From Silence to Spotlight

Before she was a clinical psychologist, preacher, or international speaker, Dr. Sarita Lyons was a college student searching for herself. Raised by Christian parents and proudly active in church as a child—Bible tracts in hand, leading recess Bible studies—Dr. Sarita once embodied what many saw as a model “Church Girl.” But as she tells it, “Being raised in church and knowing church things didn’t mean I really knew Jesus.”
That changed in college. Wanting to connect more deeply to her cultural identity as a black woman, Sarita found herself drawn into Yoruba spirituality and Kemetic teachings. “At first, I tried to blend it all together,” she writes in Church Girl.

“But eventually the truth got crowded out.” She was reading about African deities, building altars to ancestors, practicing divination. “There was a lot of community—but there was no Christ.”

The turning point came on a seemingly normal night. Her father called, as he often did, to pray over her. At that same moment, someone in her apartment loudly disrespected Jesus. Something broke. “I screamed, ‘Get out!’ and cleared everyone out of my apartment,” she recalls. “I wasn’t thinking or feeling. I was just moving—obeying. The Holy Spirit took over.”

She dismantled her altar. Tossed tarot cards, beads, candles, books—anything tied to deception. “I was sick. I ended up passed out on my bathroom floor,” she writes. But when she woke up, something had shifted. “I saw my old Bible peeking out from under my bed—the NKJV, tattered and dusty. I grabbed it. I didn’t know what to read, so I just flipped pages and asked God to lead me.”
She landed on Jeremiah 2: “I remember you, the kindness of your youth… when you went after Me in the wilderness.” It wrecked her. She wept, repented, and surrendered.

Her story begins in Omaha, Nebraska, in a home where faith was as constant as breath. Sunday services weren’t optional; they were woven into the rhythm of life. Yet as a teenager, one violent moment threatened to silence her forever. The assault didn’t just wound her body; it marked her spirit, layering her in shame and teaching her how to disappear in plain sight. “I carried it like a second skin,” she says quietly. “And I convinced myself that surviving was enough.”

Years later, when God began to call her into ministry, she didn’t run toward the light; she retreated further into the shadows. She built a respectable life, one that didn’t require her to risk her heart or her story. “I told God, ‘You’ve got the wrong woman.’ I didn’t feel qualified, and I didn’t want anyone looking too closely at me.” But the call persisted. Prophecies from strangers confirmed it. Doors opened when she wasn’t knocking. Eventually, she realized she wasn’t running from the work; she was running from herself.

Her turning point wasn’t a flash of certainty; it was a quiet, stubborn choice to trust God’s voice over her own fear. That yes led her to China, not as a tourist, but on assignment. She traded the predictable for a culture where every street was an untranslatable story and every day was a new lesson in courage. “I went from knowing exactly how my days would unfold to living in constant discovery,” she recalls. That leap became her proof that courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision to move while fear still lingers in the room.

Today, Dr. Parker spends her days standing beside women on the edge of their next chapter, guiding them through her Signature Move Framework. She helps them name the thing they were created to do, sharpen it, and bring it into the world with authority. “Your signature move is the gift people know you for,” she says. “It’s the part of you that carries impact wherever you go.” Her workshops are both strategic and soul-shaping, pairing clear steps with breakthroughs that sink deep enough to shift how a woman sees herself.

Two scriptures steady her journey. Jeremiah 29:11 reminds her that her future is intentional, not accidental. Ephesians 3:20 is so alive in her heart that she sets an alarm for 3:20 p.m. daily, a sacred reminder that God can do “immeasurably more” than she could ever imagine. “When you know you’re anointed for your assignment,” she says, “you stop asking if you’re ready and start asking, ‘What’s my next obedient step?’”

Her forthcoming book, Your Signature Move: Master Your Mindset, Maximize Your Presence and Multiply Your Impact, is more than a how-to. It’s an invitation for readers to step fully into who they were designed to be. “When you move in your purpose, you give others permission to move in theirs,” she says. “Legacy is not just what you leave; it’s who you lift while you’re still here.” For those still lingering at the threshold of their calling, she offers one final challenge: “You are already equipped. You have the power, love, and sound mind you need. Say yes. The world is waiting for the version of you only God could create.”

www.DeYonneParker.com