On Faith, Freedom, and the Inner Revolution of Harriet Tubman

“I was spending all my time knowing things instead of believing them, and that’s the first step to truly being free. When you can see past all the things that you know and believe in something better.”

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Seeing Beyond What We’re Taught

The life that we are born into is often all that a person knows and is usually as far as the average person can see. If someone tells you who you are repeatedly, without debate but rather with constant images that reinforce the teaching, the average person, again, would believe what they are told.

Every now and then, I believe God places people like Harriet in the midst to shake things up and bring about a truth that is desperately hidden.

The Birth of Faith in Darkness

To be born into slavery, to be treated worse than animals and told that you aren’t human that you are incapable of learning, creating, or thinking for yourself but yet and still to feel the thoughts flow and the dreams manifest in your mind without example or validation, but to know in your heart…

To see nothing but darkness, and to know the possibility of your fate as a consequence of defiance, but to still reach for that vision that only lives in your heart that is the definition of faith.

A Knowing That Can’t Be Taught

Everything about Harriet was an outward reflection of an inward strength and knowing that can only come from God. To try and teach a person what it takes to defy those types of odds would never fully compute. Even for those who were there seemingly having the same experience they would describe it to you nothing like she would, if you were to ask them both.

“They looked the same as the other people from Africa who had been coming over, who had dark skin. Say you couldn’t tell anymore one who could fly from one who couldn’t.”

While things outwardly appear the same, each person’s internal experience of one situation can be felt a million different ways. How we see things is heavily based on our personal dispositions and the narratives we build internally to help us cope with life.

The Burning House

Harriet, while physically in bondage, was able to free her mind from an environment designed to program her. While admirable, imagine the fear and stress of being in a burning house with all of your siblings and you’re the only one who can see the flames.

The pressure isn’t just in escaping, it’s in trying to wake the others, to convince them that the danger is real when they feel no heat, see no smoke, and believe the walls around them are home. Some would fight you for disturbing their comfort. Others would beg you to stay, terrified of what’s outside.

And perhaps the heaviest weight of all: knowing that if you run, you might have to leave people you love behind.

Survival at Any Cost

Then there are those who smell the smoke and see the fire but instead of warning the others, they push them closer to the flames to buy themselves more time. People so shaped by fear that they’ll trade anyone, even their own, just to survive another day.

That’s the tragedy of oppression: it doesn’t just bind the body, it distorts the mind twisting self-preservation into betrayal, and fear into loyalty to the very system that’s killing you.

The Unseen Layers of Her Journey

It is the nuances that are impossible for us to fully grasp that make her story and her journey so remarkable. From being a slave unfamiliar with the world and its landscape, to running in the pitch-black fields of the South, feeling your way to freedom and praying not to get caught.

From the dangers of unknown wildlife from the smallest of poisonous spiders and snakes to the dark and cloudy waters holding God knows what her journey was layered in both visible and invisible threats.

At every turn, there were not just the big stressors at the forefront, but there were the smaller ones to overcome with every step. Her journey was just as much mental as it was physical.

But at a certain point, once you know better, there is no other option but to do better.