Ash on the Ledger
The Leaving - Joel 3:3
"For my people they cast lots; They would trade a boy to hire
a prostitute, And sell a girl for wine to drink."
He would say, You'll be safe here.
And I believed him because children are built to
believe.
But safety was a word he used like a lock turned the
wrong way.
He would leave me with people who spoke too softly,
who watched too closely,
who learned my silence like a language they could
profit from.
I was never traded for money,
but for what he could gather from their weaknesses.
They called it friendship,
handshakes, favors, an understanding between men.
I was the listening ear in the room,
the quiet presence meant to expose what they hid.
They learned to speak freely around me..
and he learned how to use their secrets.
By the time I was grown,
I no longer knew where protection ended
and manipulation began.
Every kindness felt rehearsed.
Every smile felt like a test
to see what I would remember...
just not enough to destroy myself with the details.
Jehovah must have drawn a curtain over the worst of
it,
and for that, I am grateful.
The Mask - Proverbs 14:13
"Even in laughter the heart may feel pain, And
rejoicing may end in grief."
I learned how to be composed in rooms that reeked
of deceit.
How to nod at small talk and keep my shoulders
square
when whispers followed me down hallways.
I was the subject of conversations I never heard
directly,
the story they built from glances and assumptions.
They said I was mysterious.
They never said I was a child who had learned
that silence can sound like survival.
Sometimes I think Jehovah blurred my memories
out of mercy,
leaving just enough to make sense of the ache,
but not enough to drown me in it.
Pain has layers, and mine are wrapped
in half remembered faces,
in the ache of pretending that I understood
why everything felt wrong and I was told it was
normal.
Even laughter carried weight.
It was easier to smile than to explain
why I wanted to disappear into quiet corners.
Strength looked like composure,
but underneath was endurance: the kind
that tears the inside while keeping the outside neat.
The Rest - Matthew 11:28-30
"Come to me, all you who are toiling and loaded down,
and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am
mild-tempered and lowly in heart, and you will find refreshment
for yourselves. For my yoke is kindly, and my load is light."
When I finally stopped pretending,
Jehovah did not ask for explanations.
He already knew.
He spoke into the hollow space where words had
failed,
not with thunder,
but with steadiness that asked nothing of me but to
breathe.
He did not erase what was done;
He gave me gentleness in its aftermath.
The yoke he offered was soft on the shoulders
that had carried too much for too long.
I learned that rest is not forgetting:
it is being allowed to exist without fear of man.
Now when I think of those years,
I see the distance between who I was made to be
and who Jehovah says I am.
That distance used to be unbearable.
Now it is bridged by Jehovah's patience.
The scars remain,
but they no longer define me.
They are quiet testimonies;
evidence, of sort, of what cruelty can do
and what mercy can restore.
And when I lay it all before Jehovah,
I no longer tremble.
Because in the ledgers men wrote,
I was used.
But in Jehovah's book,
I am known,
and I am whole.
Comments
Post a Comment