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On a ship heading home...
This November I was able ,along with my family, to return to the place where I was raised; to make new memories where only ghosts had resided. We traveled by ship from our present home in Charleston, SC, to St Georges on the islands of Bermuda. Some of my time there as a young boy I could remember but mostly I had blocked out my memory. However returning to this land of coral reefs, pink sand beaches and white limestone roofs over pastel houses, caused those memories to become unveiled,.They rushed back like a flood. The long covered links to a boy who was my son's present age came home to me. It is amazing that once the light could shine on these memories, they enabled that long lost little boy to sprout again, to continue the growth long denied him.I watched my children play on this long a ago landscape and their laughter and joy of being children started to become the memories of that little boy who could not embrace the freedom of being loved and protected in that magical place.He began to laugh with them and run the narrow streets with them. To wade in the clear tropical waters to catch the neon fish. To take delight in being free, with out the constant worry that his scars would be revealed, on pain of death. My soul began to prosper. Then one day, quite by chance ,on a daytour, we passed my old house on Shelly Bay. The very house that I could barely remember was there. The place where all the darkness was. A place of severe injustice The very place where the pictures of the holy family watched from gilded frames the violations forced upon me, with indifference. The pictures from my past were rushing out to me on that tour bus full of tourists taking picture of the present. I reached over and touched my wife and told her that this was the place. It had been my home in the late fifties. Where the sounds of the many lawn parties, and the constant comings and goings of the many guests always helped the pillow to muffle the screams of a small boy in the the back bedroom. No one knew.I would soon be unable to remember. Only the the memory of the holy family looking on would remain. It is one reason I had always assumed that God could not and would not love me. It was some how my fault and their displeasure was so very evident to this small boy that his mind snapped, His memories left him never to return. But the Lord was not displeased with me. He brought me back fifty years later to replace what the canker worms had destroyed. New memories would forever replace the ones that were so dark, so painfull. I remember that which was lost but more than that, I remember the laughter of my children yelling at each other" Thats where daddy lived, wow" And we drove on. I knew I would never be back to this house again. There would be no need. But this time as we moved on , we took an extra child with us. To make new memories with children his own age. We spent four days on the island and then we sailed away. I watched alone on the topmost deck as the tiny island was lost in the vastness of the ultramarine ocean. The Lord in his goodness had indeed provided a way of escape. Only his images were indifferent to my plight so very long ago. I am still trying to grow up in his love. And now one of those obstacles have been removed. And I must also say that I have no regrets. After all it all lead me here, with great memories of time well spent with my family. Of my Father who adores me. Of an ocean made smaller for a ship heading home.
Comments
Jer...How precious of you to share I wish there was a way that the whole world could see this my friend.. I have always found that when something is in the dark it is still there.. but when it comes to the light and we are able to tell the world that is when the healing has come.. Hallelujah!!