I gave all I loved

"Did you know that a flower cut from it's life source withers?" December 2011

I know that you forgot.
You forgot I blotted out your transgressions
You forgot I stopped the curse from spreading,
You forgot I stemmed the shedding of your blood
and instead, shed that of myself, clothed in flesh.
You forgot I drank your iniquity like water
that I led my Son as a lamb to the slaughter
that I gave all I loved, to make you my daughter.

You forgot my pain and only saw it as your gain
to use your freedom in half-hearted struggles
and apathetic intentions. Bound by conventions
and the inventions of men, you forgot
my promises, your place, and my loyalty to you.

Your poverty and my royalty were exchanged
on that day, where I asked you to lay
your own crown of ashes aside
and to wear the crown of my flawless bride.
Did you forget?
You betray your allegiance to me in the words
that you don’t speak, in your conscious silence,
in sighs of discontent, in empty whispers.
Did you know a flower cut from its life-source withers?

You forgot that I don’t measure your obedience
or your diligence in fears and dreams,
in the unseen and seen.
I don’t measure your adherence to law
in words or in deeds, in fruit or in seed.
I don’t measure your penitence
with scales, or your negligence
in black marks and fails.

I measured it on that day, between nails
and innocence, between the harmless
hands of the one Hailed as King.
On that day when
pain lost its power and death lost its sting
on that day when the mourners could sing
and the flightless birds grew wings
and the lame and the cripples had spring
in their step,
and the your rebellion was intercepted
and your unrighteousness was swept
from my presence.
This is love, the core of my essence.

But you forgot how to love. You forgot
how to limitlessly give, and simply live
you forgot how to seek justice for the poor
you forgot how to give but just stored
wealth for yourself.
You forgot how to bless your enemies
and pray with surrender on your knees
You forgot I carry your burdens with ease
and that I do not change if you disagree.

You forgot why you were made to live in the light
You’ve crept towards the shadows of night
because you
forgot the power and strength of the Spirit
and you tried and strived in your own merit.
You forgot the beauty of my grace without walls
or the majesty of my mercy without laws
so you thought you were in control
and that life was your own to worship.
You didn’t call on my name and your shame
overcame you. But not me.

You forget the present, resenting that you
You live in the past, forgetting every fresh
start I give you and every lesson I teach you.
I beseech you, reach back to me.
The I AM, who will always BE.
For now

I am not asking you to change
But I am asking you to remember.

Mercy

-An imaginary letter to a real girl.South Sudan, 2011

To a uniquely beautiful girl, who taught me so many things in a very short time,

Our lives are so different, more different than I think you will ever be able to realise. For the majority of my 21 years of living, my life has been comfortable, for your 11 years I think the opposite is the case. I know my own name, and you are unsure of yours. I know what it is to feel safe, but I think your view of being safe is from the inside of a cardboard box, or eating rotten vegetables on the side of a dirty road.I am well fed and healthy, and up until a few weeks ago you were malnourished and slowly dying.

I am from a country that claims to care and provide for its people but you are from the newest country on earth, but its a country still gripped in oppression and corruption, stained by years of war and genocide. Your country, Southern Sudan, is like a seed struggling to grow in its own soil, but there are things in the soil that are poisoning its roots. Everyone rejoiced at the planting of the seed, it promised so much, it looked like the fruit from its branches would feed its people. But it is being suffocated by outsiders thinking they know best and insiders betraying each other. Everyone is trying to hard to preserve that precious seed, and to see a bright green shoot emerge from the dust. I can see it in people’s eyes in the streets-a desperation that longs to see the shoot burst forth soon, soon, soon. Your brothers think ethnic war will cause the soil to dry up, your sisters remain hopeful of growth. In my country the seed has deep roots that haven’t always grown in clean soil, it has often been suffocated by insiders thinking they know best and outsiders being ignored. My country is mostly healthy, in comparison to yours, but I still refuse to eat some of its fruit. You will learn throughout your life, sweet Mercy, that to be different is a very good thing.

