Waking with Ghosts: When Memory Rules the Living

Morning watch: July 30, 2025 - 3:52 am
Isaiah 43:18–19
Some mornings, before the quiet clatter of waking things and the sky softens into light, I wake already braced against something—some memory, some moment I cannot name but feel as weight. It is not the present that unsettles me. It’s the echo of what might have happened, what perhaps did, what certainly shaped me. History, personal and shared, doesn’t ask for permission to enter our day. It governs quietly, a sovereign we didn’t elect but often obey.
We tend to fear the lives we lived in shadow more than the ones we stumble through in light. Not because they were more dangerous—but because they left questions unanswered. Regret unspoken. Stories unfinished. It’s easier, somehow, to navigate the chaos of now than to confront the flickering half-truths of before.
And yet, if we let them, those ghosts educate us. They do not demand purity or perfection. They ask for honesty. They ask us to name what was and imagine what could have been—not to be trapped by it, but transformed. A moment misunderstood can be re-read. A narrative assumed can be rewritten. In this way, history need not rule us. It can become our partner in truth-telling.
Isaiah’s words hold me this morning: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!” These are not instructions to suppress, but invitations to attend differently. To notice that the newness is already rising. To believe that hauntedness can be companioned into holiness.
Today, I offer no resolutions. No path out of hauntedness. Only this reminder: if memory wakes with you, perhaps it’s not your enemy. Perhaps it is your invitation. An old companion asking not to be feared, but listened to.