Healing

Working through the process with Nnena to choreograph a dance drama rekindled the vision of why Beautiful Me started.  It’s about healing and wholeness. As we created the soundtrack, finding the right traditional African rhythm to match each character and their role in the life of the main dancer (Nnena), I saw and felt the violence, the pain, the healing.  Tears many times blurred my screen as I visualized the abusive “uncle” next door, the angry, accusing mother (danced by me), the lies girls tell themselves about their bodies.  Then I got to enter, as the guy who our torn and tattered girl comes to love and loves her. We broke out from traditional African dance to Salsa, romantic and joyful…until she shows me her “heart” (represented by a white flower whose petals had been removed by abusers in her life).  I refused it…I walked away… only to return, bring her to her knees before God, help hold her up, and participate in her healing.

It is my longing for every woman who has been battered to have people in their lives who will help them come to restoration in Christ.  It’s my deepest desire that the mothers who came on Saturday and witnessed this dance and a number of other skits and activities, would start a journey to healing and guarding their girls.  We discussed how we guard each other’s hearts, how the heart and body are connected, and brought into the light issues of sexual and physical abuse.

Please pray for these mother’s and daughters as they continue to reflect on these things.  Based on the activity of declaring before each other “what I will do to guard my daughter’s heart” it was clear that some messages were not understood.  I am pleading before the Lord to open eyes, and make soft what has been hardened by years of pain and lies.