It is well
by Nikki Weaver
Trigger warning for abuse (physical/emotional), religious trauma
When peace like a river, attendeth my way
I am six years old, curled beneath my father’s arm. My brother is eight, my sister is four. We lay on my sister’s twin bed the wrong way, our feet hanging off the edge. It is night. Soon, I will go up the ladder to my top bunk and fall asleep facing the yellow wall painted with pink flowers. But right now, we whisper in the dark. My father sings a hymn and draws slow circles on my arm, the ragged edges of his fingernails rasp over my skin in a way that almost hurts. We ask for stories. He tells us about the restaurant he used to work at before he went to college, before he left Pennsylvania, before he met my mother, before we existed. Even though we beg for the same stories every night, his life before us is a fairytale I never get tired of listening to. I hear the heat kick on—the groaning of the walls, the rushing of warm air through our vent. My sister is a dead weight next to me, her bare leg hot where it touches mine beneath our matching blue and pink nightgowns. I hear my mother in the other room, slamming drawers and talking to herself. She is angry. I know this, and I understand it is because of us, lying peacefully in the dark. In the morning, she will taunt and scream, but right now she can’t reach us.
When sorrows like sea billows roll
I am seven years old, standing outside the closed door of my brother’s bedroom. My sister and I hold hands. I am listening, counting the strikes. I am preparing myself, trying to estimate the pain before it is my turn. My crimes? Touching a toy on the shelf at the store. Humming a song during breakfast. Talking back when given an instruction. I am gathering my apologies in my hands to offer up to my father, along with my tears. Please don’t. Please, I’m sorry. It never works, but I try every time. He quotes Proverbs chapter thirteen verse twenty-four and I have nothing to say in answer. It is the Bible. It is Law. My father doesn’t yell, or scream like my mother. But he hits so much harder.
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say
I am eight years old, and I am stuck at the dining room table. My sister sits to my right, my brother to my left. We are supposed to be doing math. This is the same day playing over and over like a song left on repeat. I am sick of listening to it. My father is working upstairs in his room, and my mother is at the store. She told us we are not allowed to leave the table under any circumstances. Unless the house is on fire. We are homeschooled, which used to mean sitting on the couch with my father slowly sounding out words and syllables, or counting and stacking colourful blocks with my mother. Now it means sitting in silence at the dining room table with my books and teaching myself. It means quietly helping my sister with her lesson instead of my mother, who will scream at her. My sister will cry, and my mother will scream louder, and I’ll never get my own lesson done in time for dinner. It means begging my brother to explain a concept just one more time so I don’t have to go upstairs and stand at my father’s desk with trembling hands and teary eyes. I think that if I get off my chair, my mother will never know, but I also think that it is not worth the risk. I think of setting the house on fire.
It is well, it is well, with my soul
I am nine years old, and my father hands me a trash bag. We are cleansing the house. I pretend to understand; I pretend to be wise; I pretend to be holy. We have been asked not to return to church after my father handed out old books the leaders didn’t agree with. Recently, my father met a man who is teaching him the true way of life. How to receive miracles and healings from God and how to enter into communion with the most high. My father follows him, and I do not know how to disagree, or why I would. I try my best to believe, to follow. I walk around the house and crush my treasures into the trash bag. I give them up and I don’t cry. My Tinkerbell piggy bank with light blue wings; my favourite books about glittering unicorns and secret worlds; DVDs I watch over and over when I am sick; dolls with colourful rubber dresses and matching shoes; stuffed animals I hold when I sleep. My little sister cries over her jewelry box, and I comfort her. God has a blessing for us. I really believe it.
It is well (It is well)
I am ten years old when my parents, churchless and clinging to the old man’s teachings, buy a house to be our church. We clean it, decorate it, and then worship in it. Four or five times a week, we are there. It smells like burning sugar, sharp and painful. It hurts my head, my sister’s, and my brother’s. We sit in the basement and try to play quietly. On Sundays, we sit upstairs with the adults and try to avoid my mother’s glare. We fall asleep on straight-backed dining room chairs two hours into evening services, then apologize fervently in the car on the way home. I believe when everyone says this is what God has planned for us. I do not complain.
With my soul (With my soul)
I am eleven years old, and I am cleaning the faith home. It is late on Saturday afternoon, the setting sun pouring liquid gold through the windows. I am usually in charge of yard work and mopping the kitchen, but tonight my sister and I get to clean upstairs where the woman lives. The self-appointed caretaker. She is in her mid-sixties with silver bangs and silver hair that curls at the edges. She wears cardigans, only buttoned once at the top, and black mary janes. She follows us upstairs, doting on my little sister, caressing her blonde hair. “What if you just stayed here with me?” she asks. I look at her sharply, thinking this is my sister and you can’t have her, but she doesn’t notice. The room we clean is full of porcelain dolls and Jesus statues. White chipped skin and agony carved in wood.
