The Aftermath
The Aftermath
Mary Madeline Schumpert
I will recount my story of everything tumbling down, but only if You promise to repeat it back to me in a way that makes sense. At least on that One Day, someday not even Your Son knows. Won’t You offer some clarity of the why’s and how’s and who’s? Unravel the damage, surrey the losses, point out the Grace, please, My God. I can’t survive this repetition without that promise. It will turn into insanity.
My imagination is huge but even it can’t seem to wrap its optimism around something this broken. I am finally arriving at things insurmountable. They all said this day would come. You must have some type of math I’ve never heard of. Every angle I think it over I come up in the red with joy and clarity. You said I would see Your goodness here, in the land of living? Well, can you prove it? I am beginning to think maybe you white-lied. Maybe it’s in Neverland, never finding its way to us until death.
Right here? Really? Where I lay my head at night? Where I peel my apples and count my losses? I’ve always been directionally aloof, hard of hearing too. Maybe I misheard. Took a wrong turn. Found myself in a life not my own. Maybe that’s what this is all about. Take my hand and pull down the winding path, or least tell me where a girl can get a map. Stop with all the hide and seek. I’ve grown out of that.
“You will find me when you seek me with all your heart,” You play me back.
Well, I’ll drag it to You. It’s heavy and barely beating. I found it washed up on the shore of my tears. I’m holding it up high, as far as I can, calling on You to do just like you said.
And somehow, someway, You do. You make me feel like growing, upward to the sky and downward, into the cool Earth, hidden. Like oddly enough, the stars sparkle happier in the night, and One Day, they will all gather together and turn into Your face, the Sun high and happiest. Like You could altogether undo me and I still somehow would come away more whole than before. For now, You offer no answer but Yourself. And somehow, someway, this is only math that makes any of this aftermath add up. He is the only thing that seems like enough.
How do You make magic from mud? Play it back for me, one more time, the genesis of us. I think this promise is woven strong in there, something about man from dust. Something about faith. Maybe trust?
I’d like to settle where You are. Move into Your mind. Make my grave in Your love. Bury myself in Your point of view, arise twinkling with things unseen.
I think that’s exactly what I’ll do.
Mary Madeline Schumpert
Author & Poet
Mary Madeline is the author of Contemplations of a Collegiate Christian. She has been published on Rooted Ministries, United House Publishing, and was named Feature Writer of the Year for the Southeastern Collegiate Journalism Conference. You can find more of her words on her social media @earthtomm.
Photography by Silas Baisch