God Used Poetry to Breathe Life Back Into my Faith

This past week I’ve been working on a manuscript of poems about God and nature, I hope will become a book someday. I’m always hesitant to call myself a poet because I have only a few pieces of poetry published outside of the self publishing done on my website and here on Patheos.

Since the poems I wrote this past week are for a manuscript, I cannot share them with you here on Patheos—you’ll just need to wait until the book comes out. Instead, I want to share with you why I believe God has me writing poetry, and how God used poetry to breathe life back into my faith.

Before writing poetry, I was struggling with depression. I attributed this to recovering from my heart attacks and life changes because of my health issues. I was having trouble focusing, and I was struggling with my relationship with God.

I already mentioned I felt it could have been a side effect from having three heart attacks. My cardiologist did tell me I might experience short-term memory loss and symptoms like what I was experiencing, but I knew this feeling was different.

I stopped seeing God in any way that brought me life or vigor—my view of God was dimming.

But then something happened, God threw me a life preserver.

When this was happening and at its crux, I woke up around 3:00am  with words swimming around in my head. With Evernote open on my phone and I wrote  — and  I ended up with a poem.

I wasn’t sure what these words on my phone app meant at first, so I asked a writer friend what they made of it, and they said I had written a poem. I was stunned because I never dreamed I could create something like that with words.

Poetry was uncharted territory for me and my exposure to poetry was minuscule. I might have read maybe three or four poems in my life up to that point — poems were confusing and threatening, so I never paid attention to poetry.

Now poetry has taken over my much of my writing. I am playing catch up in the poetry world — I have no formal training or education in creative writing. I don’t care if I’m not good at it—I am having the time of my life writing it.

I never thought I was a creative person.

My wife was the only person who told me I was a creative, but I didn’t believe her.

Someone taught me at a young age to pursue things like sports instead of the arts, I buried my love of reading and writing deep down inside where no one could see it.

I never acted upon them even though I always had creative tendencies.

Since then I’ve learned to become more than comfortable with how I was knit together in my mother’s womb.

I understand now that God created me to see the world differently than the way I had been viewing it—a way I long ago suppressed and buried.

In poetry, I have found my voice. And what I’ve discovered in writing and reading poetry is that God shows himself in a more clear and articulate way to me. One that is producing life within me and hopefully to others.

Poetry has given me a chance to re-examine myself and give into my inner-self or soul that which was me before I was me—the very inner core that God wove flesh and bone around since the beginning of time. And one that the Holy Spirit shapes and forms as I become more like Jesus.

I want to end with this question:

Is it possible that God is trying to help you see him through a different expression of yourself that you might’ve hidden deep down inside, a long time ago?