On D-Day

As a younger girl, I heard my mom talk about a girl who wrote a diary and then she died, and her diary was published and my mom had read it. I wanted to read it. It was from decades before I was even born, and she wrote it during a war! "When you're a little older" my mom said.

As a younger girl, I heard my dad tell us about our German heritage and something about Germans killings Jews and that made him always feel so sad that it was "our people" who had done such a horrible thing.

I read that diary. Then I learned about how the whole world went to war because of these German people hating Jews and other people of color. I was disgusted.

Walking through a bookstore my mom points to a book "Oh this is the story of a woman who hid Jews during the war, and she had to go live in a concentration camp for it...there's a movie too". "Can I read it?" I asked having now felt a hunger for information on everything surrounding this period in time. "Yeah" she said. And so I did. Then we watched the movie as a family. That's when my dad said the thing about being German and I connected to this some faint memory of visiting his German born grandmother when I was little.

As a grown woman I sat at a kitchen table as I learned that, after this young girl married an American bugler who's heart went ugly and died but who's name I carry as my identity even now, helped the allies gain insight into the land where she'd learned to walk but away from which she'd had to flee. She aided in providing them with such things they could not learn without the mental tour of a native born.

In these younger days, roots of realization plunged their way down into my soul: there was true, unadulterated evil rampant in humanity and I had begun to understand not just what some of it could look like but that it was, indeed, my people that had begun such horror for one part. I began to develop a self awareness that I should dare not EVER esteem myself higher than another - for the truth exists that my genetic proximity to evil is just too dangerous a game for me to play. Pride destroys, and if my own people were not just capable but culpable, then I, by reasonable logic, could also be the same.

For the rest of my adolescence and some years after, my mind devoured any information I could find about all this. Something in me knew it was important. Something was needed for me to know it, and it wasn't just morbid curiosity although I definitely lived some shock as I read volume after volume of horrors that seemed so awful they had to be fake or their tellers had to be lying.

I just filed it all away growing less conscious of it but carrying it with me every step that I tread through my own journey of time. At any point that I ever saw injustice, it would fly to the front of my consciousness again giving power to my passion and purpose to my words - sometimes spoken, sometimes written, but this mostly lay dormant.

Until it didn't.

On a day I can't recount because I cannot mark it with specificity, I heard the voices of these women in my heart. I felt their strength flex in the muscles of my own body. I sensed and shared their hope and resolve. I hadn't realized they'd given me these things, moreover I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would need them, but I did. I never knew that evil could not just exist but stare me in the face with eyes so empty, my blood ran cold. I never knew that people's lies could ever be so convincing that knowing souls would choose to turn their heads rather than bloody their hands for my sake. I never knew I would stand on a patch of dirty floor in a building that was far from my home and realize that I was alone. No one who loved me could get to me to help. They were hundreds of miles away. They couldn't get to me now.

I was alone.

And then I felt it. I felt the truth of the words scrawled across paper by the hands of Anne Frank give me wind to push out of my lungs to speak a voice I'd thought was forever silenced. I felt the sheer perseverance of Corrie Ten Boom - my absolute supreme human hero - cause the muscles of my once weakened spirit squeeze together to push me up onto my feet and walk more steps on my way to the land of stability. I felt the mind and choice of Margaret Schaefer push around all the thoughts of things I knew to help put the pieces right and make things change. And so we traveled together. For years.

I thought that I had learned my lessons well enough that evil in my tiny world would be vanquished and peace would reign for the rest of time as I knew it.

SMACK! The slap of evil struck me when I wasn't ready. Looking around in my world while the skin still stung, I tried to find the eyes of those I knew who had seen this truth happen and I saw a bunch of turned heads and squeaky clean hands.

SMACK! My skin stung again. SMACK! The slaps grew into punches as my life grew more and more bruised until I lay weeping in my kitchen floor as I scorned God and begged for His mercy in the same sob. I felt sure my pleading and the truth of who I'd chosen to be would have God reach down and sort things out so justice would have it's way and peace would be more than a fantasy. No. Evil kicked as I lie there in a heap shoving it's steel toed force deeper into my soul's already broken ribs.

I couldn't get up. I had nothing left. How could evil be this strong? How could God, MY God - my Abba, let this continue?! How could so many whose words could right things in a blink so comfortably turn their heads and drown out the sound of my sobs with the noise of their own comfort?

Where was God? How could this be? What did I matter? What purpose was there for me here? How could I have ever viewed myself as the daughter of a King - a princess? How could I be such a fool? Why should I ever try ever again? What could my life ever even be?

And then the borrowed memories of their written words and spoken stories courses their way over the dusty lies being spoken in my soul. I saw Anne never losing sight for the sunshine despite having been thrust into a world of dismal grey. I saw my widowed great grandmother sitting in her home choosing to answer the questions of men she'd never met and making the choice to betray a world that held evil in its hands at the cost of her own family.

And then I heard Carrie's voice. As far as I've ever been aware, there are no existing audio recordings of the voices of Anne Frank or my great grandmother, but we have those treasures for the voice of Corrie Ten Boom. I thought about all her time of hiding Jews in her own home to the grueling periods of her time in work camps that claimed her whole family, and I thought "No. No. Nothing in my life - as broken as my heart is and will always stay and as devastated and confused as I feel about evil having such freedom to roam at my life's expense, I will NEVER know the horrors and the pain and the hate that had to be overcome by the people who endured these things. So if Corrie was able to come to the point of saying that God's love was stronger than her hate and choose to pray for vile men and women who cost her everything she held dear with a cruelty I will never see, then I must follow that example.

On this day 74 years ago, while all of the oppressed still suffered under the weight of evil, completely unbeknownst to them, the boots of the allies scraped their way into the sand of the beach of Normandy. Armed with weaponry and strategy far superior to anything the enemy had in hand, the conquered the battle, and the push of each boot across the ground began to change the landcape Of everything that was about to follow. While in their racks full of disease and lice and death, these souls held within their future the vanquishing of their oppression. They couldn't hear it or see it or know it, but it was on the way because D-Day happened. After that day, evil was held at bay while the doors of these prisons were swung open and people were allowed to once again build a life!

I cannot help but see the parable here for myself. I am humbled at the thought that I could personally apply any portion of this to my own existence, but I feel like I would be remiss if I did not.

I cannot see only the evil. I cannot choose only the hate. I cannot narrow my gaze so close that all I see is where I stand right now with the shackles on my heart and life and the disease of all I've lost. I cannot believe the lie that my Father has left me to die. Corrie and so many others lived through these things and chose to asxhew the miopathy of their present pain, and it's so good that they did, because just as true as it was that allied forces invaded and overtook the foothold of the evil then and changed history for it, I also do not now know what battles my Father wages on my behalf. He promises to do it. So dare I do this and choose to be a servant of His hope? Dare I choose to live believing the promise that this is not the last chapter to my own history? Do I square my shoulders with this knowledge that my own D-Day is coming because, as a royal heir, I stand promised that truth?

It could go either way, I guess. I could choose either one, but if Corrie Ten Boom has tread a path more treacherous, then I can be honored to tread the one I'm on.