Every morning I wake up at least at hour and half earlier than necessary because the thought of getting to the orphanage and the ordeal it is. I lay, curled in bed, dreading it. By breakfast time, I can barely cram a slice of bread and jam down my throat because my stomach's already consumed, eaten up with nervous tangles.
I hate the walk to the orphanage. The roads in Huruma are slick with mud and I never seem to be able to catch my footing. We walk past butcheries the size of small warehouses and there are pig heads and goat heads piled on the side of the road. Their beheaded, skinned bodies and entrails, glistening in the morning sun, are dangling from the hands of butchers who stare at us in a way that makes me feel like another piece of meat. Jeers of "Chinese! Japanese! Korean! Ching chong! Ching chong!" are stinging slaps to my pride and even though I grimace my face into a smile and try to respond politely, my fists are always clenched. We always greet everyone we pass with a "Habari?" or "Salama." Sometimes we receive a friendly smile in return or a cheery wave, sometimes their eyes remain hard and distant.
My senses are over-assaulted--too many people, too many noises, too many smells--all crowding around me, and it makes me long for the liberation found in the unpolluted air and sprawling tea leaf fields in rural Sigowet. There, I could run and walk along open roads as I pleased. Here, everyday, I am a spectacle--and thus an outsider. And I don't like it. I don't like it at all.
But today I realized that God is teaching me to walk, more truly. To be able to walk in His freedom even when I slip in mud, even when mocked for my ethnicity, even when I feel trapped. To lay down my rights, as Paul spoke of in 1 Corinthians 9, to "endure all things so that we will cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ." I walk in blessed freedom from my own self and into His perfect Self.
The realization of this brought me to tears.
No comments:
Post a Comment