There is No Limit to Love
“She asked me if you still love Jesus.” She tells me this, quietly laughing and rolling her eyes. She’s rolling her eyes because to her, this is a ridiculous question.
I wrinkle my forehead.
“Why?”
She shrugs.
“Apparently she thinks you worship the moon now?”
I blink, confused.
“Is this because I posted the picture about Mama Ocean and the pull of the moon?”
“Probably.”
I rock Jubal a little bit more, lost in my thoughts. Something about the question, and family members talking about my faith behind my back, rubs me raw. I suck my teeth and take a deep breath, trying to shake it off, but the feeling persists.
It persists because I know the truth. The question wasn’t really does Elora still love Jesus. The real question — the unspoken one — was does Elora still believe the same thing we do.
And the answer to that is most assuredly no. But I stay silent and I listen to my sister talk about the rest of the family and the things I don’t know that everyone else does. I stay silent, and listen, and fall back into the pattern I know well — the role I’ve played my entire life. Somewhere deep inside, I know this behavior comes from the little girl who realized quickly that acquiescing is so much better than questioning. I learned to speak in code from an early age because nothing was safe — even my journals were fair game and read on occasion, the discipline and grief and interrogation coming quickly every time my private thoughts were made public.
So I turned to metaphor.
It’s almost as if I’ve always been an outsider, even though our roots are tangled together.
//
I used to speak in code, but eventually I learned how to speak my truth. I practiced it often, spilling my words across the page, and learned how to articulate the feeling that wrapped around my gut just so. I pulled threads and pushed my hands through the dirt of my psyche and did my best to write my way out.
But then he told me to be careful what I put online, because others might think I lived a life of turmoil as a child. I think back to this now, having a few years of separation, and I laugh at the glaringly obvious deflection. Once again, what was said wasn’t what was meant. What was meant was don’t write about that online. If you write about that, I will have to reflect on my own involvement in this trauma, and I can’t look at myself in that way. I’m not ready. You speaking truth is threatening the family dynamics and so we need you to be silent.
And so I was silent.
For almost ten years, I’ve said nothing.
For almost ten years, I’ve censored myself.
But I cannot do it anymore.
And if this means unrooting the family tree, then so be it.
//
Do I still love Jesus?
The truth is I’ve never loved him more.
You tell me that he was always with me, but I already knew this. I felt him in those darkest moments. But I also felt her, and I had no way of knowing who she was until recently. The Wild Mother, Mary Magdalene, The Tower — the names she’s whispered to me in the quietest moments have been numerous. She is the one who helped me break free. She is the one who helped me see that while I was not alone in the moments of abuse, it does not negate the fact that those who should have protected me did not; some of them even perpetuated the pain.
She points me back to Love, every single time.
And so when I pray, I tap into the elements. I pull in the earth and fire and water and air. I look to the North and the South and the East and the West and remember all over again that there is no limit to Love. I go to the space in my mind where the waves crash against the shore and Jesus pulls me into his arms and kisses my forehead. I listen as he tells me it was him who sent Mary Magdalene to me. I watch as they introduce me to Morrigan, a protector with a crow on her head. And I let the tears wash down my cheeks as I feel them anoint me.
“Tell them I sent you,” Jesus says.
I feel the fire in my hands and in my chest and the breath in my lungs, the Spirit rooting me down to the depths of the ocean and I know that I know that I know…
it is time.