Our bodies are different from each other. You are short I am tall. You are dark, darker than most of your friends, I am fair, fairer than most of my friends. My arms are both the same length but your left arm is shorter than your right arm. They say your arm was broken and not fixed so the bone just fused together. Your small beautiful body is covered in scars, and there is a scar that I don’t like to look at that covers the part of your chest where your heart is. Your leg is covered in wounds where people have beaten you, and in fact one of the 4 words you know, and say again and again is “Tso!”-Stick, in Juba-Arabic. My legs run fast for fun, your legs run fast because they have had to.

They found you on the streets and the market ladies said you were crazy. The market vendors probably told the Aunties not to bother with you. But the Aunties did, and with their own Rescuer guiding them, they saved you from those streets. They think you are “autistic”, which is a label in our country for people who are different, or people who have minds that are gifted to think in a certain way. You hold your neck when you speak, and my Mum who used to be a speech-therapist, later explained to me, that its probably because it comforts you to feel your own voice vibrating against your fingers. You love to touch things. We loved drawing together, but you preferred to watch me draw, while you touched the crayons. You lined them up depending on how smooth or pointy their tips were. The only colours you wanted to draw with were white and purple, but the white didn’t show up on the paper, and it made us both laugh, but you still drew and drew with white.

Somehow our minds work the same way. I only like to speak when I want to, and I am thoughtful like you. Our thoughts don’t always make sense to the world around us, and we are often misunderstood. We both love colour and shapes and could be quite content with sitting on a mat arranging nuts into patterns for hours, or sifting dusty sand through our fingers. We find it difficult to communicate what we are truly thinking alot of the time, but now, we have people around us who want to understand us.

You as an 11-year old girl know that your imagination is powerful, you are reminded all the time by your new family, that you are an anomaly because of the way your mind works. I have only just learnt, at 21, that having a mind that works differently is a good thing. It is Mercy, I promise. You will learn this. Your imagination has probably been useful growing up on the streets, you have probably created own worlds inside your head, worlds of unselfish love and kindness, worlds where you can truly be yourself, and you aren’t treated with injustice, and where pain doesn’t exist. I used to create those worlds as a child, but God has taught me as an adult that there is a place where those dreams are a reality, and He is the only one who can get us there, we can’t get there on our own.

You call everyone around you “Mama, Mama”-its your second out of four words. I think its because your own Mama left you as soon as she saw you were different to other children. You love eating in your new safe place, because food was witheld from you for so much of your life. Let me explain something to you, my darling friend. I have never had nothing to eat,I have never been cursed by a witch-doctor, I have never been hit out of anger, I have never been raped, and watching you makes me somehow hate. It makes me hate those who have hurt you, and hate myself for having everything that you have never had, or having things you once had but had taken from you. Why you and not me? Or why me and not you?

I love watching you eat because you enjoy each mouthful, you have known what it is to be starving. You challenge me to enjoy each mouthful of food before me, infact you challenge me in so many ways. I love watching you dance because your shorter-arm bounces around and your legs cant walk in a straight line but you don’t care what other people think. I love that though you have been hurt so much, you can still dance. I love having hugs from you, you saw me each morning, cried “Mama!” and shuffle-reversed into me and wrapped your arms around my waist, it was the clumsiest hug in the world but it was best start to each day. I could hear you speak your four word vocabulary over and over again and still smile as if I was suprised with you when you point and say “What?” in your language, at something every ten minutes. I try and explain what it is to you that you point and you listen well but you don’t understand, this makes us laugh too. You have the most incredible mischievous smile and your laugh makes me laugh, and my laugh makes you laugh.

I was born into a family that loves me and a society that protects me. I was taught that we are weak but God is strong, and Jesus longs for us to know Him because he doesn’t want us to die all alone. But I think you, Mercy, were conceived in sin, deceit and shame. You have been taught to be strong because others are weak, and God doesn’t care. You probably don’t fully know who Jesus is yet, but somehow, He was next to you, when you felt alone, He never wants to you be alone again, He was even there when the aunties rescued you a few weeks ago. Because of how people have treated you in your short-life you may think that you are valueless, but you are the most valuable thing in the world.

I knew you for one week. Seven days. I know it was God’s plan that we met, I just know it. You taught me more than many people have taught me in my whole life. One day, I hope to see you in that place where your most hopeful imaginings are a truthful reality, ruled over by a perfect God. Yes it does exist-trust me.

Thank you for everything you gave me.