Lucretia Carter Berry, PhD • January 13, 2026
EASE.
That is the word resonating in this season of my life.
May we be people of peace
With voices of hope
Doing the hard work of love.
Nathan offered these words as a benediction for each session of the What LIES Between Us course—not only as a closing, but as an intention meant to ground our growth from one gathering to the next, all the way through and beyond the conclusion of the course.
I love it.
Our team loves it.
When people recite it together at the end of each session, they can feel the alignment—confirmed, encouraged, hopeful. A shared breath. A shared direction.
And yet, a few months ago, I began to sense a quiet dissonance within myself—specifically around the third line: doing the hard work of love. The word hard no longer resonated.
I don’t deny that doing love has required effort. It has. There have been seasons when loving felt like swimming upstream against currents of fear, resistance, and stagnation. Seasons of tilling and tending can be undeniably hard.
But something has shifted within me.
It feels as though I’ve spent years filling the glass—strategizing, laboring, pouring with intention—and now it’s time to drink. Or like the long, loving work of breaking up the soil, planting the seed, watering and pruning, and then arriving at the moment where striving pauses to allow soil and seed to do what they were designed to do.
It is time for EASE.
Ease can mean moving gently or gradually—carefully easing down a hill.
Ease can also mean reducing intensity—making what is heavy, painful, or congested more spacious and passable.
The ease I sense feels closer to the latter.
We tilled.
We planted.
We watered.
We pruned.
We nurtured.
And now, perhaps, it is time to experience ease.
Does ease look like stillness?
A fallow season?
A quiet expansion?
I’m not entirely certain. But I do know this: ease is not the absence of work—it is the fruit of faithful labor. And I welcome it.
So now, wherever I see the phrase doing the hard work of love—in the What LIES Between Us study guide, on my teaching slides, even on my sweatshirt—I don’t erase the word hard. Instead, I strike through it.
Doing the hard work of love.
The word hard stays, because it deserves to be honored. The planning, the plowing, the pruning, the nurturing—much of it is hard. Challenging. Exhausting. Sacred.
The strikethrough doesn’t deny that truth.
It signals a shift.
A new energy.
A new posture.
EASE.
Ease born from the labor that came before it.
Ease is what becomes possible when effort has been faithful, when love has been practiced long enough to soften the strain. It is a surrender. It is a maturation.
There are seasons when love requires grit—when we push, persist, and stay the course despite resistance. And there are seasons when love invites us to loosen our grip, to trust what has already been planted, to receive what the work has made available.
Choosing ease does not dishonor the hard.
It honors its completion.
It says: the roots are deep enough now.
It says: the soil knows what to do.
It says: I no longer need to prove my commitment through exhaustion.
So I make room for ease—not as escape, but as emergence.
Not as avoidance, but as arrival.
And perhaps this is the invitation for all of us:
to recognize when the work has shifted, to listen for the quiet permission to rest into what we have already built, and to trust that love, when tended with care, eventually learns how to carry itself.
Lucretia Carter Berry, PhD, is a distinguished author, educator, and speaker, as well as the visionary founder of Brownicity, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering education designed to inspire a culture of true belonging and justice for all. Lucretia was also a valued contributor to incourage.me, where she shared her insights and wisdom on topics of faith, resilience, and personal growth. Through her books, Teaching for Justice and Belonging – A Journey for Educators and Parents (2022), Hues of You – An Activity Book for Learning About the Skin You Are In (2022), and What LIES Between Us – Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing (2016), her impactful TED Talk, and her commitment to building just communities, Lucretia encourages meaningful engagement that transcends boundaries, fostering personal development, resilience, and the transformative capacity within each of us.
Interested in taking an in-person What LIES Between Us course?
In partnership with Davidson College’s Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) and the Community Engaged Faculty Fellows program, and the Town of Davidson, I invite you to an in-person learning experience rooted in connection, reflection, and growth.
Mondays: February 2, 9, 16, 23 & March 2
6:30–8:00 PM ET
Davidson Town Hall, 251 South St, Davidson, NC 28036
Facilitator: Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry 🎓
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