2022 The Unleashed Voice Magazine Rise up Issue

NAPOLOGETIC

Dr. Lakara Foster

Unapologetically pioneering a new path, shifting perspectives, and creating conversations around what it means to be a Christian Minister and a Psychic Medium.

Check out more from Dr. Lakara Foster:

LakaraWithTheGift.com

Dr. Lakara Foster

Stylist/Designer August Brandon, Photographer Reaux Woods, Videographer Erykah Morris, Makeup Bob Maddox

Raised in New Orleans, Dr. Lakara Foster offers healing and insight as a psychic medium, minister, and author. She ministers at Vision Church of Atlanta, owns a spiritual gift shop called Lakara with the Gift in Atlanta, Georgia and hosts a YouTube series entitled The Gift.

Q: What have you come to understand as the reason for your gift of mediumship?

A: As a medium, I can connect people to their departed loved ones and bring messages of healing, closure, and peace. Many people who seek my services are suffering from grief and that grief can steal years off their lives. When people lose loved ones, they sometimes get angry with God. I have found that mediumship is a healing tool that has helped people to find their way back to God. Ultimately, they desire to know that their loved ones are okay and the personal messages they receive let them know that they are okay and even though they are no longer here physically, their souls are still among us. I’ve worked with quite a few people who’ve lost loved ones to COVID and are mourning that they didn’t get to bury the physical body. I explain to them what Spirit has helped me to understand and that is that Spirit has no connection to the physical body once it transitions from the earth realm. The body can be buried or cremated but the soul lives on and is now there to guide and protect. When people know that then they can shift in their understanding of death.

I don’t even like to use the word death because I understand that there is no end. I start every reading by explaining, “I’m not talking to dead people, because there is no such thing as dead.” I use the word transition because we simply change form. I’ve researched both quantum physics and metaphysics, so I know that we are energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed. It’s just continuing. We are energy before we enter these bodies, while we are in these

bodies, and when we depart from these bodies and departing is an inevitability. We’re all going to do it and when that time comes, it doesn’t matter if we are seven months or seventy years old, when the soul’s mission is complete, the soul transitions from the physical body. But the soul, the spirit, lives on.

I believe the gifts we divinely receive are the ones that we agree to operate in even before we enter these physical bodies. I also believe that God only gives us the gifts that God can trust us with. When I asked God why I had been given the gift of psychic mediumship, God spoke to me saying, “I promised my people eternal life. How will they know I’ve kept my promise if the medium doesn’t demonstrate the gift?” These gifts are primarily for us to serve others, assist them with finding their purpose, and to elevate humanity. God wants to use all of us, but so many people are stuck in their grief. So, for me being assigned a medium is God saying, “Hey, we’ve got to help them get unstuck because they have to complete the divine assignment.” I am helping people to understand we all have signed a spiritual contract before we get into these physical bodies, and we don’t know when that contract is going to expire. But we know that it will because the scripture tells us that none of us know the day or the hour, but we all know that day will come. But until that final day, our job, our mission is to live life and love to the absolute fullest. We are supposed to experience heaven on earth because Spirit has told me that we don’t have to die to get to heaven. We can have it right here.

Q: How did you first become aware of your gift?

A: One of my earliest memories of this gift of mediumship, which I didn’t realize was unusual at the time, was being at a funeral for my mom’s aunt when I was three years old. I saw the casket, so I was very clear that the body was in the casket. But I was also very clear that my mom’s aunt was sitting there among them. I thought to myself, “Oh, this is cool…You get to go to your own funeral when you die,” not realizing that no one else was experiencing the presence of spirit.

Another early memory I have is getting the daily newspaper, dividing it up, and giving everyone their favorite section. My brother would get the sports section. My mom read the cover stories. And oddly enough, I would grab both the comics and the obituaries. As I read these obituaries, I could feel the departed person there with me and while obits never tell you how people passed, usually just about their life, I always knew how the person transitioned and other things that were not listed in the newspaper. I never talked about these experiences because they didn’t feel foreign or warranted any intervention. I honestly thought this is what everyone experienced.

It wasn’t until college that I realized everyone was not having these same spiritual encounters. During my freshman year, a friend of mine was

COVER STORY |

9