Friday, July 06, 2007

the power of shoes......

(part of a four part play)


(Narrator)

They were red. Candy apple red. Fire red.Cussing and fighting face beat red. Blood red. Red Sea red. Savior died and bled read. Red eyed red, red boned red. The kind of red that makes you think of a sunset you never saw, and ruby you never owned.

(picks up the shoes and admires them.)

They matched. In the window of the store there was a model, and she was wearing her red dress and her red shoes. She looked powerful, like nothing could hold her. I wanted to be like that.

Powerful. Unheld. Ready.

Ready for what? Sometimes I think that it is better not to tell your story to people, because you end up missing them. You end up floating around with little pieces of you that travel the world with your story in hand after you have given up the secret of who you are. Scrambling like a little bird trying to make a nest you flit around trying to find all the pieces of yourself you gave away to people who were careless with it.

And then sometimes I believe that we are not meant to hold onto our story, because it really isn't ours to begin with in the first place. It is His. My bondage, my hope. My fear, at its full height. My faith at its full depth.

Tangled twins, one skin, like Jacob and Esau. Who can win?

(throws the shoes on the table.)

I bought the shoes even though I could not afford them. You know how that is, when they beckon. I wasn't even thinking about the cost, I only saw the beauty of those red stems caressing my feet, petal soft.

Why?

Why do people ask why? If someone has a limp, people ask them why they are limping? If someone asks for change, people ask them why are you out here hungry and begging? If someone asks for hope, people ask why do you need it? And if they actually feel generous enough to actually give it to you, well, then, you owe them for their borrowed hope, because after all hope isn't free, now is it?

Uhuhh. Everything has a price. Even you.

I've come to the conclusion that people really don't want to know the answer to why. That's they they sit around angry at God, mad and waiting.

Why do children die in pointless wars, falling into the great gap-- landmines of generational sins? Why do fathers leave their children, countries neglect their poor?: Why did it take so long to recognize me as more than 3/5ths of a human being? Why did he rape me? Why were we poor? Why did you take the pearls that grandma strung for me and hide them? ? Why do we care more about being right than believing right? Why is Africa bleeding? Why was I homeless? Lord why can't I walk? Why is it that I can ask you for your body easier than I can ask you for yourself? Why are most people unhappy except for the people who have the least to be happy about? Why? Why didn't you save me? Why didn't they protect me? Why wasn't I loved? Why me Lord, Why me?

There comes a point when you have to say to yourself, Why not you? Who are you to live in the glass bubble of snowy spinning world and not get wet? Who are you to never know fear, or peril, or nakedness or the sword? Who are you not to be somebody's mentor, somebody's mama, somebody's reason to keep hoping when the world is charging at a premium? Who are you not to walk the walk that your grandmother, your great grandmother, and your great great grandmother all walked so that you could walk? Who are you that you are just so good in your life that you would never feel pain so that someone else may be able to look at you in all your brilliance and beauty and say if she can smile, so can I? Who are you to take away God's crowning glory, a woman after his own heart who survived to defiantly live? Who are you not to know the love of God, the peace of God that passes all understanding. Who are you this creature created in the image of the Almighty god not to be powerful, and unheld and ready for whatever comes your way?!

Who are you?

Sometimes I think to myself, If only you walked a mile in these bad boys, you would know. But you know what? If you could walk my road then you couldn't walk yours. For so long I walked. I walked over, under around and through all the things that tired to keep me mired in my own muck. But today is different. You see God gave me this word: In me, You have the power to walk away. Walk away from all the things that tried to break you. You can walk away because even when you could not afford you, somebody paid the bill. And when you walk away in He that holds your soul, you're different.

Because you don't just walk away, and through, you're walking to, because now you know the truth of who you are! The cost of why you breathe. You are worthy.


Everyone has a color. Everything has a price. Even you.

(she picks up the shoes, exits the stage...)

For me, it was red.

1 comment:

Erica Danielle said...

This is absolutely brilliant