eSwatini has been a month of redemption. It’s been a month where God has taken brokenness from my past and made me whole. It’s been a month of Him interweaving my insecurities and weaknesses to make a tapestry of beauty. It’s been a month of letting go and stepping into freedom.
Growing up I struggled with figuring out who I was. Not in the sense of my personal identity, but in terms of my citizenship and ethnicity. I’m Egyptian, my parents are Egyptian, their parents were Egyptian, but I was the first of our family to be born in Canada. I also happen to be the one born with the lightest skin, the lightest eyes, and the lightest hair.
I grew up in a small town where just about everybody but my family was white, and while I felt a little different from them, I totally felt like I fit in. They were my friends and nothing really differentiated us – not my eye colour, or hair colour, or skin colour. My issue was that I felt like something should differentiate us. I was from a different county with a different culture, different foods, different looks. But the fact that so little was different between us made me feel like I was white when I should have been Egyptian and when I felt myself to be Egyptian.
Then whenever we would go home to visit our family in Cairo, I would get constant comments of “why do you look so white?”, “you’re so Canadian”, and the like. While I would go in with the hope of feeling Egyptian – feeling like who I was – I would leave more confused about who I was.
So, for the majority of my life I struggled with who I am, but specifically with the colour of my own skin. I thought to myself “if my skin was darker people would think I was Egyptian”, and if people thought I was Egyptian I would finally feel like myself.
The things I hated most about myself were my hands. I would look down at my pinkish white palms and cringe – they looked white. No matter how tanned I got, my palms were a frustrating reminder that I would never be who I thought I was. I would never look Egyptian, so I would never fully be Egyptian.
Since then, God has totally taken me in His arms and reminded me that I’m not a citizen of Canada or of Egypt, but instead I actually get to call Heaven my home. And maybe that’s part of why I’ve found so much comfort and excitement in finally getting to be there with Jesus.
But the other day as I hung out with Him I found myself staring down at my palms, not really thinking about my identity or citizenship, but just looking. Just then I heard God say “look at your hands”. I thought to myself “God, I am looking..?”
“Look at your hands. Look past the colour.”
As I examined my hands I began to see the thousands of intricately placed lines that compiled them.
“Every line there, I sowed them together. I know every line. Each is just me saying ‘I love you’.”
I sat there, palms up, staring at my hands, examining every crevice and the deep layers of lines in my hands.
“The layers of those lines are the layers of my love for you. Don’t look at them with hate, just look and see my love.”
Within a moment, God took the one thing I hated most about myself and redeemed it to be a constant reminder of His love for me. When I look at my hands, no longer do I see a confused identity, but I see the time and effort and beauty of my created being. I see that He made me just as He wanted me, and He loves me just as I am – look at all the lines to prove it.
As I took in all that He was saying my mind went to a song by one of my very favourite artists called Hands. The chorus says this:
Hold gently what you wish to grow old with, like a sparrow in your hand still needs to fly. Hold gently what you wish to grow old with. Don’t close those hands
“Farrah, what are you holding onto with closed hands?”
“Well, I guess maybe Heaven”
“You’re holding onto Heaven so tightly your hands are closed. If they’re closed you can’t open them to see the lines of my love for you. Don’t close those hands. Let them be a constant reminder of my love for you, of that which is to come, but also of where you are right now.”
I felt free.
As dearly as I love Heaven and cannot wait to be there, in that moment I felt the freedom to love where I am too.
Heaven is still mine to hold, it’s not that it’s any less mine because I hold it with an open hand, it’s just that I now get to see His love for me here too, underlying that gift.
eSwatini has been a month of redemption.
It’s been a month where God has taken brokenness from my past and made me whole. It’s been a month of Him interweaving my insecurities and weaknesses to make a tapestry of beauty. It’s been a month of letting go and stepping into freedom.