It is well, it is well, with my soul
I am twelve years old, and the faith home crumbles. The caretaker steals a husband from a wife. When he leaves her, she marries a boy forty years younger than her. One by one, she bans our little congregation from returning. Her reasons vary. You wore sandals to Sunday Service. Your skirt was too short. You dishonored God. Your prayer was disrespectful. You aren’t holy enough to be here. We go from being at the faith home five times a week to zero. My father invites the congregation into our house instead, and she despises it. She drives her sky blue Sudan up and down our street, trying to see through our windows. She corners my older brother at junior college. She finds us when there is no escape. This woman was revered by my parents as a saint. We don’t know what to say when she turns on us.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come
I am thirteen years old. We have no church to go to, so my father makes his own. He, the pastor, and my family, his faithful followers. Sunday evenings are when the congregation gathers at our house, but that’s not enough. Every morning, the five of us sit at the kitchen table with our Bibles, reading Psalms aloud in a circle. We study an old book about a priest who lies on a bed of nails for God. I try to understand it: how God wants us to be happy and how God wants us to suffer. I imagine laying on nails. I imagine the sharp points on the soft skin of my back. I think about how I gave up my treasures for God years ago. I think of the abuse I’ve suffered in the name of God. I wonder if it counts as enough suffering.
Let this blest assurance control
I am fourteen years old and now old enough to stay upstairs on Sunday evenings. Laying on my top bunk in my room, I can hear them in the living room. There are seven or eight people, all excommunicated from the faith home like us. They sing, my father preaches, and they wait on God in long silences that stretch. Someone starts singing again and their voices overlap as they lift them in praise. I hear my father on the stairs. I jump up and rifle through my closet of modest dresses and skirts that go past my knees. It’s all I am allowed to wear these days. I throw on a skirt as my father knocks on the door. He’s long since given up on my older brother, but my sister and I are required to come down for communion every week. We follow him down and take our seats. When he begins reading from Mark chapter fourteen, I retrieve the plate of crackers and walk slowly around the room. Then I go back for the wine, which is my least favourite. No matter how steady I try to walk, the red juice sloshes in the tiny cups. I have nightmares about spilling it.
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate
I am fifteen years old, and I am standing at the front of a church next to my sister. We are only visiting, yet my mother has offered us up like a sacrifice. We are singing a hymn, my voice high and clear as the words come to me from memory. My sister spins a harmony around me, her voice dipping down three notes, then rising again. The congregation is smiling. My mother is watching us, waiting for a mistake that will not come. I do not know what I feel at this moment—self-consciousness perhaps, with a touch of pride. I only know for sure that I am relieved when it is over. A woman tells us our voices are anointed by God. She tells us not to lose His blessing. I try to notice what she hears the next time we sing, but all I can hear is the sound of our voices. It is beautiful, but I am not sure it is anointed.
And hath shed His own blood for my soul
I am sixteen years old when I meet a boy at church camp. He’s my brother’s friend, and he stares at me when I serve meals in the dining room. During meetings, three times a day, I catch him watching me sing or flip through my Bible. I am delighted with the attention. I meet him in the library before supper to talk. I practice piano in front of him. I smile more than I have in years. My mother catches my arm on my way to the beach. She tells me to be careful. I wish she would leave me alone. Anything that makes me happy spites her.
It is well (It is well)
I am seventeen years old, and I am bored to death. I sit in the living room next to my mother who pinches me every time I start to slouch. We are waiting on God, which means sitting in silence for hours. I watch the sun set behind the blinds; run my fingers over the spiral binding the hymn book, stare at the lamp until the shape of light makes colours when I close my eyes, count the stitches in the hem of my skirt. My father’s eyes are closed, his hands resting on his Bible in his lap. I imagine standing up and screaming. I imagine tearing the hymnal to shreds. I imagine walking out the front door and never coming back.
With my soul (With my soul)
I am eighteen years old. It has been two years with the boy from camp. We are young and learning to love. He doesn’t mean to make me cry, he just can’t control his words when he’s angry. He doesn’t mean to ruin my relationship with my best friend, she’s just not good for me. He doesn’t mean to control me, he just wants what’s best for me. This is what I tell myself. When I wear shorts to class one day, he doesn’t speak to me for three days. He just wants me to be modest. He just wants me to be holy. I rave at him in my journal, but when I read it back the next day, I take back everything I said. I should be grateful I’ve found a Godly man to follow. Everyone else says so.
