I walked home from a night out, my feet were hurting, I took off my boots and then found the familiar white lines in the middle of the road. Equidistant from the alley ways and gates and doors either side of the road, phone in hand, I kept my eyes on my destination, kept walking, opened my door, locked the bottom lock, texted my friend and then I sat down.
This last few days women have been sharing their automatic actions, their engrained ways of protecting themselves, their heightened levels of awareness at all times as the news of the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard has unfolded.
The story has hit women hard because it could be our own story. It's a story of the streets we live in and walk along. It's a story of everything we fear as we walk down the white lines in the middle of the road, hypervigilant, aware and waiting.
It's a story that has brought up memories we have hidden for some time. It is a story that we feel in our guts and it makes us shake.
It's a normal story.
MP Jess Phillips read out the names of the 118 women and girls who have been killed in the past year where men have been convicted as the perpetrator this week in Parliament. You can watch it here
She said:
"Dead women is a thing we've all just accepted as part of our daily lives," she added.
"Dead women is just one of those things. Killed women are not vanishingly rare. Killed women are common."
It's only at moments like these that we feel the full force of this. Each of those women has a name. Each of those women has people who love them. Each of those women is now dead. And it hurts. It shouldn't be normal. It shouldn't be part of our every day lives that when we are walking down the street in the dark on the white lines that we put ourselves in the path of traffic because it feels safer that way.
But it's a normal story. It's not an unusual story. It's why we walk down the white lines in the middle of the road - and we must continue to tell the stories of those women until there are no new stories to tell anymore.
Each of these is women is more than just a number, more than just a name, more than just an inevitable tragedy. As we tell Sarah's story, as the country responds to what happened to her and asks questions and seeks a better way, we pray for that day when new stories are no more.
We lay this brokenness in God's hands.
We take the fear, the anxiety, the deep sadness, and we ask God to hold it for us.
We ask God to heal our land.
We ask God to heal our hearts.
Loving God, we dream of a day when women don't have to walk down the white lines in the middle of the road to feel safe.
We dream of a day where every sudden movement, every shadowy figure is not a threat, does not make our heart race.
We dream of a day when the darkness is not a curfew, when the way home is easy and straight
We dream of a day when that list of names ends for good.
May that day come
May that day come
Healing God, we ask you to take Sarah's family and friends and the community around them under your wings and be their comfort and peace.
We ask you to take the hands of those for whom this story is too close to home and remind them they are not alone. Be their strength.
We ask you to take our tears and our hearts and hold our grief for us.
Heal our Land
Heal our Land
We pray for restoration, we pray for healing, we pray for an end to this.
On that day the wolf will live with the lamb
the leopard will lied down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The infant will play near the cobra's den
and the young child will put its hands in the viper's nest.
They will neither harm or destroy. Isaiah 11:6,8
The woman will walk alone and feel safe
The crowd ahead will just be a crowd ahead
The man behind will be just a man behind
And her feet won't need the white lines to guide them
On that day.
No comments:
Post a Comment