Poems and Prayers

If you’d told me when I was a kid that one day I would be writing poetry and with such an intense love for Our Heavenly Father, I would have probably scoffed at that ridiculous notion and yet in my 40’s, here I am doing exactly that, that which perhaps my heart had known all along. I had never seriously written poetry in my life though I attempted a few times throughout my life but always gave up out of frustration because I wasn’t ever good at it. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s as if this poet’s voice I finally found is familiar to me because in a way, it was always there but it took me a while to understand it, perhaps? Put it this way. The voice that has found volume is the voice I have conversations with myself and God in, so while that voice is familiar to me, I know it will probably surprise a lot of people who’ve known me for years. No one really knows this side of me and I don’t think I knew either! That’s the bonkers part about it!

And so it feels kind of weird to see it on paper or in print, so to speak. I do know this—At the very core of my heart is this poetic’s voice and it is starved for companionship, camaraderie and philosophical, spiritual conversations with an engaged audience.

I unknowingly began channeling poems and prayers through God during my nine months backpacking abroad that started in September 2013, and though I have returned home from traveling, I am still channeling them. At first, I wasn’t sure what was happening or where the inspiration was coming from, but the writer in me knew that a special moment was overcoming me and that I needed to write whatever was screaming to come out! It would only be when I started texting my poems and prayers to close friends that I even knew the significance of what was being channeled through me. I was really sheepish and uncomfortable with sharing my writings because I viewed my poems and prayers as my personal journal, but I discovered that people had different interpretations of my writing! It’s like another identity takes over and I’m not sure who this identity is, but I just know that when my heart is undergoing a massive emotional experience and if I don’t have anyone to cry to or yell at, I write because I simply just don’t know what else to do. God has humbled and honored me in such unimaginable ways and I am so moved that I want to share with the world. And that is why I am staying on this path of serving God.

I came to know God during these travels because I was undergoing such an intensely private and spiritual journey that I could not share with anyone. He was my companion and my refuge in some of the heaviest months of my life. With everyone out of my life, there was only one source I turned to and that was God. But the artist and philosopher in me needed an outlet to express my private experiences in such a way that was not blatantly revealing the journey. Because I am a writer, my natural outlet is to write so I began writing down what I started out by calling “expressions” because I was so uncomfortable with calling them poems because in my head, I didn’t even know anything about writing poems!

The first poem that came to me from out of nowhere was when I was visiting the chapel at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Interestingly enough, the hotel where I was staying was within walking distance to the cathedral so I frequented there in my two weeks’ trip. And every day from within my hotel room, I heard church bells ringing. I was scared out of my wits at this point in my journey and no one in my life knew where I was and if anything were to happen to me, no one would know because I had changed my mind abruptly that I would disappear and keep my movements private. So when I heard these church bells in the distance, I felt as if God were speaking to me and I followed those church bells for two weeks as if my life depended on it. I felt safe being in that massive, cold church overcrowded with holiday tourists from all over the world.

I had cleared my mind of half the stress in my life and it wasn’t even my personal stress, if you know what I mean! It’s unnecessary stress having to deal with people’s bombarding projections of you because they say and do very hurtful things to you, and you have to take the time to heal from those hurts, not them! They’ve already moved on! And for the first time in my life, my heart found and knew true peace. A most heavenly and divine bliss I’d never experienced before. So for the first time ever, my mind and heart were finally connected. What true liberation and peace! The closest experience I can equate this emotion and state of being to is being in love with someone who loves you back equally. Or when you’re biting into that delicious meal and your mouth feels as if it just tasted the most heavenly food ever! Or when your eyes have just been blessed with the most amazing sunset or sunrise and it takes your breath away, and you just want to fall down on your knees and give thanks.

That is true peace for me. Complete surrender to God. It didn’t happen overnight! It took me months of battling with my mind; fighting my own inner demons; discovering God more and more along my journey with the guidance of my guardian angel; learning to trust Him as my faith increased exponentially; and giving myself permission to worship however I want to worship without any devout thing looming over me; and giving thanks that I was not raised in a devout environment because that provided the open space for me to fill in however I want to fill in. Learning how to follow Him was a massive battle to overcome with the mind! I discovered how rigid and stubborn the mind is during this time of my life when I had to come face to face with my own mind. I had to defeat it. It was the only way to get to the next destination, learning how to follow Him.

I think only then could my heart write such poetry of mad love for Our Heavenly Father. I’ve never explained my writing to anyone and since the channeling of poems and prayers is very new to me, I’m explaining as best as I can. This is all to say that if I can arrive at a divine place where I can hear God’s voice speaking to me, then anyone can too. I have no formal training or guru and I really didn’t read that many books either. I’m not even religious and I don’t even go to church or any place of worship! For me, God is everywhere and He communicates to us every day. We just have to dedicate the time to get to know Him and obey Him.

For the first half of my life, I didn’t know how to do this and it all seemed so daunting and confusing. But God showed me the way and I finally heard Him. Take it from me; He is a patient man! For the first time in my life, I am truly and wholeheartedly FOLLOWING HIM. I used to think that I was the one in charge of my own life! How wrong I was and no wonder I was so unsuccessful and unhappy! When we find our way out of the darkness, we are led to cast our light for others. It is a God-given duty that I didn’t understand and even resisted when I did understand the magnitude of it all, but He humbled me in many ways and taught me so much on this journey that the mind finally succumbed to the heart. I surrendered to The Most High Creator, and how much more miraculous life is, now that I am living this way! I had no idea!