CHAPTER 31 – THIS FAMILY CALLED MINE: COLOUR US UP

© Opeyemi Akintunde
As Inspired by the LIVING WORD

Aunty Favour shut her eyes and asked us to begin with worship.

She told us to call God beautiful names, to adore Him.She encouraged us to disregard all that we were going through and thank Him for the beautiful things we were still blessed with.

I didn’t hear my sisters’ thanksgiving prayers.

I focused on God’s goodness…the few radiant colours still in my life despite the areas that felt grey and dull. One of my major blessings was the gift of the husband God gave me.

I thanked God for him.
I knew I didn’t deserve him.
His patience over the years was a course worthy of study.

After about five minutes, Aunty Favour continued…

“Next, I want you to ask for forgiveness. Every sin you’ve committed…sins of omission and commission. Then ask for mercy on behalf of your ancestry. The sins committed by your ancestors, from both your mother’s and father’s sides. Ask that the Lord turn His eyes away from those sins and show you mercy.

More specifically, ask for mercy for the bloodshed committed by your father.
Many voices are crying against him…mourning mothers, mourning fathers, aborted destinies.
Children weeping for their parents… helpers never returned to… destinies cut off prematurely.”

Her words hit us with full force.

Suddenly, the true depth of our father’s evil came into full view.

In my spirit, I could almost see him…my father…draining tanks of blood from innocent people, mixing it with colours to paint his success.

“God! Please forgive us for the sins of our father,” I cried.
“Do not look at us through his lens. We are his seeds, but we refuse to partake of his curses.”

I wept bitterly.
I didn’t know about my sisters, but I definitely wanted nothing to do with those paintings anymore.

I needed God to clean up my life and cut me off from every satanic lineage.

“You will pray this loud and clear,” Aunty Favour said.
‘Powers asking me to pay the debt of my father, leave me and let me go…in Jesus’ name!’

The prayer point was clear.
My sisters and I screamed it.
We were not the ones who owed that blood debt…yet we were paying with our joy, our peace, our lives.

Then, like a flash of lightning, I found myself in a burial ground.

The air was heavy.
The sky, grey and silent.

I looked around, confused.
This wasn’t where my mother had been buried… and my father hadn’t even been buried yet.

So what was I doing there?

Then I heard them.

Voices.

Many voices.

“Why are you disturbing us?”

It was a chorus…male, female, child…all speaking at once.

I turned in a slow circle.
Every grave had someone standing on it.
Their eyes trickled blood like tears.Yet, they weren’t grotesque.
They were human…but broken.

“I’m not disturbing you,” I replied, unsure of what was going on.

“Yes, you are!” snapped a child’s voice…clear, bold, far too articulate for a boy who looked no older than four.

“You’re asking for deliverance,” he continued.
“You’re crying for freedom. You’re praying for joy. But your father took all of that from us!”

A teenage girl…no older than 19…spoke through sobs.

“Why are you asking us to stop punishing you and your sisters when your father ruined our lives?
The only reason you’re still alive is because of your mother’s kindness… her prayers before she died.
That’s the only reason.
We agreed to punish you slowly…to keep you alive, but in pain, in endless frustration.”

She wiped her bloody tears with the back of her hand.

“But when you took those cursed paintings and planned to spend the value of our blood like it meant nothing…
We decided it was time.
We would start killing everyone around you…until we got to the four of you.”

A man with eyes like fire nodded solemnly.

“We have been fair, haven’t we?”

I swallowed hard.

Yes… they had.

What they said made painful sense.

I realized I was standing among the victims of my father’s evil….These were the lives Stephen Clarke had sacrificed to add colour to his art.

Their blood had not gone silent…just like the blood of Abel that cried out against his own brother.

“But…” I choked, my voice trembling, “…why punish us?
My father was the one who wronged you.
Why didn’t you take it up with him while he was alive?”

Silence.

Then a voice from the back…low, grave, sorrowful.

“You are his blood.
His identity flows through your veins.When our blood cries out for justice…When the children we left behind cry for missing parents…When the wives we never returned to weep through the night…When our husbands stare at empty beds…Those cries search for justice…through his lineage….Through you.”

My knees buckled.

Tears filled my eyes.
I stretched out my hands in desperation.

“Please… please release me and my sisters. Please…”

But they turned away…one after the other.
Their backs to me.

“Please!” I cried louder.
Desperation clawed at my chest.

“Please don’t turn away!
We didn’t know!
We didn’t know what he had done!Please don’t punish us for what we didn’t choose!”

My voice echoed…but none of them looked back.

“Please…” I sobbed, crawling forward. “Please…”

Then, in a blinding flash…I screamed myself out of prayer.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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