From MATTHEW 15:21-28
I am so tired. I don’t think I can last
another day. I want to just walk away
from it all. I want to leave my home, this
house that I have come to love, the friends that I have made; and even my
child.
My ONLY child. My once-sweet daughter. My beautiful child was such a joy to me from
the moment she was born. But now, (sigh) now I cannot look at her without
wanting to cry.
I don’t know why the life that I loved so
very much was taken from me. I was a
good girl growing up. As a young girl, I did everything my nurse told me to
do. I was quiet and respectful and
learned how to do everything the eldest daughter of my father’s household was
expected to do. I obeyed my father when
he announced that he had promised me wed to my husband before I saw my
fourteenth year.
I was
a good wife to my husband; who I grew to care for deeply. I learned to manage
his household, eventually finding the courage to control the servants. Even the
servants who had been with my husband’s family for years. Some of them older than my own mother and
father. My husband was good to me, though I never gave him the son he
deserved. He was not an easy man, but he
was never cruel to me. Not like some of the other men who live nearby. We would hear the cries of their wives and
servants as they beat, or did even worse things to them late at night. When I was young, he would tell me that the
screams we heard were the wolves crying in the wilderness. Years later, when he
knew that I understood what was happening, he would curl himself around me,
holding me in his strong, safe arms and whisper, “Never in my house.” Over and
over again into my tangled hair. His
breath warming the chill of shame that ran down my spine as I cried for those
women whose lives were a nightmare compared to mine. I think he was declaring
it for both of us.
And then suddenly, when our daughter was almost
ten years old; all of the things that I worked so hard for were stripped away. Leaving me with just the bare bones of the
life I’d had. My husband, taken by fever,
leaving me with no male relatives to support and protect us. Forcing me to learn how to do so many things
that I never imagined had to be done. Some of our servants stayed, out of
loyalty to my husband, who was the last male in his line. I spent many weeks in
fear, thinking that one of the evil husbands from nearby would simply come and
claim me and my daughter as possessions, owed to pay some imagined debt. I prayed to all of gods I could think
of. I took offerings and made secret
vows to the gods who are never spoken of out loud.
We were left alone. I thought we were safe, and then one night,
after the watchman had passed by the gate leading to our courtyard, my daughter
began to shriek and tear at her bedclothes.
Scratches covered her face and this horrid voice spewed venom from
her. She used words that I only heard the
unwashed and unwanted speak from outside the city walls. The wise men from the temple came to see what
was wrong. They left right away, running out of my home, shouting that she had
been cursed; she was overcome with evil.
It distorts her lovely features, hiding all signs of my much-loved
daughter. She spends hours sitting
hunched in a corner, spitting and staring at me as if she no longer knows who I
am.
Her eyes were once so beautiful, just like
her father’s. Dark and deep and filled
with laughter. They twinkled like jewels or stars at midnight. I used to sit holding her for hours, drinking
in her joy and innocence and sweetness. Now her eyes are red-rimmed and runny with a
sticky film that smells of death. Their clarity lost, the whites now yellowed
like an old rabid dog. She grunts and
pants as if she were one.
No one will help me anymore. When I was first widowed, there were some good
people from the temple who would bring us food and small gifts, offering
comfort to us. But gradually they all
stopped coming; and began to avoid me in the marketplace; pulling further and
further away from us as the sweetness that had been my girl’s true self was
consumed by this vile and evil thing.
Our gardens were ruined, flowers uprooted,
fruit trees ripped apart, fountains cracked and filled with filmy, putrid
water. So many lovely items that my
husband purchased for our home were broken and turned into weapons to attack
anyone who tried to help her.
She shouts at me and sometimes hits me; but
seems to know that I am the only one who will not really harm her. I no longer know what day it is, or if I can
continue to love any part of this creature that is controlling my life.
Oh, how I have cried and prayed and given
nearly all I own as offerings to those who have promised to cure her. The ones
who said they would break this curse that had befallen us. All have failed. There is nothing more to be done. No one and nothing that I know of will help
us now.
So last night, after my tortured girl was
finally allowed to sleep the restless sleep that has become the only time she
is not a danger to herself; I decided to seek the one the people talk
about. The Healer from Nazareth. The Man who had drawn so many to Him.
There is nothing else to be done. I know that she – and I cannot last another
day like today.
I MUST FIND HIM! I MUST MAKE HIM HEAR ME!
I MUST DO EVERYTHING I CAN TO SAVE MY CHILD!
Written by
Lynda Kinnard
