River

I don’t remember being baptized, but I know that ever since my senior year of high school I have been drowned in the river of love from the Lord and I can’t seem to get up.

Sometimes I am able to come up from this river and catch my breath but when I do come up I feel the heat of oppression on the other side. I feel the flames of stress, hunger, and poverty when I am not covered in his love.

I am left with third degree burns from a history of violence and careless attitudes that leave my skin falling from its bones. My skin is beaten to the white meat from the bashings from being a poor black girl wanting to fit in in a society that expects me to be pregnant by 15 and unable to finish high school. Shoot, they’re probably surprised I made it this far. I am on fire from poor education, a minimum wage that does not equate to a living wage, and the constant bashing from society to rise to their low expectations.

My eyes are bruised from witnessing the murders of my brothers and the sexual abuse of my sisters. My lips are sealed quiet by a world that expects me to be silent when hatred opens its filthy mouth and spews venomous lies that lead to the death of this “free” nation. My arms and legs are whipped and left with ugly scars until I am willing to conform to society’s views and beliefs that I am nothing but a poor black girl who abuses the system and should be looked down upon because I will bring no real contribution to this world. I am beaten, broken, and belittled until I am flushed back into the river of God’s love.

I once again drown into his love and all my frowns are erased from my poor little black face and I am again basked in the love of the Lord. I am no longer chained to my shackles of poverty and gender inequality. I believe that I can make the same as a man who has the same title and the same position and I do not have to prove myself to a world that should already accept me as I am. I stay this way for days, weeks, maybe months and then I am again forced out of the river to a world filled with hate. A world filled with unwarranted bombings, sacrificial killings, and kidnapping of girls who are my little sister’s age and then I am hoping, wishing, and praying to be back in that river.

I want to be back in that river. I want to hear the waves of the water rushing past my ears and swallowing me whole. I want to feel the water in my nostrils and get bruised from the roaring waves because I know that when I am basked in this river, everything seems okay. Everything is okay. Everything the Lord does is okay and he will make a way out of no way. And sometimes, more often than not, when I do find myself slipping into the flames of this world, I am reminded that the Lord’s love will encompass me again and I will continue to be in his river of eternal life and I am again drowning. I am drowning in his purpose.