YESTERDAY is HISTORY...TOMORROW is a MISTERY...TODAY is a GIFT (AND THAT'S WHY THEY CALL IT THE PRESENT)
It’s icy cold.
The ghostly eco’s of our footsteps are the only sound accompanying us into the wards of an institution in Zimbabwe. The gray corridors are home to over 300 spiritually disturbed patients.
As we walk closer and closer to where the patients are kept, I feel the definite presence of change. After today, I will never be the same.
Of this I am strangely certain.
The hollow silence retreat to make room for the moaning and complaining of sadness and desperation...a weird kind of unknown loneliness that softly wails...
It presses in on the very core of my soul...
In my mind I am standing in front of the thrown of the Almighty Father asking:
Why God? Why do you want me to see something I cannot change?
A familiar voice surfaces from my memory.
“What drives the choices you make?”
My eye catches a man sitting next to what appears to be his wife. She hugs herself while swaying back and forward. Her face is blank. Tears shining in his eyes.
My thoughts travel...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sitting on the kitchen counter. Swinging my legs.
It’s about 10 PM but the rest of the outreach team is already asleep. It’s been an exhausting day; guys working on the roof, ladies helping out at a nearby old age home. Still I’m not ready to sleep...my mind is still racing around. I keep staring at the red and black checker floor, drawing the outlines of the squares with my eyes...
The little blocks are like little boxes...
(When we were little we always played a game where we were not allowed to touch the lines with our feet...stay in the lines...those were the rules.)
Walking up and down with your hands behind your back like a professor.
“What do you do with the feelings God placed in your heart?”
“What are the choices you make?”
Little blocks...little boxes...stay in the lines...
Choice. Chance. Choke.
I’m scared to take chances. It’s a risky business.
You pause, as if waiting for me to say something...
“What do you think of my theory?”
I can’t answer...
Little blocks...little boxes...who drew the lines?
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The shrieking and howling of an animal fills the hallway of the institution and snaps me out of my own thoughts...
But, it’s not an animal making the vicious sounds...
It’s a child.
The little boy’s lips quiver constantly as if he is very cold...he scratches in frantic protest at the bandages around his wrists, where the stitches keep everything in place. The boy howls again...he is the size of a seven year old but his face is distorted with lines and twists like a person of 120...Smeagle? I wait for him to mutter “my precious” but he doesn’t.
I don’t want to look, but I can’t help but stare...
This is a human being...
How did this happen?
Why this little boy and not me?
Why God? Why do you want to agonize me with situations I cannot solve?
Why am I seeing this?
“Be true to yourself...”
“Stop running away...”
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“Being true to yourself...”
You break the silence, when I don’t say anything...
I quickly glance up, accidently catch the deepness...
I see too much...I understand too little...
Just look away...
Risk. Pain. Fear.
little blocks...little boxes...stay inside the lines...
It’s easier to stay silent...
It’s easier to ignore...
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A train of four woman walk by our group.
They seem as if in a drug trace, like Hypnotised zombies....slow even movements, dead expressions...It’s the drugs. Drugs they have to drink to keep them from being violent, from acting out the pain and imbalance they feel...Drugs that keep them empty.
Empty nothingness...
They’ve lost their choice...
No choice...
No chance...
Hell...
Into another room we walk, a woman jumps up and down up and down, no standing still, up and down...when she sees us, she runs to the corner and hides her face...
She runs and hides.
Run and hide.
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Last year, I was reading the book of Deuteronomy and I came across a piece of scripture where God was giving the Israelites a choice.
Deuteronomy 30:19
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live...
God gives us a choice.
Everyday.
In every situation.
The choice to take chances and live.
Or to be scared and never live...
He emphasises...choose life!!! So that you may live!!!
Still after God spoke these words so clearly to them they chose to be fearful and to complain...
To be senseless...
To run and hide...
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In that place. That cold lonely mental institution slam dunk in the middle of Buluwayo, Zimbabwe, where the patients have to sleep on the icy cold floor with a single blanket, because they don’t have enough funding, where there are no working toilets, only pee pots lined next to where those people have to sleep, where they have no hot water, only icy cold, where they have to be kept heavily drugged, because they don’t have the necessary staff for therapy, where they have nothing to do all day but wander around, where they have lost their dignity, where they have lost their choice, those people who will most likely never ever be able to really live and laugh and love...
I realised how I still run and hide...
Even when I am capable of so much more...
I choose to stay drugged and senseless and empty because it’s safer...
I choose to do nothing with the chances and feelings God himself placed in my heart...
Because then, I cannot hurt...
Because in LA-LA land there exists no risks...
Fear is a drug...
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You jump onto the kitchen counter next to me.
Chatting away about your theory.
Although I love listening to you when you talk, I can’t hear what you are saying because of my own loud thoughts...
Being true to myself is so risky...
Choosing to live can hurt so deeply...
I’m so freaking scared...
And then,
A whisper in my heart. Directed to my soul.
“Trust Me My daughter...remember the cross”
Huh, ummm, God? Was that You? I silently call...a bit shocked coz I heard Him so clearly...
“Remember the cross”
My mind clicks to the cross, to Jesus choosing to die so that I can live...to Good Friday, the day we celebrate and remember the cross...remember...
I get it!!!
Remember the cross, damn, I remember Good Friday...
(and all this happens while you are still talking)
Slowly illogical peace fills my being...
The peace that surpasses all understanding...
Choosing to live is risky...
Choosing not to run and hide can be painful...
(Your eyes reveal a lot about you, even when you’re trying to hide...did you know?)
Peacefulness...
I don’t wanna run away anymore...even though I have no idea what’s going to happen...even though I don’t know how this story will end...
“I’m tired,” you say “think it’s time I go to sleep.”
I jump off the kitchen counter,
Little blocks...little boxes...oopz, my feet touched the lines...
But it’s okay...I’m gonna choose life...
BECAUSE I CAN
