At the end of month two in Ghana I read a poetry book by Rupi Kaur called “The Sun and Her Flowers.” The way she writes you can feel exactly what she is trying to explain to you and it opened up emotions I had shoved down for so long. These feelings were like the old photographs mom took of you and stored in the box in the back of the room down the hall and never pulled out. But those emotions are the very ones that the Lord has been working on in me.
I ended up writing statements that her book spurred me to feel and realized that these feelings were still raw. But over time, the Lord has replaced these emotions with His love and showed me that He was right there the whole time. This poem that I wrote contains some content that could be inappropriate, but in a world that sells sex, I think it is safe to say that explaining my emotions is a safe thing here. I just hope that one day the way I felt in this poem will no longer exist in this world.
“The very thing you did that made me run away is the same thing that makes me want you now.
I hate everything about who you are, yet I dream about you often and what could have been.
You said you loved me but all I could hear was your roar for my body.
All I knew was how to give myself to you. I taught you to love the only way I knew how to. To grab me, push the hair out of the way and dig in. Like it was the last meal you were going to get.
I was a broken girl looking to be made whole by the same kind of guy who broke me in the first place.
You said I was the most beautiful, yet you never took me around your friends. You said you loved me, but you always made me change in to the person you wanted me to be.
You always made promises you wouldn’t keep, and I made excuses for you and your absence. Now, I’m the one who is absent.
All the words out of your mouth were what I wanted to hear, yet your actions were everything that I despised.
I spent hours getting ready to surprise you, for you to tear me apart and take me nowhere.
So many days I tried to be the person you wanted, but at the end of the day I just lost who I was.
I felt like I was in the clouds around you, until you spoke and instantly cut me down. You shattered my heart.
You no longer are my everyday thought. I have cried enough tears to wash me clean.
I have seen enough doppelgängers to forget what you look like.
I go through my days and no longer flinch when I see men. I can smile to the ones around me and not be afraid of what will happen.
I have control now. Since you gave me up.”
The Lord has completely filled me up with His truth about who I am and who He has created me to be. It didn’t happen over night, and it didn’t happen in a week. It was a long process of continually seeking what He said was true and believing it. I think that is what has changed the most for me while being on the race. Countless numbers of people had made comments that I radiate Jesus so much, and I believe it is because I have accepted who it is that He has called me to be and I don’t let society hinder that any longer. Freedom comes from when you release the chains that you once held on to with all your life. Freedom is what these past 4 months have brought to me, and there is still so much that I could learn from freedom.
I’m a new creation as 2 Corinthians 5:17 says and I’m choosing to trust in that. Jesus is the only one who could have saved me, and He is the only one who can give me His will for my life, my purpose. But I first had to realize that I was holding on to lies. What lies have you been believing that the Lord wants you to set down at His feet? Do you trust that He is faithful to replace them with the truth? Because He will.
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XOXO, your world traveler
