This one's for you

FOR GIRLS of EVERY COLOUR

Today I saw “For Colored Girls”.  I have never before watched a movie that pulled so much from me.  I have shed more tears than I can remember for a long time.  The stories of these women, coloured women, affected me to the core. Was it my own brown skin that connected me to them?  No.  It wasn’t.  Yet I empathized with all of them.  I followed their lyrical prose and felt touched to my soul.

 My mind replayed my own scenes, a curtain was pulled back and I saw all the ugly I thought I had forgotten.  My tears became like the water that runs through the gutters of the streets.  They washed the filth and garbage away.  I kept thinking God, this is too much. I can’t watch any more.  Yet I couldn’t stop myself. I had to see the end.  I had to see if in the darkness light would pierce through.  Did anyone get better?  Did anyone stop crying?  Is this the heritage of being a woman of colour? Pain?  Hurt? Brokenness?  Is it only through these hardships we are to become as they have said we are?   Strong? Resilient?  Independent?   It makes no sense to me.  I don’t get it. What is this fable that keeps perpetuating itself, year after year, generations after generations? 

I cried for myself.  I mourned;   Big, loud, ugly sounds escaped my lips.  Oh God!  It was not for me, but more for all the women of any and every colour that has been so tragically violated by the face of a loved one.  She was right.  The boogie man had been given the right to be there.  He was not the face of a stranger.  Oh how I understood that so well.  I wept and wept and wept some more for those women that have been left alone, surrounded by so many but no one hearing her, no one seeing her. 

What “For Colored Girls” failed to show was that healing was not just an awareness of self and the root of the problem and “issues”.  Holiness cannot be within oneself without the presence of God.  The only religious reference was made to appear foolish and mocked by her white dresses and ineffective prayers, candles and oils.  It was ridiculed. But be not deceived, for God is not mocked.  He does for us, what no man or woman can ever do. He is the source of light from this darkness we find ourselves in at different times in our lives. He is the sanity in the madness. He is the straight in a winding road. He is the source of life in our death.

I sit here now and I remember how I was rescued by the hands that now hold me forever.  I remember how I thought I would never again be okay, but then I was. I remember how I felt alone and ashamed, and then how the nights of guilt were taken away. I remember how I was so lost and how now I am found.  I remember being so broken and now being made whole by Jesus Christ my Lord.

So here I am, this girl of colour.  I say to you my sisters across God’s wonderful colour wheel, black, white, yellow or blue, be no longer discouraged and beaten, distressed and depressed; there is a friend for you too.  He will be found when you seek Him with all your heart and soul.  He will never leave nor will he ever forsake you.  He will be with you when no-one else can or may want to.  Your tears and burdens He will carry for you.  I know what I am talking about.  I have been a recipient of all of this and so much more.  He loves you sister and calls you His own.  No tricks, no dance, nothing more required.  Just come to Him – Jesus is calling your name.