Why I Wrote a Book...

             So, as many of you may or may not know, I write – a lot. Not just missionary newsletters either. I usually write poetry and have been doing just that for the past 12 years. What many of you may not know is that about 8 years ago I almost published a book. It was going to be a random collection of poetry that I had written when I was 16 of about 100 something poems which I considered to be from my best writing streak. I had submitted it to an editor and it had been looked over and we had a meeting. Now, if he was just stroking my young and fragile ego I will never know, but he said that my work was really good and had quite an original voice. Part way through all that, it fell through and I ended up not publishing and less than a year later I ended up moving to South America and my life completely changed.  

                Did any of you know that my plans before that of becoming a missionary were to be a writer? I even started my first novel when I was 13 – not saying it was that great or anything, but I wrote it and I was 13. When God started guiding me towards missions I thought it was just something that I had to give up – you know give up my dreams and take on the dreams that God had for my life. I just didn’t get that God was taking away my dreams, but adding on to them. As the years went by and my professional writing dreams far behind me I actually started writing less in general. The thing is I hadn’t started writing with any intention whatsoever of people reading my poetry – it was a dream that came along later. I started writing because someone made an offhand comment that writing how I feel might help me to feel a little better. So, as I began to write less and less I really began to miss it. But these things are like muscles – you stop doing something for a while and it’s hard to start back up; you remember how but it takes time for your muscles to get back into shape.

                So as the years went by I tried and tried and tried to get back into writing and every once in a while I’d come out with something, but I just never really did get back into the swing of it. I kept trying nonetheless and then I felt God pressing upon my heart to finish what I had started. To take the idea I had originally for my book - which was to be an autobiographical poetry book about coming out of depression – and finish it and publish it. So that’s what I did

 

 This is the name of my first book - "Soul CPR" and it is a book of poetry about my journey with God through years of depression.

Closing In

              I remember the day that Alex Haley changed my childhood. That night long ago in the land of yesteryear sitting on my living room floor staring into the TV watching the man from “reading rainbow” in chains. Awakened to the marvel that people in different countries have different sounding names. Saddened by the fact that what people don’t understand they often try to change. And troubled by the thought that my skin color was linked to a heritage that brought me shame.
                I looked like the bad guys! I hated the fact that I even looked like I was on their side. The oppressors were not the ones with which I identified and thus that movie marked my very young life.

                

                Growing up I knew people of every shape and color – from black to Mexican to Asian; from family to friends – and I loved every last one of them.
                Their differences didn’t scare me and I didn’t find them weird – I thought they were some of the most beautiful people to every have appeared. My parents happily confused as to the type of child they had reared. I never even realized that I was the one considered “socially weird.” Thinking that all people are equal is a moral to which many people find difficult to adhere.

                

             And now I’m all grown and my husband isn’t white. Maybe he’s not black, but his Latin brown is close enough in societies frightened light.
              My children will be mixed, lacking blonde hair and America’s blue eyes; and I often wonder how they’ll be treated in their mother’s countryside.  Speaking a different language and probably accented English, will they be treated differently by the country they share blood with?

                

               Why is this the world we live in? Why is this ignorant bliss something people are willing to sit in.
                No one speaks and no one shrieks as long as the silence holds them steady on their pinnacled mountain peaks.
                It finally hit home. I know it happens, but I thought “this ain’t Chicago.”
                I thought we were the south. I thought we were kin. I thought people had learned to look past one’s skin. So many people unknowingly have blood with black in it. 

Fantasy Fiction

               I am a nerd. It all started out in childhood with Superman, Batman, and Spiderman – your classic alien, outcast, mutant mutiny against the machine that we call society. My parents had birthed a fan girl.
                I fell in love with that imaginary place we hide in our brain where the underdog on the outskirts of society was actually something more than just a victim. Where the people´s hero was somehow also the system´s villain. “The man” never could handle things that seemed all too different.
                And then there are references that few will actually even get about adopted adolescent aliens and the Scooby gang marveling over “9^th wonders,” an old book of shadows, and meteor rocks over after school coffee at the Tallen. They were the people and places that told you you didn´t have to be all growed up to save the world or have everything figured out in order to make a difference. It´s surprising how people wonder why we applaud the non-existent. They take those that seem forgotten and make us feel significant. And it wasn´t even their superhuman ability that we envied, but their unparalleled unity and undeniable calling to some higher duty.

