I sat there as she delicately drew lines and swirls on my hand and arm with henna. I was amazed at the intricacy that flowed from her brown hands.
Beauty…sitting across from me and on my left arm.
I couldn’t remember being this happy, this content in a while. Being there among a couple hundred people – most of East Indian decent – it just felt right.
How quickly these feelings faded as insomnia ripped through my body that night, and quickly drudged up all the anger that had possibly, slowly begun to fade.
I laid on our couch. The glow of the street light out behind, and the nightlights in the kitchen illuminating the anger seething from my heart.
Where had it gone? That happiness I’d felt just a dozen hours earlier.
Where as I had begun the process of re-trusting, and of re-experiencing the grace between Creator and creation, I now screamed.
I fear that if you could see this anger, this distrust that swells my chest and juts out my chin – you would shake your head at me in contempt.
………….or, maybe you wouldn’t.
I wonder at how hard we fall sometimes.
Why we distrust One who is so magnificently in control.
Why we choose to believe words we know are lies.
In these handful of days that have past since that sleepless night I still wrestle with the accusations I placed. And I fear them.
They hold power if I allow them to.
But I want to get that place I was at with the beautiful Indian woman creating filigree on my hand. To the place of joy I experienced as we were swamped by the culture of a land our hearts cries for.
I need to remember and believe that He is not looking at me with contempt but with eyes full of tears and a broken heart.
