The wind lashes Golgotha.
It lifts dust over a world that can no longer reach me. It tears at my flesh like a starving animal. My wounds burn. Blood slips away like sand through a shattered hourglass. My vision blurs, but from up here I can still make out the crowd: cold strangers, some curious, some disgusted, others simply indifferent.
I remember the days I walked among them like a shadow. I fought to take for myself what no one ever freely gave me: safety, love, a place in the world.
I was a survivor.
The first time I had to fend for myself, my hands were too small to carry the weight. I stayed silent when I was told to stay silent. I clenched my teeth when I wanted to cry. I learned to keep moving when all I wanted was to stop.
I carved my way through life with a knife between my teeth, stealing whatever I could: a smile of recognition, a moment of peace, another chance.
And yet, here I am.
On a cross.
At the end of the road.
What have I left behind? Who will remember me now? And how?
All the running. All the fighting. All the desperate effort to prove that I was strong, that I could make it on my own…
Every step had led me here.
Beside me hangs Someone else.
I knew Him only through rumors, but only now do I truly see Him.
He hangs on the same kind of cross, pierced by the same nails.
And yet… He is different.
Did He also live as a stranger? Did He fight people who never saw His true worth?
He does not look defeated.
His eyes are clear, as though they are fixed on something beyond death itself.
On His other side hangs another thief.
Another cross.
Another set of nails.
He laughs.
Only bitterness spills from his mouth.
“If You are who You claim to be, come down from that cross! Save Yourself… and us!”
Part of me wants to shout the very same words.
Life has been unfair to me. I deserved more.
I look at Him.
And for the first time…
I let go of the fight.
I no longer want to steal from others what I believe I deserve.
I no longer bite into life with desperation.
I simply ask Him,
out loud,
“You…
will You remember me?”
He turns His head and looks straight into my soul.
There is no judgment in His eyes.
No sentence.
Only a tenderness and a love that tear through me more deeply than the nails in my hands.
“Today, you will be with Me.”
The beauty in His eyes hurts more than all the blows life has ever dealt me.
Here, where my body is failing,
my soul awakens.
And for the first time,
I let myself be carried.
Without fighting.
Without stealing what was never mine.
Without running.
I do not know what Paradise is.
I have never had a place to call my own.
But if it is with Him,
that is enough.
For the first time,
I am truly seen.
Without a mask.
Without sin wrapped around my weary body like a burial cloth.
There is only Him.
Only me.
And a promise
I choose to believe.
I close my eyes.
Instead of dying,
I am born again.
I surrender myself into the hands of a love that makes no sense,
and yet somehow holds me together.
I did not find salvation in struggle,
but in surrender.
Not in strength,
but in the gentleness of a single today filled with love.
And at last,
I am free.