FINGERPRINTS:

A MONOLOGUE

            When I first met him, he made my knees go weak.  I know that sounds silly, but he did.  He was so different from my dad.  We used to sit in cafes and listen to jazz and discuss books or politics or religion.  Now that I look back on it, I should have seen that what I thought were lively debates somehow seemed more intense for him.  But I remember one conversation in the student lounge very clearly.  We were taking Child Psych together and got into a discussion on how to raise children.  We disagreed about something, and the conversation escalated into a heated argument.  He reached over and grabbed my arm.  As his voice got louder and louder, his fingers got tighter and tighter.  I tried to pull away but that only made him squeeze harder.

            That night, alone in my dorm room, I looked at the fingerprint-shaped bruises on my arm and remembered the bruises on my mother’s face when I was a child.  She covered up those bruises for years and never talked about them;  I think it was because someone convinced her that the Bible said my father had the right to hurt her and she couldn’t leave him.   Well, I’ve read the Bible, and what I think it says is that everyone is a beloved child of God, and no one has the right to do that to someone else.

            The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 5:28 that husbands ought to love their wives as they do their own bodies.  As I looked in the mirror at the bruises on my arm, I decided that even if he would do that to his own body, God and I weren’t going to let him put fingerprint bruises on me.

Deepening Faith:  Youth Ministry Resources and Some Miscellaneous Advice

Rev. Lizann Bassham, Front Porch Spirit Press

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