Don't give it up

Some of you may know and some of you may not but I used to read tarot cards not too long ago.  I think I started reading them my senior year of high school and I stopped a little over a year ago.   Some of you may also know this:  I have a tattoo on my shoulder.  The tattoo is a tarot card.  I got it right before I stopped reading them.

 

Well, now that the Lord has taken me to Africa, I think I may finally understand what the image means in the larger story of my life, and what the image means in the stories of the lives of the women in the fistula ward, and what it means in the life of any person who has come to know Jesus Christ, and in the life of any person who hasn't. 

 

            People always ask me what it means and it’s probably the question I really hate the most because honestly, I don’t really know how to explain it very well.  There is no short version.  In fact, I hate the question because it confuses me, and it’s usually asked by a stranger, someone who I was never really ready to share the following story with. 

 

But I think I’m ready to do that now.

 

There was a particular season of my life when most of my relationships were abusive.  I allowed myself to be controlled by people not because they were directly causing me to behave a certain way, but because I allowed their presence in my life to cause me to believe in my own powerlessness, helplessness, and inability.  This is the essence of the meaning of the tarot card.

The eight of swords.  This card means captivity.  The woman in the image is blindfolded and bound, standing, of her own accord, in the mud.  She is not struggling.  She is not freeing herself.  Her captors are nowhere to be seen, and yet, there she is, alone, trapped in a fence of swords.  There is a building in the background, representing the place she has been cast out of.  She is in the wilderness, and she is completely isolated.

 

But this is not the image on my body.  The image on my body is upside down, which changes its meaning.  When tarot cards appear upside down, or reversed, whatever the original meaning of the card was when it was right side up, is blocked.  I wanted it this way because I didn’t want the meaning of this card to follow me around for the rest of my life.  Looking back on my life, I saw how oppressed I was, and continued to be, and I always wanted to remember to fight this trap.  I didn’t want to be controlled by anything or anyone anymore.  I saw the image of oppression and I rejected it.  What I wanted was freedom.  I wanted liberation.

 

 Liberate: to set someone free from a particular situation (especially slavery or imprisonment) in which their liberty is severely restricted; to free a country, city, or people from enemy occupation

 

So I started searching for this.  I started searching for freedom, but I couldn’t find it on my own.  Sometimes it feels like I didn’t find it until just yesterday.

 

The women in the fistula ward know what it feels like to be controlled by your own feelings of helplessness.  They were such promising women, hopeful for so much, and then something terrible happened to them, they lost their child.  But they lost something else too, something slipped through their fingers without their even noticing.  They lost respect for themselves and their dignity when they began to believe the lies people told them.   They began to blame themselves.  They began to blame themselves when other people began to blame them.  They believed the lies. 

 

If you were a good enough woman, like your own mother, you would have pushed hard enough and you would have your baby now.  Instead, you’re damaged.  You’re leaking urine right now because it’s your punishment for failing.  The only thing left for you to do now is take your punishment.

 

My version isn’t that different.

 

If you were really capable of love, you wouldn’t have been in so many failed relationships.  If you were really worthy of love, you would be loved, but nobody loves you.  Therefore, it’s your fault.  It’s your punishment for being damaged.  You’re damaged.  The only thing left for you to do now is take your punishment.

 

Yours may not be that different either.

 

You’ll never be the same after _________________.

You’re divorced.  Only selfish people get divorced.

You can’t go back to school, you’re too old.

War damages people.  You’re damaged.

Your dad always said you were_____________.  He’s right.

It was your fault when __________ died.

It was your fault when ___________________left.

 

Those are the lies that keep you standing in the wilderness, wearing the blindfold, accepting the punishment and the isolation.  These are the lies that keep women from accepting the love and redemption of Jesus Christ.  These are the lies that keep women hiding in villages on mountaintops leaking urine.  These are the lies that kept me believing I could never be beautiful again, the lies that made me want to cut off all of my hair and rid myself of anything that made me beautiful, because I believed I wasn’t. 

 

I didn’t want these lies, but I didn’t know what redemption looked like.  I didn’t know Jesus was what I was looking for.  I was like a lost sheep without the truth.  Jesus looked like He had nothing to do with my life.  He was just some historical figure, completely unrelated to what I was feeling.  In fact, most of His people didn’t really look like the sort of crowd I wanted to be associated with. 

I'd been down that road before, and the Jesus I found expected too much.  He made me feel ashamed and judged and I didn't really want that.  His people didn't look like people with hope, they didn't really look that different from anybody else I had ever met.

So I went out looking for liberation because I knew I didn’t want shame anymore, but without the good news in my life, I only found punishment, even with the best intentions.

 

I chose punishment instead of redemption.  I chose punishment because it felt like justice, but what my soul wanted was mercy.  I was looking for freedom, and you can only find that in one place.

 

The cross.

 

The Ugandan women find freedom at Kagando Hospital, because it’s a place where Jesus is healing people and giving them hope.  They make the pilgrimage because they hope that somehow there’s something better than living in shame on the top of a mountain, mourning alone and leaking urine. Some of them had been out to find it before too, like I had.  Just like I had turned to the church for hope and been sent away feeling worse, they had gone to other hospitals that made it worse, who damaged their bodies more than they were before, but the women who had come to Kagando hadn't given up hope.  They knew there had to be something better.  

 

Everybody knows deep down that they want something better than whatever it is they’ve got.  And they don’t just feel that way because that’s just how everybody feels.  They don’t feel this way because this sort of thing happens to everybody.  Everybody doesn’t feel that way.   It doesn’t happen to everybody.   It’s not just because they’re just never satisfied.  It’s not because they’re just flawed people and everybody’s flawed.  It’s not just because something that happened to you years ago will always affect you.  It’s not because you’ve made mistakes and there’s no turning back or making amends.  It’s not because you’re damaged.  It’s not your fault.  You don’t have to live like that.

 

But think about it.  If you believe that you do have to live like that, will you ever start looking for something better?

 

If you just choose to believe that there’s nothing out there that will satisfy your soul, and you accept whatever punishment feels comfortable and just, you will never be happy.

 

Have you given up that dream?  Have you stopped searching?

 

What if the Ugandan women at the hospital had given up that dream?  Some of them live alone in shacks leaking urine for the rest of their lives because they have no faith.  They’ve given up.

 

Don’t give up.  I didn’t give up.  I chose to believe that there was hope.  Hope just happened to be on the other side of the ocean, where Jesus called me to make a pilgrimage to a place where He IS doing something, where He is healing women just like me.  I don’t know where it is for you, but I know Jesus has something to do with it.