Healing Song

~ Phleng Cheate, Khmer Rouge’s
national anthem

After a civil war victory over Lon
Nol’s government in April 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge took the
capital of Phnom Penh and forced everyone out of all the cities in
Cambodia. Armed with communism’s ideals of fairness and equality,
the Khmer Rouge sought to create an agrarian society without
education or Western thinking influences. They killed anyone
associated with Lon Nol’s government or military, educated people,
teachers, doctors, corrupted by western thinking. In addition, they
killed religious people including Buddhist monks and 90% of
Christians. In years prior, the major political leaders of Pol Pot’s
Khmer Rouge studied in France and discovered communism. While the
practice of Chinese communism appealed to the Khmer Rouge, it seemed
insufficient to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, who wanted to take
communism even further. On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese troops took
control of Phnom Penh and the government. By the end of the Khmer
Rouge rule, as many as two million people died, 1/3 of Cambodia’s
population.

 

Cambodian schools do not teach the
holocaust and genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The older generation
rarely speaks of the horrors they’ve experienced in the killing
fields. Still mass graves throughout Cambodia’s killing fields,
undetonated landmines dotting the countryside, and S21 remain a
memorial to the devastation of the Khmer Rouge. Only thirty years
later, Cambodia tries to forget its embarrassing past while films
like the Killing Fields and books like Children of the
River do not let us forget the inhumanity of genocide and remind
us of the preciousness of life.

 

Psychology tells us that healing from
traumatic experiences requires an integration of emotions, thoughts
and memories, through retelling the stories and making meaning of
those stories. While this is an important step in healing it is
insufficient. As I’ve recently experienced in my own life, healing,
true healing, comes not only from a psychological integration, but
even more from a complete surrender and release of past
disappointments, frustrations, tragedies, sorrow, grief, and pain to
the one who treasures my every tear and hears my silent cries.
Despite my circumstances and my earthly experiences, I stand arms
wide and heart abandoned in worship to God for His unchanging
character and unfailing love. Healing says God is good even when I
don’t understand and don’t like what is happening around me. Healing
sings I love you, Lord for
the first time in fourteen years. Healing forgives and hopes for
renewal. Healing says not in my timing but Yours, not my wisdom but
Yours. Healing claims the promises of God even when I don’t feel
like it.

God did not intend for earth to be
ridden with corruption, pain, disease, death, and fear. No, God
despises these things. Earth is only a temporary place for imperfect
people, flawed by sinful and deviant thoughts, desires, and
intentions. I look forward to the day when I will be completely
healed – when God’s glory will radiate upon me, when there will be
no more sorrow, no more pain, when things of this earth will fade in
comparison to the overwhelming love of God and the joy I experience
in His presence.

 

 

 

 

 

~Love is Here, my anthem