By Cynthia Aralu

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From whence does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved,
    He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep. 

The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not smite you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

Psalm 121:1-6

Hi everyone! Pray the Rosary.

For most of the time I have written, which is a good chunk of my life, whenever I set out to write, I have allowed my emotions to drive me. Sometimes, I had written after a chance inspiration by a body of work which I found to be inspiring and other times, I wrote from my place of interacting with the things and the people in my life. I don’t think I have really included God in my writing process, at least not until recently, when I began writing about God; then I started praying before writing. I did this because I got nervous about writing the wrong things about God or leading people astray.

I did some introspection after my poem, “Hey Mom” was refined by my younger brother. The experience left me feeling a bit shaken for some days. I realized on looking back on the poem I wrote about “Expected Endings”; I had been purely driven and guided by churning emotions. I believe most of what I have considered “some of my best works” have usually been produced this way. Even as I put the arrangement together for “Expected Endings” up on my blog, I did not pray since I was not directly mentioning God on the post. I seemed to have separated my work from God in doing this. As if to say, “Now, I get to post something of mine since I have posted everything else I wanted to post about God.” Actually, my thought process was exactly this.

Before or while writing the poem “Hey Mom”, I had said a prayer to God for His help to write well. I felt nothing as I wrote but I tried to refine the poem as best as I could on my journey home from the church. I posted the poem on my blog late at night but sent off a copy separately to my younger brother for his feedback. I suppose I wasn’t expecting anything major from him, but when I woke I up and picked up my phone, I saw his replies. We had a back and forth on my way to work, as I did not fully grasp what he was getting at. Understanding of his point of his view hit me, from seeing what his refinements were, just as my bus halted at the bus stop. I teared up in reaction to this assent of my mind to his creative genius, as I alighted from the bus; a reaction stemming entirely from a strong wave of inadequacy which washed over me and nothing more.

Logical or not, that feeling of inadequacy which had labelled me a horrible writer might have been, I cannot say. I can say however, that by the time I arrived at my office, I pondered on the fact that I had prayed to God for His help to write a good poem, but His help had come through my brother. I think I was rattled majorly because His help did not come in the form I had expected it. I literally want God to show up in dazzling ways through me, but He does not want me to be alone, so, He shows me the bar of my limitations, urging me to lean on the strength he has supplied to others, to surpass my limits.

So, I prayed to Him to send me a helper for a petition I have been making for a while now. 

This experience made me realize three things: (1) God does not want me to be alone, (2) God will use the people or whatever it is He has sent into my life to help me whether or not they realize it or even want to help me and (3) I do not want to keep my writing separate from God.

I will figure this writing thing out with God because my help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.

Thank you for reading today’s post. Remember to like this post and share it with your friends if you enjoyed it. Follow me on my blog, Katmira’s blog or my podcast, Amara’s Musings, to receive notifications whenever I have a new post. You can also subscribe below to get an email notification whenever a new post is out. This is particularly helpful if you don’t have a WordPress account.

Pray the Rosary. Let it be, until we meet again or “Ka ọ dị” as it is said in Igbo.