The Ghosts of a Winter Melody

"You keep track of all my sorrows.  You have collected all my tears in your bottle.  You have recorded each one in your book."  Psalm 56:8

Memories unfold, unlocking old wounds that fade but never fully heal in the recesses of the heart.  Like snowy landscapes covering secrets beneath the murky earth, visions shackled to the attic of consciousness.  Looking back to the winter day long ago holding captive a fifteen-year-old girl with flaxen hair and blue-gray eyes.  She was shadowed by memory monsters stuffed under her bed and shouldered by adolescent uncertainties.  The children's voices that mocked her, naming her "ugly" and "stupid"--cruel words calling her to fade into the cracks.  The sound of the voices that haunted her, pressing into her, and breaking her spirit down.  The pills she took to drown out their taunting cries.  The sister who brought her into the bathroom, begging her to vomit the pain that she swallowed to pierce the edge of her soul.  And she wrote this poem that screamed for redemption from the razor's edge of these regrets.

Sightings

It was January when the hoary beard of slumber 

concealed the earth.

Crystals danced like nymphs on the weathered

Limbs of maples,

And I locked myself in the attic to seek my creeds

Through shattered cracks.

It was January when the other children dusted

Snow angels in their rosy forms.

Their ruby lips savored the succulent icicles

Hanging from my windowsill,

And with blanched fingers, I counted dead roses;

Their needle edges piercing fissures into 

My porcelain palms.

It was January when delicate flurries melted at 

The feet of time.

The people shared their fireside fantasies

Over a cup of soothing cocoa,

And I left my solitude to drape my life 

Over the skeleton arms of the cemetery willow.

"The Lord is near the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."  Psalm 34:18

On a winter's night more than 25 years ago, her soul was crushed yet not abandoned by the Lord's hands that lifted her up by drawing her into His gentle embrace that kept her alive by His willful grace.  A year later, at age 16, she wrote these words in the winter passages of her weathered journal:

Passages

Snow will once again flutter at me feet,

It's difficult to believe that year has passed

Since I last cried for my soul,

My long golden cap protects me.

It hides my shivering ghosts of the past.

No one shall know the truth.

As the wind hisses and

Claws at my hair,

I rush through time.

It's clock thumps in my solemn heart.

I can hardly keep up...

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?"  Psalm 42:5a

The shattered voices followed her into adulthood as she stuffed her sorrows and tucked them away, holding everyone else at bay.  She would not let them in to see the frozen winter gales that robbed her virtue.  Bitterness for the pieces of her life that died with each cutting word and each wrong choice she made.  Turning to the elusive by avoiding the light, she clung to the kaleidoscope hopes that cried out to her for redemption, but she was blinded by these fragments.

Fragments

Broken fragments have fallen before my mangled feet

Like shattered shards of ice scattered upon

The tattered earth on a lost January morning.

I gaze upon these fragments, desolate and alone.

All I can see is icicles;

Gray icicles that fuse into my own gray eyes

In these abstract reflections consuming my life.

My body twisted and contorted in Picasso formations.

I yearn wistfully to feel real and complete again.

Like a child does in the gentle flames of bronze security.

All I can do is lay upon my glacial bed in 

Agonizing meditation.

Could my own security have been this dilapidated quilt

Of faceless images, of uncertain convictions?

Fervently, I attempt to warm my severed form with its security,

But my legs stretch beyond these boundaries of cotton.

Their soft jagged edges will not conform to my size.

I could regress to fetal position,

But that is like a hermit's first breath of the sun--

She could never smother herself with darkness again.

I need to focus on what is real,

But all I can see are these obscure reflections

A circus of dancing images, kaleidoscope dreams.

"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed."  Isaiah 53:5

Freedom sought her out more than two decades after that January day because the God Man held steadfast to her severed soul.  He loved fiercely when she turned her back from His redemption promises and chose the stubborn way. Eventually, He called His beloved prodigal daughter back into His arms of grace. Like the chasing the ghosts of a winter melody, she escaped her past and stepped through the refrain of pierced dreams.  The waves of sorrow sheltered beneath the surface of her facade.  But God in His measure of fresh mercies would draw her into His redemption plan and tear through her being with the molding of His sanctification stone turned to clay.  Burned and baked, she cried for sorrow seeking wholeness to expose the winter ghosts.   Healed by wounds of the Man Who was mocked, beaten, and torn apart.  He bled for her lost heart and wept for her crushed spirit.    Her freedom emerged in stages of grace and forgiveness, chasing the monsters and ghosts away, and releasing the voices taunting her childhood grief.  She offered them up to the bleeding hands and feet that were scarred, bruised, and torn for love and peace.   She could finally rest easy in His tender embrace. Downcast soul lifted out for joy and sweet love for  grace.  The miracle birth for promises whole and complete.  And winter was redeemed into spring...

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."  Revelation 21:4-5