Imagine to Remember

As a young girl I witnessed suffering and cruelty, at home at times but even more so out in the world. I remember questioning my mother about this. I would see the addicts in the depths of their withdrawals, those cast aside homeless, sick, rejected, refused even the simple acknowledgement of their existence by passersby. I was equally horrified by the images on TV, the starving children with their big eyes and swollen bellies, lepers without fingers and noses, bombs over the skies of some unknowable city a world away, one of those cities in a homeland I had never known, a place I would one day return. These faces haunted me, sometimes for hours and even days on end. Sometimes the unabashed, shamelessness of their pain made me uneasy to the point of feeling lightheaded. I wished they would be more discreet with their suffering and yet I could not look away. I never did get an answer that seemed to satisfy me. Every response to my questions only created more questions, an exponential growth of chaos and confusion erupted in my mind. Sometimes I was told to be thankful that I had been spared such a fate; this was the most unsettling response because in some way I intimated that it very well could be me. At other times I was told that it was simply God’s will. I didn’t know much but I knew to question God was a sin. This never shook my faith in God’s existence though, that has always been obvious to me. My questions were of a different nature entirely.