My Life Is Not My Own

I have joined others at The Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Fridays. Our assignment is to write for five minutes flat on the topic for the week and share our responses to the same prompt. 

The word for this prompt is ROAR. Here I go...

I am not afraid to roar....I know what it means to feel the roar of anger...The roar in loss...

But there is a roar that is not ear-piercing, but quiet and powerful. There is a roar that says, I am not afraid. There is a roar that says NO to injustice whatever the cost.

I wish I roared like the Freedom Riders in the 1960’s. I wish I roared like Martin Luther King, Jr. or  Rosa Parks. I am always profoundly moved by the courage of that era. I was born in that era. 

I’ve never roared like that.

Elizabeth was from Nigeria.  She was my bunkmate at a conference in Amsterdam in 2000. One night, we sat on her bunk as she told me her life story. She was a woman of faith. She was a pastor. She chose to follow Jesus at the risk of death. She was beaten for her faith. She was denied access to her children for long periods of time. She was shamed by her husband in her village. But she never turned from her faith. She helped to establish nine faith communities. Her husband, her persecutor, asked for her forgiveness on his death bed. Three of her sons became pastors.  

After she shared with me, I asked, “How did you do it, Elizabeth? How do you survive all the persecution?” She looked me in the eyes with compassion and said, “Oh, Kim, my life is not my own. I gave it all to Him. It’s not mine. It’s His.”

I wept.

I wept because I knew I hold on so tightly to what I think is mine. I wept because her eyes said how much she longed for me to know the joy of not fearing anything. Not even death.

I want to roar like that. I want to roar with those who have given it all.