…you think you have nothing to offer the world? you think your life is so small there where you are hidden behind the kitchen sink, your nest slowly emptying itself of the soft bodies you have poured your life into.

perhaps the only pilgrimage you know is between home and the school gates, with small detours to find milk and bread.

and how about you, reading this with tired eyes in a tired body, at war with yourself, the pain, and the tiredness, the weight of your unlived life heavy within your bones.

you think you have no purpose here? that your life is a mistake, or perhaps that God has taken her eyes off you for a minute, or maybe since the day you were born, sticking the words ‘unimportant’ on your forehead, and you believing the lie.

why, even this morning, after making the beds, and whilst sitting at my kitchen table with only my words, a cup of tea, and the faint smell of heather that always lingers in the air after God leaves, i walked into a place where i was shown words that fell in anger from a soft mammal body’s mouth—a stranger whom i will likely never meet, how she chose to plant war and destruction in the life of another, and not only there, but in the lives of each person they love: ‘may all the people they love suffer forever and ever’… her mouth, in that moment, a weapon, and too wrapped up in her own anger, she did not even realise the hooks she was casting into other realms, how far they travel, but how hooks are always connected to something—how they hold people captive for years, and years, and lives, and lives, and some of us wondering at the losses that plague our doors.

do you know the extent of this kind of warfare?

how many lives might be shaped by it?

other soft bodies that have done no wrong.

we are all soft bodies who don’t realise the power of what we are speaking over the shape of our own days; the shape of the lives of the ones who are still to follow after us.

entire generations can get caught up in these flaming nets.

i once thought my life hidden and without the spine of purpose. i once thought myself unimportant, believing so many things that were given to me by others who had been eating plates of violence for centuries.

this has been my life’s work: first the unlearning, the walking away, the refusing to eat what i was given, and then, learning how to pull the hooks from my own life, and from the life of my son.

do you know how many wars i step into, for strangers, on behalf of soft mammal bodies that i will never know, my presence unseen, wielding only my words as weapons.

with my mouth i say:

‘no. not for this family. not for these people. not for the ones caught in the crossfire of someone’s poor decisions.’

with my mouth i say:

‘in the back of this ambulance there is fear, but there shall be no loss of life here today. let there be hope and the pulsing body of life. stay for a little while longer, stay for the people who will miss your presence if you were to give up now.’

with my mouth i say:

‘here, let me plant grace, let me plant hope and healing and joy. let me be the witness-with-the-message, the mother-who-sees, the one who steps into the gap and deflects the arrow.’

with my mouth i say:

‘be careful what you plant in the lives of others. be careful which side you choose to dwell with. words have wings, and they always return home. i shall plant grace over your life instead, just for now, just until you can see with your own eyes how far a word can travel.’

you think you have nothing to offer this world, even though you have been eating the light, unseen, for years in your small, ordinary world?

listen to me! now is the time to open your mouth and to let your water-words find hot wars to pour themselves over.

there are flames everywhere waiting to be found by eyes that have the time to see them.

shall i say it again? a reminder? listen!

the world is weeping and there is tender work to be done. warriors come in every shape and size, and there are healers all around, and messages waiting to be plucked from the ether, waiting to be turned into shields.

© liezel graham 2023

{image by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash}

i don’t think this needs any explanation.

it will either sit with you, or not.

it doesn’t take away its truth. you might try, for a short season, to speak hope and life over your own body, perhaps the body of someone with whom you have had a quarrel.

plant life and grace and freedom, and you will find those words returning to you with life in their wings.

you have the power of life and death in your mouth.

go on, brave healer! step into your purpose.

the world is weeping and there is tender work to be done.

liezel

{the line, ‘the world is weeping and there is tender work to be done‘ is originally from my poem, The World is Weeping, which is in my second book, A Counting of Love}