Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
At the complex intersection of identity, faith, and culture, How To Be Seen explores the universal human drive for recognition through the lenses of behavioral science and biblical theology. Hosted by Tahjma VanBuren, the show investigates the lengths we go to achieve status and the vital psychological distinction between performing for an audience versus being authentically known. Ultimately, it serves as a reference guide for listeners to embrace a sense of worthiness rooted in the truth that they are already fully seen and valued by God.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:00:00 God is such a show off. When people say, I haven't heard from him, I don't see him, I don't feel him. All these different things. Right? And I've been guilty of this. I don't know that we're actually locked in. I don't know that we're actually paying that much attention to what is being said, what is being done. God is the same God that sent ten different plagues to the Egyptians to set his people free. The book of Exodus. Ten different. He could have sent one and was like, hey, let's keep it moving. He could have sent one. He sent ten, not just so that he could set his people free, but also to be able to use it as an example of I am the greatest God that you will ever interact with. All those other small G or little g gods have nothing on me. Show off. Do you realize our world could be. It could have been totally underwater. God could have decided. Oh, we're here.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:01:30 Why not just make the target over there, put the the Walmart over there and then the gas station. Make it, make it do what it do know. In Genesis it talks about he separated water from water. God literally said, hold my beer. Watch this land. We all could have just been underwater right now, more than than any of this. He literally says, I will have no other gods before me. I am a jealous God. God is a showoff. I was watching or listening, whichever, to a Tim Ross podcast episode within the last 2 to 3 weeks. It's one of his more recent ones, and Tim was talking about how his mom suddenly wanted fries out of nowhere. Like she had this burning urge. Maybe burning is the right word for that, but, this crazy taste for French fries. She goes out, gets dressed. Goes to find the food truck, orders the fries. She turns around and drops them. The fries. The hot straight up at the oil shake.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:02:48 Shaken in the salt fries. She drops him on the floor, on the ground outside. And birds sweep in to eat the fries. And in that moment she hears. Thanks for feeding my my birds today. So when it literally says in Luke, I want to say Luke 12, I provide for the lilies. What? What is the actual scripture? Luke 12 verse 22. Then Jesus said to his disciples, therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life and what you will eat or about your body. What you will wear for life is more than food and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens. They do not sell or reap. They have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable are you than birds? Bro, God could have just could have just sprinkled some fries out the sky for those birds. But instead he says, watch this. Watch this real quick. I need you to see this. God is a show off. And I think that plays a role in our strategy to be seen for these particular reasons.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:04:12 If God is a show off, it's literally not about us. It literally has never been about us. How? The point is how to be seen being used by him, how to be seen loving on his creation, how to be seen stewarding his creation, how to be seen expressing his creativity that he put inside of you. How to be seen glorifying him. It's literally not about us. It is, but it isn't. So I started this particular podcast largely in the sense of largely thinking about how is it that we have such incredible women that are experts in what they talk about, that are ambitious and providers and all these beautiful anecdotes or adjectives that I could list out there, but it's hard to find them, myself included. And then I'm reading the story of Hagar. If you go back to one of the older episodes, I'll link it in the show notes where I talk about Elroy, the God who sees me, shows up in the story of Hagar in Genesis 16. I want to say it was about Hagar then, but it wasn't really about Hagar.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:05:30 It was about being Hagar, having that experience so that she could be the example for so many other people later, so many other people that didn't even exist yet. How Do We seen Is Not About Us, which takes a little bit of that fear and stress and anxiety away. Hopefully, when it comes to standing firmly and standing fully in your gift. All of this is coming from my own personal experience. So I work in an industry of visibility. I produce podcast episodes, I manage social media accounts, all these things, all the things that go into having people be able to be discoverable online. I do that, but yet there are very specific moments that when I was putting this together, I would said, oh, touch me, you're the problem. You're the one that has been in your own way for how to be seen, not necessarily by the world, but just how to see yourself differently, how to interact with yourself differently, and thus have your life be used as a testimony to who God is.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:06:44 I'm the problem. It's me. I'm the problem. I can pinpoint very specific moments that this has happened. When I was a teenager, I wrote songs all the time and I would like sing a little medleys. And this one particular time I decided to record it because I kept writing different songs and coming up with medleys while I was washing dishes or on the bus, and I would totally forget what it was. So I said, okay, I really like how that sounds. Let me go ahead and record it. My younger sister is in the room at the time I'm supposed to be babysitting. I'm writing a song, so I create this whole thing and it's I can remember. I can remember the tune. To this day, I have journals of me writing this particular thing. I remember when my mom started sharing that particular video or audio. It was just audio, that particular audio with other people. I deleted it because I felt nervous, I felt seen, I felt perceived, and I like that.