5 Nov Why doesn’t she leave?

5 November 2023

WHY DOESN’T SHE LEAVE?

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? (Psalm 139:7, Recommend reading full text, Psalm 139)

I feel suffocated and condemned, I feel rejected, I feel unloved. My heart bleeds as I ask why my body is subjected to so much pain. “Where can I go from your Spirit, O Lord? Where can I flee from your presence?” I feel used, as I have been raised to believe that “my body is meant to please man”- when I am sexually and physically abused and run away from him, my elders tell me to go back and submit. “You must have wronged him; it is how you talk back to him! Look at your dress! So why should you blame him when you are dressed like a “harlot”? I ask myself – is being a harlot

defined by dressing? Should I not express my needs and not be seen as not being submissive or as a harlot? “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”

Indeed, you have hemmed me in, yet I have hope. You formed my inward being, and I am fearfully made in your image. I love the way you say that my frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret! Ha ha, Lord, so you ordained that I should be formed in secret! I love that you gave us the gift of being asexual to bring to life those you have ordained. There is neither male nor female to you, but those that have been formed and knitted in secret in their mother’s womb. You, O Lord, are my Mother God, the one who loves and nurtures us to fullness. You are the one who preserves and protects even when the devourer uses your name in vain to assault me.

I am comforted to know that your knowledge of me is perfect! I cannot leave you nor run away from your Spirit! My life flourishes in you. You strengthen me with your joy and show light in the darkness. My body may be bruised and bashed, yet you assure me of your presence, that you “have searched me and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up...” Indeed, where can I go from your Spirit, O Lord? Where can I flee from your presence?

I will sit and wait patiently for your redeeming salvation. Search me, remove my anxieties as I trust you to lead me in your everlasting ways. I will not leave you too.

prayer

Lord, you are asexual. Help me to love and respect the other with your love and mercy. Amen!

for further thought

Think about God’s Motherhood - how does it reflect how you should relate to the other gender?

Mary Zulu-Mwiche

The United Church of Zambia