Innerdialects

For a few months, I wrote for an NGO that rehabilitates Burns victims. Young women, eyes like stars, lips sealed with somethings too beautiful to easily make sentences. Each of these Survivors startled me with a reality too stark to estimate. Zara*(names changed), Mini, Kayini…. today they are healing from even internal scars that could’ve done their life in half.

I returned from that Rescue Shelter with awe at Its Organizers, awe at the Power that can raise shattered life from a hell worse than basic crimes of need.

One young woman in particular, Disha* said,

” ..we must forgive. ” Words as potent as the scar running down her eyelid, halved ear under new grown soft hair plaited in low bun on neck with more scar tissue under neckline of blue cotton Kurta. She has more than forgiven her husband who tried to burn her. The reasons are mindblowing. There are little children involved, who must also heal,

but Disha made a decision to save herself from the toxicity of Unforgiveness. As her story unfolds my insides curl with horror at how a burns victim must heal: the endless swabs and ministry of meds, surgical intervention, counselling against suicidal attempts…and that first look in the mirror: the screams at how she now is. There will be more surgeries, more pain, more gut wrenching will

to return stronger, under the death defying brute force of Forgiveness that can only stem from Love. I said brute force cuz It must cut back on depression, trauma, pain, physical fatigue and social issues, even self hate..

If you’ve read my Posts here, you’ll know I’m a softie for Love & Its healing. Everything is possible with the Love of God. But

as I listen to Disha, reliving her chapters, am startled by the rage in me.

She goes back home, she forgives the man who did what he could to burn her from the Lil stove in her kitchen, as her young kids watched, and neighbors ran in to help. The husband was jailed. Later she bails him out.

She works with the gritty process of burns re-construction: nightmare of nightmares. You don’t want the details. Disha shows me a photo of him, tucked in her small purse. Yes, she loves him. He’s her husband, she says.

No he did not hurt her again. Her eyes are soft with a new found love that insists on forgiveness. She found it at the Cross. Ofcourse I know about the Cross. But if I were Disha maybe I’d have run miles before I trusted anyone again. Not negating what the Sacred says; but my knee jerk response was, run! “Love” suddenly seems an overrated word, here in this room surrounded by a Thing that stares down basic cut throat human response.

But the man has his share of pain. Today she walks tall, their entire society is with her. The man looks up to her with new found respect. Don’t ask me how, I’m still dizzy thinking what it must be like even today.

But no, he loves her. He’s older now. There was police surveillance. He pleaded guilty, said sorry, stays true to her. I see it in her face, softened with deliverance from hate. The children are growing well, she says. No they have no bad habits. In the aftermath of all that, Disha went from a shy young mother and wife into a gentle loving tigress over her family. No one dares come in here offering bidis to my young son to smoke, or any nonsense with my daughter. And husband better not hurt me or anyone again.

I take a moment digesting the fire in her soft words. What’d she do if it happened again, I am about to ask, but she reminds me that we are all sinners in the eyes of God, and like Christ said, if we forgive others, then He will forgive us, and then we can love everyday in His power.

Ofcourse I agree. But if Disha were my daughter I’m unsure I’ve let that man in again.

As I wrapt that interview there was the distinct impression of the God of Disha, shuddering at my thought:

He would (shudder). He loves victim and offender equally. Sigh. Is that even Just?

I’m here thinking on the Justice of God that’d even ask us to try feel what He did at the Cross, forgiveness, ouch. And again, who is not ‘bad’?

Am startled by women like Disha, who can start over and learn a new language: its soft syllables shielded by a Thing humans have been trying to grasp and make our own since Time began:

in our deadly pursuit of selfish happiness, seduced by self gratification, pride, pride of possession, insanity, generational hate, contempt of the love of God, even the innate desire to kill for greed, revenge, ….blind to the fact that this Life is also spirit … This life is more than physicality. This is supernatural too. We are in love with Love , for self. We believe in Love, but morph it into lust for power, even in the way we might feed the poor or declare religious rule. The Language of Love is not in syllables, It shies from mortality and sees with eternal perspective.