less than human

There are things you want to write sometimes and can't. Or don't know how to.

I have discovered that when someone consistantly treats me as less than human over a period of time, there comes a point at which I do not know what to do.

I want to remain able to talk and to speak as if all were well. But I am so grieved, I cannot speak at all. It is not anger. I am not angry. I have been angry - for sure; but I have faced raw anger across from me and I do not want to share in it. It's not who I am; it's not who the Lord allows me to be. I see and understand the pain in faces that reduce me to this sub-human status, this less-than-life. I have tried to reach out, to help, to bring peace. But peace exists between peoples. For there to be peace here, it is not up to me any more; others have to see I too am a person and begin again to learn how to treat me as one.

So I do not know what to do. In a social setting, in a chance meeting, even by email, I find myself speechless. Unable to communicate. Frozen, inarticulate, unacting. Aware I appear to be blanking people; I am not blanking people. It is beyond a question of choice.

CS Lewis once wrote - "How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?" I do not know what to do; but here is my prayer. That those of whom I write and for whom I pray, for whom I pray dearly in their own situation, would see again I too have a face. That we may one day yet again meet face to face.