A Lament

Lancaster bishops affirm proposal to leave denomination.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to make requests and a time to demand a hearing, a time to hold my tongue and a time to rage.

Eternal Grief by Jeremy Brooks CC

You held me gently when I was thrown into your arms, tired and broken. I had lost something precious and you grieved with me.

I was afraid—slow to trust—but you coaxed me into your house with promises of love and called it my home.  “I am your home,” you said.

And you were.

It was some time before either of us noticed what was growing inside me. “It’s of the Spirit,” I said.

You said, “Cancer.”

People whispered as my form began to change.  My stomach grew, straining against my clothes, and you averted your eyes.

“Get rid of it!” you yelled, in the loudest of whispers.

I said, “No.”

You pulled a picture from the wall. A picture of me in my prime, slender and graceful. “This was who I promised to love. The promise I made was to her.”

I looked down at my distorted figure and cried. “Love me anyway!” I begged, and I clung to you. You shook me off in disgust. “Get. Rid. Of. It.”

No.

You met with a lawyer in secret and filed for annulment.  “Misrepresentation,” you alleged, and sent it to the magistrate with before and after pictures.

Like a surgeon, you cut me from your womb. “Cancer,” you said, as you threw me out with the trash and closed the door to your home.

My home.

You looked down at your bloody hands and screamed, “Why did you make me hurt you?!”

But it was your blood too.

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