"The Lord replied to Moses, 'Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my Book.'" Exodus 32:33
My feet crunch the leaves, colorless in the night. They are fallen angels smashed beneath the feet of God, singed by the fires of hell. Without warning, a wind comes sighing in through the bony trees, disturbing their branches so that they clack and snap like skeletal fingers. The moonlight laps the naked trees like a tongue - they are nothing but remnants of what they were, dead frozen fingers sticking up out of the grave.
I haven't always been this way. Forever ago and away I was what I am now, but much more...and much less. I was clean, fresh, young. I was naive and unscarred, bright like a summer bird in full and radiant plumage. Saved and sacred, forgiven and redeemed; I was God's child.
...I pray about all sorts of things. I almost began to cry. so conflicting were my emotions. I feel hopeful but also humbled. I can't really describe what I feel, but like a sinner and shamed but also filled with brilliant contentment in Jesus.
Bleak sentences undone/When the gold is shorn/From the Lion of Judah/Lifeblood poured/From the Innocent's veins/Spreading liquid hope/Upon the reaching fingers/Of sinners redeemed/Killers are blind/To Him, to the One/He calls aloud in the throes of death/To forgive those who have covered their eyes/The immovable stone will be moved/The hopeless and deadened will receive, once again/The Light. ("Sacrifice")
And then...
dis-ease
noun, verb, -eased, -easing
-noun
1. a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.
2. any harmful, depraved, or morbid condition, as of the mind or society.
I became sick. Whose fault was it? Was it mine? Is depression the fault of the heart or the body, a chemical imbalance? Is anorexia the fault of the self or the society? Winter breathed, it whispered and I listened to great gales of ice. It froze my summer wings. Parts of me died that even three days could not resurrect. Like a serpent, I shed my skin for the flesh underneath: a new identity of blood and scars, angst and tears.
I feel desperate, as though the devil holds a ticking wristwatch above my aching head. I glance at my arm. The cuts are pink and the skin stained. Memory taunts my stomach, which heaves at the thought of bleach-white and stale hospital reek.
The iodine staining the snowy sheet and my arms, both of them, sickly orange and stinging.
In the Psych ward, they took the laces from my shoes and the tie from my hair. The madman pacing the floor, eyes crossed and rolling, exposing unnatural whiteness like a blind man's.
Once home, the cold rank house air filled with piano key anomalies and the tears on my mother's face.
These days are a snowstorm blur, filled with grey silence, grey scars, and the grey scent of death-dreams.
I healed, as all eventually do. But you find me much altered.
I stand now upon a hill, my skirt fluttering in the wind like a captured banner of independence. The flower-head sun and clouds bewilder the oncoming night. My heart is a sea of wily thought - wandering wonderings of decay and salvation.
The cross around my neck weighs heavily upon me as if it is a shackle to hinder my every movement. I break its thin golden chain and tuck it away, keeping a hand on the area where it has disappeared as if to assure myself of its presence.
The firmament is by now almost completely grey-blue, and the slight fire in the farthest west spreads its roots into the darkness.
Nothing waits for me at the bottom of the hill but the dirty old ghosts of my forebears, come to pay a penny for my thoughts. When they purchase them and discover their mournful sound, they prepare a dirge among them. It is beautiful but desperate, as if they long for my wild spirit to join them, and after listening for a moment, I ignore them.
Samantha, Samantha - they call to me. But I heed them not, and follow instead the last sun-petal that quavers in the increasingly dayless west.
So what now? Is Christopher Hitchens dancing a jig? Does Tim Keller mourn for a sheep newly strayed from the fold? Has God erased me from His Book?
To the Almighty...am I invisible?
Might I say this was very capturing to read. I love how you have ties to religious upbringing. It's something I can always appreciate. And the way you wrote this was just beautiful. Although some parts confused me a little, my favorite part of all was this:
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