Did it start when we were children? We were so young and vulnerable. We were placed in samll planes, flown 400 miles away from our parents to boarding school. Missionaries kid's (MK's we are called), placed in rooms with other children, lost and lonely, we wonder where Mommy and Daddy are.
(that's me on the right with the blue flowered dress)
I remember the dorm parents, we called them "Aunts" and "Uncles", they wouldn't let my brothers come and visit me when I so sick and in the infirmary. I remember going into hysterics, screaming and crying, throwing a fit - I just wanted to see my brothers, my family. I cried and cried and cried, so long and so hard, till exhausted, worn with broken heart, I finally fell asleep.
I remember when my sister flew back to Canada. I remember the airport. I remember the wire fence separating us. I remember the panic, the tears, the wailing coming from deep within. I remember my hands reaching out, I want, I want my sister....
Hot and steaming Africa, yet I am cold and alone. My parents are hundreds of miles away. My sister in Canada. My brothers though technically in the same place are denied to me when I really need them.
I remember my oldest brother, every Saturday would go to the tuck shop and buy me a "Mars" bar, bring it to me. A connection, a treasured memory.
(The whole family in Lagos, Nigeria - where my parents ran a guest house - there were some together times, but they were interspersed, often months apart - I think this may be just before my big sister left to go back to Canada.)
My parents must have stressed familial ties because as siblings, we are, for the most part, apart from a smattering of blow-ups, very close.
We come home from Africa, stay in Canada.
But the marks are there engraved into the warp and woof of who we become as adults.
Is it also the sorrows of our lifetimes too, through teen years, schooling, marriages, children? Have our lives written as all humanity, with tragedy and trial, carved this anxiety, this grief we so often carry with us, is it in the very landscape of our personalities mapped out in our bodies?
We have collectively born so many losses.
Did we unintentionally pass this anxious sorrowing through bloodlines to our children? They suffer too in many ways.
Sometimes the adversities of our families, both brothers, my sister, and myself, are crushing, even seem insurmountable. We have traveled journeys and do travel journeys dark and long. We watch our children, mostly adults now, they too have journeys. We watch with anguish as they traverse their own trials. We watch them trip, stumble and fall flat on faces. Sometimes they get up and carry on and this is good and right. Sometimes they are halted, trapped in their stories and as yet unable to find a way out or beyond. We watch their successes too and are glad.
We celebrate our joys, oh yes, we revel in gifts of time untroubled. We have laughed and we have danced and we have twirled in delight. And, frankly, I wish there were more of this.
We find ways to enjoy life even in dark days, but to me, sometimes it feels like there are shadows that hang in the background, like clouds threatening storms on a sunny day.
Would that heredity only pass along the wondrous character traits. Only the ones that we like to brag about when we are talking about those we love.
Yet, we do learn from all these bents in personality that shade the hue of our days - black, blue, rose-colored or yellow, sometimes bright or bleak, sometimes laughter filled and sunny. We can find the help we need if look for it, ask for it.
We are not ourselves imprisoned or at any rate do not have to be. Heredity or no, we can change. To change - it takes perseverance, determination and baby-step by baby-step we can make the adjustments that will bring us greater peace of mind and strength of character. It is a struggle, often long and arduous but it is a work I can begin and have indeed begun. Some days I tire of it though, and honestly, some days, it just seems too much.
But I think of the words of Jesus when He went into the temple and when He opened the scroll -
" the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him." Luke 4:17-20
This is what He came to do, to proclaim good news, freedom and recovery and to set the oppressed loose.
When I am bound up with fear and anxiety, when I am tired and do not feel like I can go on, when I am oppressed with the worries of today and tomorrow, when I fret over my children, what can I do? I can fasten my eyes upon Jesus. I can remember that He came to set the captives, the oppressed, free, and that means me too.
"When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul." Psalm 94:19
So this is what I will do today, I'll turn my eyes upon Jesus, fasten them there, and look full in His wonderful face...
"O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!
Refrain:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace."
http://youtu.be/nA2VpysAvgk
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