bearing the mark

She came to my house last night, the princess. A young heir to the Kingdom, only 12 years old. Everything about her was exactly as He had said, her robes, her spirit, the way she lived, the way she carried herself. It was maybe what you would call a royal moment, how I felt when she told me abouot her life, when I held her in my arms. It was royal because in her I could see exactly what the King was about. I could see exactly what He meant when He said that the Kingdom was hers. That for princess daughters such as her, He had worked and planned and sacrificed to establish his rule and his reality-one that was nothing but good. It was her He was thinking of all along. It is her He is working for now.

I wept too because everything about her was exactly as He had said. Her robes are despair and her spirit is broken and her life is poverty and and captivity and her attitude is humility. I wept because she doesn’t even know that she is a princess with a Good King Father. Instead she only sees that she is a young girl living in slum, about to be abandoned by her last care taking parent. Her arms were like sticks, her shoulderblades sticking out like fins underneath my hug. Her heart and body are broken by the verbal and physical abuse from her family and neighbors. I wept when she told me “She tells me that she doesn’t love me and that I am a bad person. She feeds the others and not me.” I wept when she told me how they had pushed her in the gutter and beat her up.