very thing that keeps us from living.
There is a difference between quitting because something is difficult and releasing it because it is finished, and discernment is knowing which is happening. The removal prayer forced me to reflect on how often I have mistaken familiarity for alignment. We become accustomed to suffering in familiar forms. We know how to navigate the stressful job, how to love the emotionally dead person, which friend requires us to edit ourselves, and exactly how to manage the chaos. Because we know the choreography, we convince ourselves that familiarity means safety.
So when peace arrives, it can feel suspicious. There is nothing to troubleshoot, chase, prove, rescue, or perform. There is simply space, and space can be terrifying when you have spent your entire life filling every empty corner with responsibility. But space is also where new things live, and that is what I think we miss when we talk about removal. The prayer is not merely, God, take this away. It is also, God, make room.
Make room for healthier love, creativity, financial freedom, rest, friendships that don’t require constant repair, and opportunities I cannot even imagine because I am too busy gripping the ones already in my hand.
Make room for the woman I am becoming, and perhaps most importantly, remove my attachment to anything that requires me to betray her.
That part may be the hardest prayer of all because sometimes we are the obstacle. It can be our ego, our fear, our appetite for validation, our obsession with being understood, our need to have the last word, or our willingness to overextend, because being needed feels suspiciously similar to being loved. It can also be our belief that every investment deserves a return simply because we invested heavily. Some things need to be removed from around us, but others need to be removed from within us.
I’m learning not to automatically label every loss as punishment anymore, because sometimes what looks like everything falling apart is simply incompatible things losing access. And yes, removal can hurt like hell. You may grieve the friend, the relationship, the job, or the version of your future you had already decorated in your head. You may even ask God to put something back once you realize how serious the assignment was. But I’m beginning to understand that relief and grief can occupy the same body. You can miss something and still know it needed to end. You can love someone and still be healthier without access to them. You can be grateful for a career and still recognize that it has taken you as far as it can.
The same is true of the versions of ourselves we sometimes have to leave behind. You can honor the woman who survived by being hyper-independent without forcing her to run every relationship. You can appreciate the ambition that once saved you without letting achievement become the only language through which you measure your worth. You can thank old habits for helping you survive a difficult season without inviting them into the life you are now trying to build. Growth does not always require condemning who you used to be; sometimes it simply requires recognizing that she has completed her assignment.
That is why I no longer think of removal only as rejection. Sometimes it is redirection, sometimes it is protection, and sometimes it is simply God answering the prayer exactly as you asked—even if the answer arrives wearing steel-toed boots. Moving forward, I’m much more careful about what I ask God to remove [at once], not because I don’t trust Him, but because He apparently listens… and my Pisces heart is very fragile, lol.
But maybe that is the real lesson of the removal prayer: you can't keep asking for a new life while demanding that everything from the old one come with you.
At some point, something has to go. And sometimes, the blessing is exactly what didn’t survive the journey.