Defeated but not despairing

The reality of the pain and suffering of this world is hard to fathom. And I have such a limited experience, only now am I beginning to open my eyes to the world around me. Sometimes I want to hide, to forget or deny the truths. I want my naïve childhood to somehow return, to saturate my current adulthood. Believing that this is truly a good world is not an easy choice just now. Tonight, I am struggling with that thought.

I just finished reading Tears of the Desert, the words and images still too acutely fresh in my mind. It is the horrifying story of a young woman who escaped the brutalities of the current war in the Darfur region of Sudan, only to find unwelcomed exile in England after much pain, abuse, rape, and death was experienced and witnessed. It is too horrendous to believe, but I know it is true. I cannot let myself forget that it was, and is, currently the reality for millions of people. I need to feel that pain, as too often I allow myself to become numb and unaware.

A short respite in Kampala allowed me to venture to the movie theater this afternoon, not sure of which movie I was going to see. My second choice was Iron Man II, and maybe I should have watched that movie. But instead of fantasy and action, I wandered into the theater and sat in disturbing silence as I watched a painful movie about the lives of three individuals in Uganda. A child mentally scorned by his forced capture and assimilation into the military in Northern Uganda, only to be returned to his biological family some years later, discovering an alcoholic father who blames himself that he did not protect his son from getting taken and forced to become a child-soldier. A woman whose sister is repeatedly beaten by her husband, and now the woman is forced to prostitute herself to help her abused sister. A young man, who has chosen the ‘higher’ road by helping street kids and youth through a break-dancing ministry, confronted by a childhood friend who has chosen gangs, violence, fear and death instead.

It is late at night as I listen to the steady rainfall. The cool drops bouncing off the tin roofs, finding their way to the grass and soil that lay below. It is somehow appropriate for rain to be falling just now. A soothing sound that has always comforted.

Maybe several weeks of sickness, and now living in a country all-too-familiar with war, continually hearing horrific true accounts of death and destruction, and an ever-increasing awareness of impatience and self-righteousness in my own heart, has left my usually optimistic spirit feeling a bit defeated tonight.

Defeated but not despairing. I know where my help, and hope, comes from.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angles nor demons, neither present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39