I walked out of the gates of Moria for the last time, my eyes burning with tears underneath my sunglasses. I couldn’t look at or talk to anyone, and for the hour long car ride home I stared out the window, trying to process what had just happened.
It started earlier in the day, when I was out taking clothing orders from tent to tent. I had a sheet of paper I would hold up, and people would point to the articles of clothing they wanted. At one tent, a Pakistani guy in his mid twenties gently grabbed my arm and pointed to the scars on it, and said something in his own tongue that I didn’t understand. I quickly became embarrassed and pulled my sleeves down as he just looked deeply into my eyes, pulled up his sleeve, and pointed to his. He put his hand back on my wrist and looked at me, and although we couldn’t understand each other, we didn’t need words to understand this.
twelve years ago
I was twelve the first time I ever cut myself. I didn’t even understand why I was doing it at first, all I knew was until that point I didn’t know someone could feel such immense heartache and yet feel completely numb at the exact same time. It became an expression of my pain and self hatred, the way I coped, and a method to feel anything, anything at all rather than the pain that was going on inside of me.
I always tried to cover it up, to hide it, but as the years went on, wearing hoodies in the heat and wrist sweat bands all the time gave it away, and it was the one thing in my small town that I knew everyone knew about me. There were many times that I was confronted about it by peers or other students, but no one could get through to me, no one understood. It had a hold on me, and I was far from alone, a lot of people I knew struggled with it. I know that this can be a difficult and uncomfortable topic; some people will understand completely, some will think it is absolutly crazy, and some just can’t relate. All of those are okay.
It’s been almost six years now since God freed me from it, and although at the time I developed other addictions that replaced it, the scars have been a symbol of the healing God is capable of doing. With that being said, it’s not something that I am proud of, its something that I am self conscious of when I notice other people noticing. The second I see someones eyes wander to it I just assume that they assume the worst of me.
How do explain that part of your life when someone notices it on a first date, or when you are pouring a drink for them while bartending, or when you are giving them treatments at the hospital?
clothes and frustrations
As the day progressed I started getting frustrated, I couldn’t make the refugees understand that the reason it was taking them so long to get clothes was because people kept coming up and interrupting me from other sections trying to put in an order instead of letting me get the section I was doing done so I could make it to them. But even with that, it would take weeks to get to every single tent in the camp, not to mention that new people were arriving all the time and tents were being constantly moved around. The system just didn’t work, and their frustration with me made me frustrated with myself and their situation, because I wanted so badly to help all of them, but I was the person that had to say no, I was the person that became just another added disappointment to their day. It didn’t matter how many people I did help and was able to get clothes to, because there was still that resounding number of people that I couldn’t help.
At one point a pregnant lady whose tent I had to move a few weeks prior saw me delivering clothes and came up and started yelling at me, telling me I only cared about the Pakistanis, Irani’s, and not the Syrians. Telling me all that we had to say to everything was “Im sorry,” that we weren’t actually doing anything for them. I could feel myself getting angry, she was taking it all out on the wrong people, but thats when I saw her arm… covered in cuts. She was living in a place she couldn’t stand to live while caring another life inside of her. She didn’t have the freedom to yell at anyone else, she was in pain. My teammate and I put together a bag and she delivered it to her.
it isn’t enough
At the end of the day I went to go visit a friend for the last time when her family invited me into their housing unit and gave me tea to drink. They talked about the riot that had happened the night before. Her mother was in the unit alone as rocks struck the outside and put cracks in it. She said she felt like she was in Syria again, when the rockets would hit the buildings. Her family thanked me for all that we had done and hugged me goodbye.
I feel like I have done nothing God, it isn’t enough.
I went into the bathroom stall in a desperate attempt to compose myself.
God how am I supposed to leave these people behind!?
One by one our friends found us to say goodbye. I could feel it all boiling to the surface… it was past time to go.
the hardest goodbye
I started walking to the entrance alone, when I saw another friend. I had seen him earlier that day walking around with a bandage on his arm, and he had avoided answering me when I asked him what had happened. So here he was again, hugging me goodbye. I held his arm in my hands and asked what had really happened, I asked if he had been in the riot last night. He said no, he would never be apart of that. He said, “All my friends are leaving me.” I told him, “We don’t want to, none of us want to go, but we don’t have a choice.” He said, “You do have a choice, if you really wanted to stay you would.” I told him it wasn’t that simple, that we were sad to leave.
He then grabbed my arm, slowly rubbing his finger over the scars from long ago. Tears swelled in his eyes and he said, “I’ll show you because you can understand.” My stomach dropped as he unrolled the bandage… what I saw being forever engraved in my memory. I couldn’t hold the tears in any longer… they were streaming down my face as I wrapped his arm back up. Quietly I whispered why. He said, “I cannot live here! I cannot live like this! I have lost everything and now I am losing you guys too.”
I looked deep into his eyes, tears streaming down both our faces and said, “I know what this kind of pain feels like, I know what it is like to not want to live another day, to feel trapped, to feel hopeless, but your life does not end here! You have to find the strength in something greater than yourself to keep pushing on! You were created for more than this!” I held him as he was weeping, and whispered, “We are leaving but you are not losing us. If you care about us at all you cannot hurt yourself after we leave, because we love you and we care for you and leaving you is breaking our hearts.”
I raised up my own arm, “This, this does not solve anything, it only hurts you even more!” He wiped my tears and said, “Don’t cry for me I didn’t mean to make you cry.” I replied, “I am crying because I care, because I want to make you understand how much you are cared for! The greatest revenge you can have on the people you have run from, on the people who do not want you alive, is to keep living. There will be better days, you just have to push through this. I will always think of you, and you will be missed greatly, but I know that my God has you in his hands.”
He took my hand, tears streaming down his face, and choked out a thank you. He asked for a bracelet of mine for him to keep, so I took off my favorite one, put it on his hurt wrist and said, “Anytime you feel the urge, you look at this and remember that you are loved and cared for, and you find the strength to resist.” We hugged, and I walked out the gates of Moria for the last time.
a fathers love and faithfulness
I may not always understand God, but what He taught me in Greece is that He is good, He loves me, and He loves you. I know that twelve years ago when I hurt myself for the first time, He was right there crying with me, holding me in His arms saying I know you don’t think I am here, but I am and I love you, and I will never stop pursuing you, and one day you will find me again, and I will use even this for my glory. In twelve years your path will lead you to a refugee camp, and just as I am here hugging you now, you will be hugging someone who is feeling then what you are feeling now, and I will use you as my arms around them, because I created you for so much more, and I will turn your scars into something relatable and beautiful.
I don’t know if I have ever truly understood God’s love and faithfulness until that moment. As much as I hurt for them, He hurts for them even more. As much as I love them, He loves them even more. Every ounce of heartache I have felt, He has felt it too. I am only one person, and He is unfathomable. He has seen the darkest parts of me and still loves me anyways, still calls me His daughter, still sees me as worthy, still sees me as pure, and still sees me as chosen. I didn’t deserve His love, but He gave it to me anyways.
Every choice I have made, every wrong path, every step that I took, lead me right back into His arms. He is my greatest love story.
Taken from Pinterest.
