Mists of Time
The faith of my youth
This post is a reprint of my story published in the October issue of Paddler Press. At first, I was terrified to submit this piece to a magazine, not because I feared rejection, but because I didn’t want to be “seen” by strangers. Let alone by friends.
When the editors accepted it, I was thrilled. Then I read it again. The imaginary critic wandering the edges of my brain started whispering, don’t show this work anymore. It’s terrible.
Nevertheless, when Dusk Daughter launched her second stack with heartfelt, honest words about her faith in Three Sixteen, I thought, it’s time to stop hiding. Just post it, and don’t worry about good, bad, or indifferent. Just speak.
Apparently, I am getting a little better at ignoring the hostile, contentious voice in my head, you know the one that rattles the voices you hear from your ghosts. The belligerent ego who cannot stand it if your attention is focused somewhere away from it. The insecure creature who doesn’t believe in the magic of words and messages from elsewhere.
My words flow as languid streams of consciousness when I travel to past lives. Not often, mind you, just when I am able to open the padlocked gates to my memories.
Time trickles through my fingers | I dream of deeds I’ve planned | When I am gone, what will be left | a little pile of sand. Lilian Stockton Edmonds | c. 1920 | b. 1884 | d. 1966
My grandmother is calling me from the past. How much time do I have to return to the faith of my youth? The century-old, hidden poems I discovered in her Civil War desk are exquisite ones of lost love, wasted time, regret, and faith rattling against the bones of her memories as she lies in her grave.
Must I remember everything? Forgive all before I can return to my Father in heaven? Lord knows I cannot return to the one on earth—he died when I was only twenty-four. We scattered his ashes in his favorite boyhood creek in 1974. No grave to visit. He does not even have an urn with an angel praying over him like the one I found for my older sister. White clay guardian with hands clasped in front of her tiny wooden coffin as she rests beside my bed.
I say goodnight to Penelope every evening—along with offering a silent prayer I do not believe in anymore. I want her adored, kept safe, embraced until I arrive, should that happen. But I am in doubt as to any of it being real. Faith eludes me at the moment.
Writing in burgundy ink, I am my grandmother filling pages in a leather-wrapped journal packed with thick, handmade, linen paper. Only hers are crumbling and yellow with age—brittle skeletons of a life begun in 1884. A few of her lines scratched out and edited, but never shared.
The poet urges me to take her place in my old age. To write, remember. Forgive myself for the paths I chose without discernment. Forgive those I have not been able to forget. I believe she is warning me.
“You must do this before you die,” she whispers. “You’ve abandoned your faith. Search again.”
Remembering the trials of Saint Teresa, who lost her faith for decades, I think, perhaps this is my test. It’s just … I don’t believe that—not anymore. I believe my forgetting is a choice I make. To give up on the God I’ve spent half my life chasing and then leaving behind. Can I find the strength, the courage to believe once again what I can never know? Before my time is up.
Only a few years younger than my grandmother was when she died at age eighty-two, I might not have years to rekindle my faith—to believe without doubt, if such a thing is still possible for me. Maybe that is why my grandmother hounds me.
She begs me to pick up what she abandoned. She won’t leave me alone.
“Write poetry, create short stories. Work out your memories on paper. Be brave. Do not quit the way I did when my beloved died. Believe again. Achieve what I could not. I have left you the path with my words.”
Stalling any longer is useless. Lilian the elder calls me to my task. Or perhaps, the gift of faith I was handed as a child is calling me back?
It chased me when I was in my forties. Lost. Then after a while, I abandoned it for the second time. I suppose it doesn’t matter which one of my ghosts I hear in my old age.
“Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” —James 4.14 (Bible: English Standard Version)
I must answer. It is time. Drifting on my grandmother’s rosewater—the scent of my childhood, I bury my nose in the warmth of her neck. I am four years old, and for a moment, eyes closed, I remember faith. Believing without knowing. He waits for me to return to Him.
Can I hold on to faith one day at a time? I pray it will not matter in the end, as long as each time I fail, I try, yet again.
“He waits for me to return to Him.” Yes. And he is patient. X
I love your writing so much Waving. ❤️ Dm me if you want to talk. We could solve all the problems of the world. :)