A personal narrative essay I had to write for school :) Wanted to share it with you all since I missed this past Saturday's post...

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It was a pretty beaded bracelet: deep blue, white and shiny, graced with elegant thinness. I had bargained it out with the seller, and had gotten it for as cheap as I could and really it was nothing but elastic with beads strung on in bracelet form…but to me it was an absolute treasure. To rewind, it all happened on a trip…a trip I took with my choir to England and then Ghana. I was eleven and no doubt this trip was one of the biggest events that led to my coming of age. The bracelet I instantly put on my wrist, which since it was very thin, caused the bracelet to hang spaciously. That bracelet saw many of my adventures, it followed me onto a precarious swinging rope walk above the jungle and down to the ambassador’s house…it witnessed my plate of fries and rice with plantains neglected to the side and it even came with me to an orphanage. But mysteriously…it didn’t come back. And that’s where my story starts.

I think there was always something in my heart for orphans, maybe it sprung from reading Anne of Green Gables…or my mother’s magazines filled with tear jerking adoption stories. Anyhow it was deeply ingrained in my heart and my mind that one of the greatest things in the world would be to love and be friends with an orphan since my future of adopting one was far off.  I’ll really never forget that day I said goodbye to my precious bracelet for something much more precious.

Sweltering heat hazed in a cloudy gray sky, down below, the ground was colored deep ochre red dust. Entering a concrete rectangle of a room we endured some welcoming thanks from the leaders of the orphanage. The memories are blurry in my mind but I remember a few things clearly: a group of orphanage children dancing and singing for us followed by our performance. But those things don’t matter much to my story, what truly mattered was the moment we all flocked outside to play soccer. Instead though I decided to hang around the sidelines and talk with some children. The first person I encountered was a girl with ebony skin and shining brown eyes so I said hello and we hit it off. Though she looked no older than twelve she was in fact sixteen. I don’t really remember her name or everything that we talked about but I remember that when one of my friends said we had to go, I scrawled my name and address on a paper so that my new friend could write to me. Suddenly my eye caught my bracelet and flitted to her wrist to notice a pretty green and golden bracelet.

“Where did you get the bracelet?” I asked

“One of the girls gave it to me.” She answered taking my piece of paper and tucking it in her uniform pocket.

I stared at my precious bracelet and I wavered, but finally I took it off and handed it to her.

“Here...it’s for you.” I smiled at her.

Her brown eyes shone as she put the bracelet on her own wrist and she looked up at me and said thank you.  I don’t remember much else than the hug I gave her before rejoining my choir.

Days passed and I went home. Weeks and then months of eagerly checking my mailbox but my friend never wrote. Time may have passed but it never robbed the little spark of joy in that moment long ago…one that words can’t really explain; one that only the sparkle of an eye, a touch of a hand, or a shared memory can. Some days I still wonder about my friend; is she married? What does she do for a living? How did her life turn out? Does she still have my bracelet…or was it forgotten or broken long ago? I may never know the answers to these questions but that encounter so long ago taught me something I’ll never forget, something that’s repeated in my life over and over again.

Letting go is often a way of holding on.

HOW ABOUT WE GO ON A LITTLE TOUR? I’M WARNING YOU, IT MIGHT BE DEPRESSING AND EVEN A LITTLE MORBID AT FIRST, BUT PLEASE STICK WITH ME TO THE END…THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT.

  What is life? In this society and generation we don’t seem to grasp or understand what life is. Go scan the news, pretty much every day we hear of horrid deaths, terrorist attacks, homicides. And life just…goes on. It becomes normal to hear about abortion, suicide, death, euthanasia. Maybe it even becomes subconsciously normal and in some cases, acceptable. And slowly, little by little, or slam after slam we start getting numb. Indifferent. Our hearts start getting calloused. One bruise than another and suddenly we find ourselves living in a shell. Think I’m exaggerating? Let’s back up.

 We are living in the age where depression and suicide is more rampant than ever. I wonder why? We are trying to fill that empty space in our hearts with MORE. MORE clothes, MORE books, MORE status symbols, MORE reasons to be liked, MORE friends. And it never ends, because that space in our hearts isn’t getting filled, it’s just getting…bigger. It’s starting to spiral out of control, and we’re wildly fighting to stuff that hole and it’s just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Or maybe we embrace it…maybe we bare our chests and show off that hole. We find people with holes, just like us. And we start building communities and idolizing people with…holes. How…empty?

And sometimes and on an downward slide into sheer darkness some just CAN’T DEAL WITH IT ANY LONGER. So they end it. They end your life. How did that happen? Let’s back up even more

 Let’s face it, as much as we’d like to call ourselves independent, we do rely on other people every single day. It happen in two ways. One, in what others have created. Two, in others themselves.  And it affects us. How often have you heard yourself or someone else saying something like “If ‘he’ or ‘she’ wasn’t there then ‘blank’ would be ok.” Or “If ‘this’ was better than ‘blank’  would be ok.” Unfortunately it’s not that easy or magical. We can go on doing it practically forever. Something gets fixed and more problems surface and we find ourselves wondering what went wrong. Because no matter how much we want to believe that if we had divine power we would solve the problems, we couldn’t. So what can we do? 

As we head into the last section of this whole exhibition get ready to find all the answers and the whole point of this tour. Go back to the first paragraph and read the title…Are you back? That up there is the whole issue. For a second imagine you have absolutely no idea what the word “Life” means. Just try. So what is the meaning of Life??? Are you ready to be surprised? The meaning of Life is…God. After all…God is Life. He is the very thing that holds this whole world together. Let’s dig a little deeper…let’s get scientific, don’t let it turn you off this is going to be incredible!