Precious

I saw the movie Precious last night and can't stop thinking about it. If you don't know, its a story about a young African American girl who through grace, strength, hope, keeps putting one foot in front of the other in the face of terrible abuse and violence. She is very obese, only 16 and pregnant with her second child from her father. She lives in a small apartment in Harlem with her mother who hits and yells at her, tells her she is stupid and dumb, an animal that shouldn't have been allowed to live. Her three year old daughter has down syndrome and lives with her grandmother. She is teased at school, can barely read, and has just about nothing to keep her going in life.

Sounds like a fun movie to see, right?

But, Precious (the girl) has such strength, humility, hope that incredibly we are uplifted by her ability to love, the courage to learn, to trust. She is perfectly beautiful in her largeness and blackness. She keeps going to the alternative school, learns to read and write, reads to her new baby son every day. She tells her son that he is very much loved. She finds love to give him even though she didn't receive anything close to such love from her mother or father. She walks away from the mother that hated her, trusting in the graciousness of strangers (a teacher, a social worker, a nurse assistant) that she has a right to a good life for her and her children.

Her story is a testament to how much we have inside, our birthright, God, to fill all the holes and heal the wounds, share the love we didn't know we had to give.