You are too soft

I’ve been terrified. I thought that I lost Him.

God.

I knew it when a feeling of cold vulnerability washed over me, about the same time a distant, long-forgotten memory of internal hollowness squeezed itself into my body, a suffocating echo from the past.

I became a frightened little girl again.

The voices -the ones that broke me- came back.

“You are too soft,” they said.

I have long released the need to be hard, but “soft” still stings. See, I was never just called it. “You are too soft” was done to me, every single act -overt and covert- indelibly carved under my skin.

I quickly learned that it was unsafe to be me: kind, silly, innocent…soft. So I learned to be afraid of me, and to shape-shift. To manufacture a badness that I did not have within me because apparently I was too…good? Straight? Unreal? It felt like my very essence was a flaw.

The other day I tried to chase away stray dogs from our work compound and I swear that bitch bared her teeth and growled “soft” at me. I did not want them to be beaten so I tried to shoo them away gently.

Yet those dogs turned on me -and only left when the person I was protecting them from came at them with a wooden pole. In that moment, something in my core disintegrated. It’s one thing to be taken for granted over and over again- because of who you are- but the mockery of nature and with its literal dogs reinforcing the same message was funny, only for how it was particularly not funny.

It’s been a long, long while since I felt this way. I mean, I had even begun to enjoy being soft. So why was I suddenly afraid again? Had I not just softly loved, taught, forgiven, counselled, cared for, and evangelised for over a year? Where was this feeling of victimhood coming from again?

In the face of no forthcoming answers, a cold, unholy thread rippled across my body, then coiled into a heavy ball and dropped in my stomach. Fragmented thoughts flew back and forth across my mind -old witches of anxiety swooping on broomsticks through my head.

“Where was God in all of this?” I asked myself?

Wait, WHERE was He? I thought that He was besides me this entire time! It quickly dawned on me that He and I had lost contact a whole while back. I mean, I had Him right there besides me for months! Where did I lose Him? At what point did His fingers slip through my hands and how come I did not feel myself let go of Him?

The answer was right there.

It was at some point during which both my hands got crowded – Work, Dad’s retirement, Ministry, Endless travel, My personal learning projects, Growing pains – that my grip on His hand had loosened.

No wonder I suddenly felt cold and alone. No wonder I felt vulnerable. No wonder things had shifted in ways I could not comprehend. I had drifted too far away from His presence, and I did not even know it.