I have my good days and bad days.

On my good days, my mind rolls back, and a panorama of images play across the back of my eyelids.

I see my carefree, young self, running and exploring, back in the hills behind our home. 

I hear the crickets playing their raspy, violin-like tunes, and, as I sit back and relax, I can feel the warm sun soaking through me, warming me while the air remains crisp and cold all around me.

On my good days, I remember my mother.  I can still picture her thick, dark tresses falling around her beautiful face, the face that always made my father look like he owned the world, when he looked upon it.

I remember my mother’s love for me, her firstborn.

I remember climbing the hills behind our home, and, on a bright, clear day, looking down and westward into the bluest sea.  I hear it’s the high salt content in it that reflects the deep blue from the sky so perfectly.

I remember how delectable the marine life was from its waters.  In later years, it would come to be known that the water in our sea only exchanged with the outside water every 100 years or so, creating a nutrient rich habitat for thousands of species to thrive in.

I remember so well that I can almost feel it now.   The wind would start its march around the dial, going from our winter westerly wind towards the springtime easterly wind, bringing in the tangy, far-off smell of salt and foggy mornings.  Our crops couldn’t help but grow when the wind turned like that.

But on my bad days, I’m bound in time and place, and my memories stick fast in my mind like flaming darts, thrown from a skillful opponent.

My world gets smaller and smaller on my bad days.

I think of all that is lost.

I think of my mother, who died in childbirth with my younger brother when I was eight years old.

I think of how my dad, so in love with her, never was the same afterwards.

I think of how we sort of just existed for a time there; how we really didn’t have any purpose at all.

I think of my older brothers, and how bent on cruelty they could be when the mood crossed them.

I remember the horrible hot winds that blew in from the desert way back behind our place.  The crops and livestock suffered terribly on those days.  Sand covered everything, and slowly snuffed life out.

On my bad days, I ache for my lost mother, and, more recently, my lost father.

My mind tends to get stuck in place, though, and it carves a rut that it can’t jump out of as I go over and over again, the events of that one horrific day, back when I was 17 years old.

I try to think what I could have done differently.

I think of each word I said and wonder what I could have said otherwise.

I try to remember if there was any opening, anywhere, where I could have made a run for it.

The gaping chasm left in my life, from that day on, will never go away or be healed over.

I remember the dread I felt at being locked away, and hearing the footsteps of those I knew and who I thought loved me, fading slowly off in the distance.

I remember so well, the next morning, hearing new footsteps arrive.  For a second, I dared to hope, but when they spoke, and I couldn’t understand their language, I knew all bets were off.

We made do with crude sign language for the first while, as they took me away and made me their property.

And now, after what seems to be an even worse outcome than I ever could have imagined, I am here, over 200 miles away from my homeland and family, if, indeed, any of them remain.

Here, where it is cold and damp all the time.

Here, where I never see or feel the warm sunshine like I did as a child.

Here, where my feet touch the other side of the room before my legs ever really stretch out.

On my bad days, I see my once young and strong body slowly wasting away.

I see my skin go from supple tan to ashen yellow.

I see sores appear and I watch flies dig away at the center of them. 

I make guesses with myself, as to whether I’ll die from starvation, lack of the will to live, or infection from where the iron bands are cutting into my ankles, just a little more each day.

And yet.

My good days are more than my bad days.

Because there is a Presence that I sense each day sitting near me, holding my hand, and ministering to my wounds.

On those days the pain in my ankles isn’t so great.

On those days, I feel more than healing. 

I feel an urgency from him who sits by me to remain. 

To make it. 

To prepare myself for what may lie ahead.

At times I feel him test me on my faith and I see it stretch out to the thinnest of lines between us before he comes near to me and adds to my faith that of his own.

I look at my ankles, and I know I’ll probably always walk with a limp, should I ever go free from this place, but it’s okay.

Because his presence and his words are with me, both now and in whatever we face together in the future.

I am Joseph, whose feet they hurt with iron.

Psalms 105:18-19