When I was in high school, I fancied myself a poet. I still write poetry now, but now I really focus on other forms of written expression. I fell in love with poetry and met a sad, melancholy poetess, Sylvia Plath. In the midst of my teen-age angst I felt like Sylvia Plath understood me--and her sadness reflected my own. How wrong I was… thankfully.
I read and fell in love with a poem called "Lady Lazarus" that Plath wrote towards the end of her life. She talks about having become an "expert at dying…" though she never quite succeeded--until attempt #3. (But I don't think she ever meant to kill herself--comparing herself to a cat with 9 lives. Maybe she was just trying to release some of her demons and pain. I am no expert, so take that for what it's worth!) She compares her pain to the plight of the Jews in Hitler's Europe, and being a walking miracle.
She also compares herself to Lazarus from the bible--raised from her own death. I, too, am my own Lady Lazarus, but not for the same reasons Plath dubbed herself Lady Lazarus. You see, I too died and have been spared through no effort of my own. You see, I was saved from death by this amazing enigma called grace. For Plath, her saviors were the humans who saved her from physical death. And though she sought reprieve from her own anguish and darkness, she did not find it.
I died. I was raised. But my savior is Jesus Christ. I am saved from something worse than death--but I am saved from the eternal separation from God. Hell. I have been granted reprieve from anguish, darkness and my sorrow has been assuaged. I no longer cry out in loneliness for something "more." I have it.
Plath says, in Lady Lazarus, "A sort of walking miracle, my skin" which is about the only part of this poem I now identify with--I am a walking miracle. How can I be alive and dead at the same time? I am. I am my own Lady Lazarus.
My Own Lady Lazarus
A sort of walking Miracle, my skin*
covered in grace that lives.
Covered by blood that forgives.
But I, a woman on my own,
am not alone.
Hand in hand we walk.
A heart that is yours.
Seeking to be sought.
Sought while seeking.
Raised again out of darkness, sorrow
no longer my companion.
A sort of walking miracle*
Thankfully.
Covered in grace that lives.
Blood that forgives.
*Line borrowed from "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