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:07:59 Then I can recall after that, somewhere in that time frame, YouTube really started popping off. Yes, I I'm old enough to be a part of, like some of the original folks that created content on YouTube. I was talking about youth activism, and I was so gung ho about young people need to be out here doing things in in our communities. We need to be engaged. We need to be having these conversations. I was so gung ho about it. I was making YouTube videos about it. I was putting out blog posts, episodes about it every other week. I was in there, but then again, they started getting too much traction. People started expecting the videos. People started introducing me to other people about the things and I got scared. So I deleted the videos. Or actually I think I either I deleted them or I pivoted them. They actually might still be available on my YouTube channel. I don't know. But I definitely took away access to see them. Why did I do that? Then I could think about.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:09:11 I chose the the wrong degree to go to school on purpose because I kept thinking, oh, touch me, you could never do that. That doesn't that doesn't seem like a smart career decision. I have a degree. I have a bachelor's degree in human development and family studies. It's a Bachelor of science. I spent a whole bunch of time studying that particular thing to studying family structures. And, adolescents age those that are, older, more mature adults. I studied their particular mental progression and their, growth, their developmental stages, all those things. Did I have fun? Yeah I did. However, that's not where I was supposed to be, and I learned to force myself to find enjoyment wherever it is that I that I am, which can be a skill in some aspects, but anything turned up to loud becomes detrimental to who you are detrimental and eating away, eroding away at yourself, who your natural self is. I should have gone to school for like media or broadcasting or something. I remember studying, I think his name was Terrence Day when he was on 106th and Park.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:10:42 I remember studying people like him and Terrence Howard and, all of these different media personalities. I remember studying them before applying for college to be able to figure out, oh, okay, how do they do this? What? How did Roxy do this? Oh, why did Roxie have this problem with blah blah blah? I was in there, but I didn't go to study that thing. I remember actually telling myself. Tara, that doesn't make sense. That's too hard. When I had spent the entirety of my childhood writing and creating videos and singing and writing songs and anything in media, I was doing it when Tumblr was out there. I was changing all the colors on my website, HTML, even back when Myspace was the thing, I was doing that over and over and over. I learned how to code from those experiences, but I stopped doing it. I deleted it. I got a degree that I don't fully use right now. Everything turns out for the glory of God. It works out for his good.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:11:53 Yes, and I went around the lap a couple of times that I didn't need to. The mile was done years ago, but I went around the lap three more times. Last one I used to have a podcast called Emerging Black Professionals. That particular podcast it might have. I actually think it's still for sure, for sure. I started that because I was looking for other people who were black in the profession that I was in. I was almost in. My first big girl job was what I call it. I was almost always one of like 2 to 3 black women in the room, and that was quite alienating all the time. Not to mention I was consistently the youngest. It was alienating. It was lonely. So I was looking for my community. So I started emerging black professionals. And yet again, yet again. My spirit was like begging me. God was begging me dang near to do what he made me to do. If I can be very freaking honest. Very freaking honest.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:13:12 Two weeks ago. Because by the time this comes out, I think there will not have been an episode out on this particular channel in this particular podcast in 2 to 3 weeks. Right? I two, 2 to 3 weeks ago, I hit this wall as well where I said, oh no, I feel kind of silly. I don't really know what I'm talking about. Let me, let me just not. I almost repeated the exact same thing again that I have repeated now. From what I recall, I'm sure it's been multiple times, but I've repeated this exact mistake one, two, three, four different times now. It took me being in a small group and the Holy Spirit being like, share this with them, where I said, hey, every time I talk about blah blah blah. Every time I do XYZ. And a room full of women are speaking life into me and they're like, you need to do it. You're being disobedient. You need to do it. Then my sister doubles down and puts a link to my, YouTube channel in the small group chat.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:14:17 Like, I couldn't believe she did that. But it was the push and the very thing that I needed to do. Again, not because it's about me being visible, not because it's about my story, but because God can't help but show off. He can't help. But I was watching The Chosen the other day and I've been like binging the first season. I'm one of those people where I will wait 2 to 3 years until the hype of something is over, before I really get into it. I don't know why. sometimes the hype is just like, nah, I feel pressure to keep up with it. No, I want to watch this in my own pacing. So I'm watching The Chosen and in the in the show, Jesus is doing all these miracles, right? But it was when he, when it came to him doing the miracle at the. And we know that this is a dramatization of the Gospels, right? But when it came to him doing the miracle at the wedding, where he had to produce wine for everybody, that wine, Jesus could have just replicated the exact wine that the, the, the caterers brought to the thing.