There once was a girl with short blonde hair and a name so common she always seemed to blend in. She liked it that way for a while but it wasn’t long before it got really lonely. She found herself longing to stand out and be different but she wanted it to be perfect. Perfectly different. Until she could find a way to be perfectly different she wouldn’t do a thing. She got so lonely searching for perfectly different that she wanted to give up, hold her breath and never come up for air. She wanted someone to tell her that her ideas were perfectly different so she wouldn’t feel so afraid and could finally do something and not be lonely anymore. So she thought it best to ask the other side of the screen. That way no one could see her deer-like eyes. Problem was, the other side of the screen told her lies, they told her they loved her kind of different as long as she obeyed and listened. She did so many unthinkable things to appease the unknown faces behind the screen so they would tell her she was uniquely flawless.
It wasn’t long before 2 men named guilt and shame kidnapped her and revealed how imperfectly strange and how isolated and insane she had become. Still searching for perfectly different she changed her hair and changed her clothes. She accessorized her body with red worded lines, etching on herself what people said and what she thought should be her truths: Ugly, fat, whore, evil, worthless. Maybe if they knew that she knew that she was who they said she was, she could be perfect and different after all. Maybe they’d at least want to talk to her.
A young man told her she was perfectly different as long as she did what he said. This time, though, she thought it must be true because he was part of reality. Many times she was trapped, cornered by fear, shame, guilt and him. Too many imaginary dark shadows for her to withstand, one of them real right before her. The only way out each time was to be stripped bare again or to be obedient to demeaning commands. She decided it was impossible to be unique and flawless after that. She decided it was best to fill herself with bottled, prescribed candies and let them do their sweet job but she hesitated. She stopped herself only because a child once told her she was who she always wanted to be and that child might make anything worth it.
It got too hard to carry so much water weight and her eyes turned to waterfalls as the truth finally started to pour out. At least someone knew that water weight was there now. When the dumping was done and the river was dry, living water came to fill her back up again as she traveled to a faraway land. She discovered that a man from long, long ago, had already made her perfectly different and she finally saw how. She had only heard of him all her life and believed to blend in and hide her war torn skin.
Now, she’s a girl with long, multi-colored hair and the name of that man inked artfully all over her skin. Black etches of life over the red words of death. Jesus loves her. Her name is ai melei, the water lily. The Jesus who loves her is not the one she always heard of in Sunday School as they taught from a rule book. The Jesus who loves her is the one they helped her find inside a beautiful storybook.
