Writing a poem about prayer is hard

I subscribe to The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad, and the prompt this week is intriguing to me for a variety of reasons. The prompt is to write a poem about prayer. There are various components to it, but that is the gist of it in a nutshell.

Let me get two things straight. 

First, I have a disjointed prayer life. It comes and it goes. I don’t think to pray at some times and then I pray a lot at other times. 

Second, I don’t write poetry. I just don’t. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s something I don’t feel comfortable with or that I don’t feel that I’m very good at. 

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I decided to write a poem about praying, because I need to do hard things. I need to put myself out there and see what happens. See what sticks. So, here’s what I have to offer:

My Prayer Life

My prayers come in waves.
When life is calm, I often forget to pray.
When life is tumultuous and chaotic, the words come out feverish and panicked.

I long for a prayer life marked with consistency and authenticity.

Prayers that mark the gratitude for small things:
Birds singing in the early morning,
A cup of steaming coffee,
The gift of another day.

Prayers that mark the need for solace on the heavy days:
When illness hits and there’s no explanation,
Sad days of not wanting to get out of bed.
Grieving for something out of my control.

Prayer life encompasses all,
Saying everything on some days
While not being able to put words together on others.
And knowing that however I pray,
Head bowed in solitude or screaming at the unfairness of it all. 

But reminding myself that my God hears me.
He hears it all.
He reminds me it will all be okay.
In time. 

What I learned.

I got out of my own head with writing a poem. Instead of overthinking it, I let the words flow from my head to paper. I didn’t think about the spacing. I let it happen as it was supposed to. I didn’t get caught up in rhyme, scheme, or anything else that can get in the way of letting the words come out. 

I enjoyed the process, and I probably need to give myself permission to write poetry more often. Just like my prayer life, I need to let the words come more consistently and see where they go.