I’ve collected several hundred pages of writing at this point. They tell the story of the journey to date. I wrote approximately half starting last year. A quarter during a 5 year period when I was in Indiana, Philadelphia, Boston, and the remainder during a portion of the NYC years. I wrote the least in college, the first two years of Indiana, and the majority of Boston. I had a journal in high school but mainly during my sophomore and junior years. 

From the end of college unti last year,  wrote no more than 5 poems. That was a span of 22 years. Starting in January of last year, I wrote more than 70, with approximately 90 percent coming after last September when I was still recovering from the hospital. My friend, the 80+ year old nun, says she cries when praying with them. My grandfather figure has also been circulating then to his friends. They like them. My priest friend prayed with the one I wrote for Advent at a meditation retreat.

The best ones were written for you. 

Why am I telling you all this? 

They are my heart. 

An advisor said that no one really has sat down with me to actually figure me out. I really don’t care too much either way about challenges and accomplishments. As a poet puts it, they are both illusory in one way or other. I had varying ones in both categories. They see what they are. They shaped me and gave me many stones. 

It was lonely everywhere. Boston was a dream come true and is so beautiful but it can be hard to make friends because of the student demographic. ———was at the hospital a lot and I wouldn’t see her for days. When she was home, she was either studying or exhausted. She really wasn’t present. No regrets.  I guess. She is still part of the story. She was fate or destiny. And now she isn’t. I understand and I don’t simultaneously. 

Life is unfair but God isn’t. This life has taught me that people will do things to you. That’s a given. The real question is what will God do in response?  Over all the pages of writing, spanning most of my adult life, many of the same characters pop up – the kids, DAs, cops, Bono, Eddie Vedder. 

But I realized the person that is the most preset is God. Wow. How He was there in every season. Every stop along the byway. All over the country:  The world. From the crack houses to the castles to the streets to the oceans.

I got angry at God a lot. I think He’s ok with that. He can handle it. My kids get angry at me too – I’m mostly amused. The girl swears like me and the boy has my temper. But I think God already knows what will happen – free will notwithstanding. Nothing would have been different. We could have been in any other locations or situation and it wouldn’t have made a difference. I knew too. I could see it coming even if it’s now in hindsight.

I ask why it was hard for me to find people to stand by me. Maybe it’s because I appear difficult on the surface. But I also had to stand for many difficult positions. At the end of the day, maybe only God stood fully with me. As may very well be the case with everyone.

I spoke to a close friend and I said tha God made my journey hard. Even though I regretted saying this next, I told him that it was a gift. Disguised and hidden like many parts of my life.  

So now I still wait and depend on God, like I’ve often had to do, usually secretly. He is in charge of the timeline and charts the course. There’s this Garth Brooks song – The River with these lines giving God the role and credit as the Captain. 

Tying all this into the writing, almost everyone I’ve sent them to says I need to publish and how it has touched them. I didn’t set out to be known that way. I wrote for kids, family, friends. I wrote for you. If some way or somehow the writing gets more exposure, I don’t really want or need the credit, it will go to God. Sometimes when I finish something that I know is good, I recognize that these aren’t my words but His. 

And that’s what I send to you.