A modern midrash on wounded girls, sacred lineage, and a God who enters through tenderness.

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Christina has brown, curly hair that never quite stays where it’s supposed to. It springs loose around her face, like it’s trying to keep up with her thoughts. Her eyes dance when she’s excited — not in a loud way, but in that quick, flickering way children have when the world still feels full of possibility. And when she smiles, people notice. It’s the kind of smile that makes adults soften without realizing why.

Christina melts into hugs. Not the polite kind — the full-body kind. Arms wrapped tight, cheek pressed in, breath syncing with yours. She loves animals, especially the wounded ones. The limping dog. The stray cat. The bird with the crooked wing.

She asks questions about everything:
why the moon follows the car,
where ants go at night,
whether God can hear you underwater.

And Christina is lonely.

Not in the obvious way. There are people around her. Adults who smile. A mother who is tired but loving. A house with noise in it, and dinner on the table, and a man who tells jokes and brings treats and seems kind.

But Christina has a loneliness that lives deeper — the kind that comes from being tender in a world that doesn’t know how to hold tenderness.

She is the kind of child who leans toward warmth.
The kind who trusts easily.
The kind who believes that charm means safety.

Her mother wants to believe that too.

The man is easy to like. He listens. He helps. He remembers details. He offers to take Christina places, to give her attention, to fill the spaces where her mother is stretched thin and overwhelmed.

He seems like a gift.
A blessing.
A relief.

And Christina, who has always longed to be seen, steps into that attention like sunlight.

At first, nothing feels wrong.
Just special.
Just chosen.
Just… finally important.

But children don’t have language for when the world quietly shifts its rules.

They only know when something in their body starts to feel confusing.
When warmth and fear get tangled.
When affection stops being simple.
When the place that used to feel safe becomes a place their nervous system tries to escape — even while their heart still wants to please.

Christina doesn’t become a different child overnight.

She becomes quieter.
More watchful.

She still smiles — but now it’s a practiced smile.
She still hugs — but her body doesn’t melt the same way.
She still loves animals — but especially the ones who flinch.

She learns things no little girl should have to learn.
Not as facts.
But as sensations.

She learns that:
being loved can cost you.
that adults don’t always protect.
that her body is not fully hers.
that God feels farther away than she thought.

And because she is a child, she doesn’t say:
Something was done to me.

She says:
Something is wrong with me.

So she carries it forward.

Into adolescence, where her tenderness becomes volatility.
Into womanhood, where her longing becomes hunger.
Into relationships where love feels urgent, and safety feels boring, and boundaries feel like abandonment.

Sometimes she tries to disappear.
Sometimes she tries to control everything.
Sometimes she gives her body away, hoping it will finally earn what her heart wanted in the first place:
to be held without being taken.

And somehow — somehow — she still believes in a good God.

Not the easy God.
Not the tidy God.

But a God she suspects must exist, because the alternative is too unbearable.

She hears about Jesus.
About the way he looks at women.
About the way he touches the untouchable.
About the way he never confuses power with love.
About the way he doesn’t ask for bodies — only for hearts.

And something in her recognizes him before she understands why.

It feels like:
the first safe nervous system she’s ever encountered.
the first authority who does not demand.
the first man whose attention does not cost her herself.

She doesn’t know it yet, but Christina is standing in a very old line of women.

Women like Tamar,
who was used and then blamed.

Women like Rahab,
who survived the world the only way she could.

Women like Ruth,
who gleaned at the edges and hoped for kindness.

Women like Bathsheba,
whose body was taken by power.

Women like Mary,
a young girl whose life was rewritten by forces beyond her control.

Women like Mary Magdalene,
whose story was reduced to shame until Jesus spoke her name.

This is the lineage God chose.

Not the pure.
Not the untouched.
Not the unbroken.

But the ones who were wounded and kept breathing.
The ones who learned to survive.
The ones who still, somehow, believed love was possible.

Christina is not a deviation from the story.

She is the story.

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This piece is offered as a lament, a lineage, and a gentle re-storying for anyone whose nervous system still carries memories their mind wishes it didn’t. May it be a place to rest, not perform.