“Why does it hurt so bad?”

By Lumepa Apelu 03 March 2017, 12:00AM

When I look around me sometimes, the journey of a survivor strikes me. 

How they forge over castles and tyrants like everything means nothing sometimes. How they weep one day and laugh like flowers for the rest of their lives. 

How they forgive the sea as if it is not a murderer of children. How they can kiss their enemy’s cheek and move away, leaving a kind thank you note on the door they closed.

Dear reader, I am as clear as the eye of a cyclone, one of those. But while the skin on my shoulder blades is not the same as yours, we may feel the same when the wind touches us. 

We probably smile the same smile when the clouds disperse on us like fairy dust on a spring day. We may also be as quiet as the moon on a starry night, our shadow dressed as one, because the night sky is bent. Have you too tried touching the hand of God in your small dismay?

I write these things as I am a woman in love with life. When a woman is in love, you would know that the rose’s scent and hibiscus’ sweet sap flourish from her. You would know that a woman in love is untouchable because her feet are not on the ground, when conversing with the secrets of her heart. A woman in love is the pain and the cure in her-self. Where is her God you say?

Lean over so I can whisper to you how my passion lies in fields of grey hopes and drives over slippery hills of Upolu, watching the sunset of our islands, missing us as we do not notice much these days. For we are buried in our business of living a haste filled life. And we are not aware of the missing heroes, I love to love and write about. 

Today, in my un-forsaken passion, I passionately write about the breaking of my own heart, at the sight of my own fallen heroes before me. If I try to tell you how much I miss the affectionate touch of their perfect ways on my broken wings, you would understand my tired soul. But I write with deep disappointment too, because what child looks up to nothing? 

I love my country, as if the country itself lives inside me. My country loves God and I too have borne to love him without a doubt. But if I should give up on my country, will it be like the islands of coral reefs and the rest of the world, sunk without my body and lost without my worshipping?

Yet for the child in the streets and in poverty, why do we still struggle to accept him? True, he may shame us, but we live inside him too. How can we abandon the heart that longs to belong to his home anyway? Yes dear reader, the child in poverty, roaming the street, is lost. 

And if you have not a clue as to why, look over your shoulder blades, and remember the beginning of time, when we once had nothing but sails on our boats and stones as tools to fish with. Recall the days when our idols were sure of their wisdom and certain of their star readings, that even in our plenty doubts, we as followers, made it.

But here we are, toiled inside the arms of a spoiled planet, unable to return to the simple life we once had. Upon judging the extremists, we falter in our fears. 

Why do we try to own the cross? If we are journeyed souls, through colonies of foreign explorers and imposed religious beliefs, can we not change our minds with our hearts? The Jesus in me is burning with desire to heal the world and make a better God of the one we worship. But will it? 

Will all our focused worshipping make the God we love, love us more than others? Will our putting him on a pedestal make us his better children? Is our possessiveness of him our calling? And I ask you dear reader, from the child inside me who has always been in love with God, the woman in love with life, and from the silenced mouth of a child in poverty, 

“ If we can love this much, why does it hurt so bad?”

Oh yes, I do pray for kinder times. I pray for true love too for each of you, me and the rest of the unkind. After surviving the deaths of many from the wrath of the sea, I realize, there is no point in our bickering. The world owes us nothing. But we have to remember despite our worries, that we are innate glowing people. 

Without darkness, we cannot shine. Move closer then to the strange things this life is offering. 

Within them, you may find your courage to seek the dreams we each came to find. I am certain as the sun will shine, that God is in all of them too.

By Lumepa Apelu 03 March 2017, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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