           
                   Our younger selves understood more than we give them credit for. They knew that ideals both did and had to exist. That people are so much more than what so many are impressed with. And that the “it” people are many times the ones that few times get “it.”
                   Comic books and pulp fiction remind us that we may not actually know absolutely everything. That things are not always as they seem and that heroes don´t walk around in a super suit and wings. Heroes could be reporters, scientists, photographers, and millionaires. Even a group of teenagers could protect us from things crawling out of the mouth of hell or whatever may wander the deserts of Roswell.
                  And just like when they “saved the cheerleader and saved the world” through the life of one man humanity was cursed yet through the death of Another life was reimbursed.

Earthly Sadness

               The earth mourns with us as death right splits us with lightning like sadness that knocks our hearts right out of our chests in a thunderous opaque explosion.
                To see a grown man cry is almost as if nature has committed a crime like when the sky strikes a cedar cracking it right down to its pride.
                It´s a hard thing to learn that even nature has weakness and as sure as oceans have beaches there are limits to our strength. It´s hard to accept that even life has its length.

                

              So just like when the heavens cry right over us and we run and hide under some make-shift shelter when life up and dies taking us all by the most unfair mortal surprise we once again don´t know if to run or sit or simply just stand and be wet.
                It´s a hard realization that we simply don´t know just how much life we get. No one knows just where their margins have been set.

              
                   Just as every storm has its goals to be met, I hope my life can say the same as I fade away into the sunset. 

Misery Loves Company

               Back and forth you go each day between crippling fear and saving grace. Back and forth in sickening sway trying to side with what makes you feel safe.
                It´s troubling how you´re willing to take someone´s grace just in order to secure your own place, and even more troubling how you´re willing to give up faith just in order to fill some manly mandate.

                
                Can someone help me understand just exactly what´s taking place? I never did get if this was caused by subtle bewitching or self-loathing hate. How and why do you claim to be wise with your eyes oh so very full of despise? Are you even aware of what your price implies? Because it would seem that you yourself only pay with lies. You can´t even keep the same rules you seek to destroy everyone else with.
                Maybe it´s not intentional and I know we´re unconventional, but that´s no excuse to try and change us which deep down is actually an effort to cage us. What you´ve wanted from the beginning simply was to enslave us.
                Yet honestly nobody wants to be the company to your misery. 

Fall of the Kiskadee

There once was a bird never meant to be caged –
A marvelous creature beyond beautifully made
Made with colors so amazing it would seem palace decoration,
Yet with fight comparable to warrior determination.
Her song so beautiful that it serenated kings,
Yet she held enough strength to ignite fire with her wings.

While tying her down is nothing near an impossible feat,
Caging in beauty is an undeniable atrocity.
What once was pleasing becomes rather beastly.
The strength that lifted her beauty to soar
Becomes the voice in which her hopelessness roars.

Slowly but surely, her song fades into the floor,
And all the colors lose their allure.
No longer does she even fight against the cage door –
Once envied by kings and now pitied by the poor.

Heroes Die

I want to be just as Thee, storming with power in a raging sea.
Taking on hell and Hades with the roaring fire I´ve seen You making.
Let them tremble at our feet just as they tremble when You speak.
They must learn to fear the weak for we were transformed in lightening streaks.

Yet Hades is fought down in hell – a match with death you´d never live to tell.
Clean each other´s trembling feet and listen to Me as I speak.
Bravery is on the coward´s lips and he dies because of it. Try not to speak so much, but just try to live as such.

Bravery is more than the craze of power, but is knowing to accept your own humbling hour.

If you want to be just as Me you must try on My death in order to have authority.