It is well, it is well, with my soul
I am nineteen years old and losing sight of myself. I slip away from my friends. I hardly speak to my parents. I live as though my life is something that is happening to someone else. I am by myself more often than not, because then I can drop the charade. I lock myself in the bathroom so I can text him exactly where I am, what I’m doing, who is there. If I don’t, it will be a week of coldness. I still tell myself this is fine. This is what I have to do, my cross to bear. My suffering will reward me, like the priest in the old book.
My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought
I am twenty years old. We belong to a new church, where the boy from camp goes. Three times a week, I play piano at services. I can’t tell if I do it because I enjoy it or because I feel obligated. I feel something when I put my fingers on the keys and weave a melody for people to sing to, to worship alongside. I feel connected to them, or to God. Maybe it’s the same feeling. I open my mouth and sing, remembering how that woman called me anointed. I try to be anointed, to let God lead me. But I honestly can’t tell if He is picking the hymns or I am. My fingers speed along the keys, hitting chords and arpeggios with the petal pressed to the floor. It is beautiful, and it is my offering.
My sin, not in part but the whole
I am twenty-one years old. I think I will marry the boy from church. He has always been cruel to me behind closed doors when no one is looking, but now, he’s started to be cruel when others are looking. Nobody notices, or perhaps they choose to look away. He is like my father, ready with a Bible verse or a word from Jesus to excuse his every action. Everyone is expecting us to get married. Everyone looks at us with doting smiles—the perfect church couple, the example to follow. It has been five years and I am utterly trapped. There is no way out, so I’ve been taking every hurt and folding it into my heart until it looks like acceptance. Until it feels like love. At twenty-one, I do not know what love is. I have watched my parents be cruel to each other, to us, all my life. They call it love, so this must be it. I’ve drawn away from my friends, even from my sister, and I tell no one what is really happening to me. When I look in the mirror, I do not recognize myself behind the fake smile and blotched red eyes.
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more
I am twenty-two years old, and I think I’ve had enough. There’s a feeling in my stomach that this is the last time I will go to church. I’m in last night’s clothes. I lied about where I was and danced in pink-coloured lights in a crumbling apartment near New Brunswick. I drank more than I should’ve and was crowned prom king, standing next to my queen, a girl I’d never met. I stopped at Dunkin on my way for a coffee to ease the hangover behind my eyes so the congregation can’t smell the sin on me. My mother is angry I’m not wearing a dress, I can tell. I step up to the piano and face them, their eyes closed and their hands raised. Before I begin the first song, I know in my bones I can never come back here. I can’t lead these people in worship. I am their enemy, the very person they preach against, to be cast out, to be destroyed off the face of the earth. My boyfriend greets me with a hug after the service, and I cringe away from him.
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, oh my soul
I am twenty-two years old. It is four days later and I am at my breaking point. I will either disappear completely or strip my skin off and change my life entirely. I wake up and stare at myself in the mirror, seeing myself clearly for the first time in years. I see myself at sixteen, so sweetly naive the first time I take his hand. I see myself at thirteen, so unsure of myself and who I am meant to be. I see myself at nine, a little girl so desperate to please my parents, begging not to be hit. I see myself at six, a child with big blue eyes who flinches every time her mother raises her voice. I see myself as I am. A child who never deserved any of it. I break down in tears and I run to my parents’ room like I am seven again. I can’t do it, I tell them. I can’t marry him. I can’t go back to church. I have to get away from him. I have to. Please don’t hate me.
It is well
My father hugs me for the first time in nearly a year. I don’t let him close anymore, but I do today.
(It is well)
My mother cries with me. She had no idea.
With my soul
I delete my Instagram and break up with him that night. For the first time, our roles are reversed. He’s sobbing. I am stone-faced.
(With my soul)
I never go back to church. Maybe they are sad to lose their pianist, but nobody asks if I’m alright. The boy spews lies about me, and they believe him. When I see two women from church at the grocery store, they turn away.
It is well,
I do not understand God, and I’m not sure I ever have. I have tried to live right and to live holy. The only reward I’ve been given is more suffering. I do not want to believe God has guided the hands that have harmed me, like they claim. I want to believe God is Love.
it is well,
I still feel Him with me sometimes. I still play hymns on the piano when no one is home. I sing and I cry and I beg God, if He is really up there, to forgive me. I ask what I should’ve done differently. I tell Him I have spent my whole life trying, but if I stayed, I would have died. I hope He understands, because now that I am free, when I sing It Is Well, it finally, really is.
with my soul
“It Is Well with My Soul.” Spafford, Horatio. 1873. Tune: Ville du Harve. Bliss, Philip.
Image by Jani Kantokoski for Pexels
Nikki Weaver (she/her) is a writer from New Jersey living in Dublin and studying an MA in creative writing at DCU. She helps run international writing trips with a professor from Rutgers University and performs short stories and novel excerpts at home and abroad.