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:15:33 But he said, no, I'm Jesus. This has to be the best tasting wine. I can't help but for it to be the best tasting wine that these people have ever tasted, that in their entire life in the show, the wine is so good that it makes this like snobby character, this snobby character, it makes it convicts him. My goodness. So at some point, it's about you getting out of your own way to be able to say, how am I not creating space for God to be exactly who he already is, exactly who he can't help but be in my life and in the people's lives around me. Where am I missing the mark? Where am I actually not just putting myself in a box, putting God in a box, expecting him to do XYZ, or expecting him to not be able to do XYZ? Who are you girl? Who are you? Here's my point. Our conversation is consistently about how to be seen, and I want to consistently bring it to the frame of how can we be seen for the benefit of bringing people to Christ? How can we be seen in a way where we can't help but use the gifts that God gave us? My mom uses the example all the time where there are homeless people and even like people who are addicts, that you will see videos of them all the time on the internet singing their heart out like you can feel the anointing in their voice because God can't help show up, but can't help but show off.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:17:17 He's not going to take that dangling gift from you, the gift to sing from you just because you found yourself in sin. He gave it to you and he's going to get the glory from it. So what if that is the situation? How much better would it be if you allowed him full rein to exude exactly who he is? And stop trying to pocket him over in the side portion of your of your life. Only when pastors always like you have to totally surrender. This is what they're talking about a total surrender, allowing access to every part of your life. Because you never know what God is looking to do, and it's not really our responsibility to know and understand and figure the things out. It's really are you creating space for it? Was it Jonathan Reynolds? I think it's his last name. McReynolds. I think it's Jonathan Reynolds. His song, Make Room. How are you making room for a board? How are you making room for your faith to to be materialized. How are you making room when people talk about, oh, my gosh, when people talk about faith without works is dead? I think it's the scripture.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:18:44 I think it's in Romans. I don't know when people talk about that. That's what they mean, or that's a portion rather of what they mean. How are you creating space for your faith to come into fruition when that when the parable. When the not even the parable when in in the Gospels it talks about this guy. This guy is paralyzed from the waist down, and he has his friends put him into the ceiling of the house, because their faith is so great that they're doing that for him. They're like, hey, we believe that Jesus can can do this. We believe that he can heal you. We can. We believe that he can make him walk again. Faith without work. The work was I'm going to go not only walk to to where Jesus is to that house. I'm going to go climb to the roof of that. I'm going to carry my friend. I'm going to try and as safely as possible put him down into this home, because everybody's crowding every other other entrance.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:19:57 They didn't get to the entrance and be like, oh, the line is long. They created an opportunity for God to show the frick off. How to Be seen is about creating opportunities for God to show off. Normally in these videos and in these episodes, I offer you some kind of like application action that you can take. And truly, and I know you. I know you're gonna look at me like, girl, give me something for real. But really, it's two things. Get in your dang own book. Getting your dang own book. You don't have to understand everything that you're reading. You don't have to be excavating everything about it, but you do have to open it. You do have to commit to two verses a day or two chapters, whatever that thing is for you. You do have to commit. You do have to open it for yourself. You can't just rely on somebody else's. Not even my telling of what I'm reading. I gave you, like, 3 or 4 different scriptures.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:21:18 Did I tell you where they were? Maybe one of them. So you can't rely on myself. You can't rely on your pastor stuff because he's a human just like anybody else. And then finally, I would say wise counsel is the is the game changer having community. We're all talking about community right now and having people around us. But true community are the ones that are going to correct you, the ones that are going to tell you. The last month and a half, the Lord has been using this community between my mom, my sister, my younger sister, my older sister, my sisters in Christ. He has been using these women to read me for filth in the best possible way. This. I'll leave it at that. Having people that believe as you believe, meaning they know and understand and believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for their sins and resurrected three days later, that he defeated. That he had victory over death. Victory over sins. Victory over the enemy.
Tahjma VanBuren 00:22:42 Having people that believe that that will open up the book for and with you, that will pray for and with you that will correct you in a loving way. That would be like, girl, stop playing, do that video, girl, stop playing, Create that business, girl. Stop. Plan. Make those cakes, girl. Stop playing. Go pray for that man like that. Like the Lord just told you in your heart. It's crazy. I know this is a lot, but I was like, the Lord shows off. We just have to give him something and present the opportunity to let him be who he is, because he can't help but do it.