Image via WikipediaI received an email last Friday letting me know that my DNA sample had been received. I felt the anticipation of the results heighten within me. The six to eight week wait will be hard. While I read over the email, tears started streaming down my face, and they were not tears of joy.A feeling that I had subconsciously repressed came rushing forward uncontrollably. A pain so severe and very deep had me so astonished that I could not articulate it. I knew that it had been with me for as long as I could remember, but somehow I had not experienced it so.
So why was I feeling the full weight of it then? Where was it coming from? I wanted it go away. I wanted to push it back to where it had been lying dormant, but I really think someone wanted me to analyze it so that I could understand there are others who carry it unknowingly. There are those who carry it and have not been hindered to the degree it has effected me, and there are others whose lives have been destroyed by it unawares.
All I could do was to utter a prayer for guidance. The answer came quickly. "This is what it feels like to not know where you come from." In my mind, I answered, "But I know I am a child of God." Then the reply came that it was not by design that I or anyone should move through this life not knowing who our ancestors are or where they came from.
Image via WikipediaI was told that I had been shielded from the pain, and I was being shown what that pain felt like. I was told that it was a gift being granted to me to know the places where my ancestors originated. For me, I could look forward with hope and I would not carry this pain any longer even subconsciously.However, many have this subconscious pain, and it is destroying their lives. It was never intended that they should experience the removal of their heritage, and it was never intended that they should know what it felt like to live in a place where they were not accepted wholeheartedly.
I felt the pain surface of what it feels like to have your heritage, your history, the knowledge of who you are, and the knowledge of where you have come from taken away. I felt the pain of what it feels like to have the blood of ancestors run through me whose descendants would be hesitant to claim me. I felt the pain of being able to document them so extensively and not the ones for whom my genetic makeup signifies I am.
When my results come in, I am anxious to know from what part of Africa I am from, but I claim the whole continent. I will be able to study the pre-1800 history and understand the contributions of my forebears and their existence before American chattel slavery. I may never know their names in this life, but this connection will bring me one step closer to who I am. I will be able to discover living people who carry the same mitochondrial DNA.
As hope restored and the pain subsided, I thought of how my family will be blessed by this gift. Then I wondered, am I reaching others who carry this pain? Who is most effected by it? Perhaps it's our youth who struggle and have lost their way. I feel a sense of responsibility because I escaped the paths they now trod mostly because of Divine Intervention. I want to reach those suffering because they do not know who they are. If you do not fall in that category, then please let us continue to search out and help those who do.
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