Those stupid questions were a repetitive curriculum in the visitor's folder of their minds and some even dare to put them into spoken words. For some reason the idea of being invisible was entertained in my mind as a viable possibility of escaping the unsolicited attention of being orphans in a nun' s orphanage. Good intentions, bad approach on one side, good approach, bad intentions in the other side of this coin I call it circumstances. Adult and child. But who was who? My mind was always ready to clash with the visitors' dealing of my circumstances. Distance was calculated as if we were either a pet or a plague. We were neither.
I practiced being invisible as if it was a form of an ancient art. The art of disappearing even when I was still in front of their eyes and they can still hearing me talking.
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
The patio meant freedom and the trees refuge, to a soul lost in her need of healing.
Mornings and evenings were equally expended in prayer given a sense of normalcy to an otherwise bothersome routine that always left me yearning for a different tomorrow.
If it was going to happen at all, there were three possibilities:
a) It will work it out at its own.
b) I will make it work.
c) I will need God's intervention.
I didn't know that ultimately, all three were the course of action my life will take, to that end.
You can say a lot by saying nothing or say nothing by talking a lot and right then, it wasn't easy to judge the difference. Nevertheless, I invested a lot of time on overcoming my stuttering and learning to express myself in silence and in words.A balance act you may say.
I thought that there was a time for everything but time was so slow that that may have been why silence was on our schedule. That was the time of the day when being invisible was possible and nuns in the orphanage and in the covent attached to it, were in agreement.
To my advantage, that was also a precious opportunity to let my mind soar to the possibilities that one day, tomorrow may bring. In the other hand, I became obsessed with words that I lodged them in my brain, weave them into thoughts and departed from stutter. My speech was finally living in harmony with the speaking world. Still, being invisible amounted to a short term strategy but any future, needed a long term plan and I have none.
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Through the eyes of a child everything was plotted to bring time to an standing still but it was never so.
Growing up did the trick. So in between unexpected joys and deep sorrows I became a teenager. So this worked out at its own.
When my anger flourished into rebellion I became the questioner but in the view of my foster parents I became the question. Who is this child?
14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
I challenged the teasers and bullies with an "all or nothing" attitude and they became acquainted with their own medicine. They left me alone contributing to my happiness and I developed a "can do" kind of confidence.
My quest intensifies as my load got a grip on me and it may be that because of that I felt compelled to search in the wrong places. I wasn't sure what I was looking for but I felt confident that " I will know it when I find it".
Somehow my journey equals me to many people perhaps even you. Although our path may never cross, I assure you, you are not alone. And there is a beginning and an end even to bad things that happens to innocent people. As much as we wish to blot out entire seasons of our lives, I am convinced that those were the things that instructs us the most when we let God use it in our lives. God waste nothing.
I never understood the depth of my loss until much later in life when I realized how profound my life was impacted by it. It made me different that the average, bold and shy at the same time.
My boldness was the inner crutch that lead me to God and my shyness an outward defense, kind of a forced invisibility that I imposed on myself until my path was clear.
Who was this child? It can be anybody.
It just happened to be me. I wanted to be me. And it was because God's intervention.
12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.