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Joe Puentes

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God Used Poetry to Breathe Life Back Into my Faith

God Used Poetry to Breathe Life Back Into my Faith

Last updated on: September 24, 2018 at 2:26 pm by Joe Puentes

God Used Poetry to Breathe Life Back Into my Faith 2018-09-24T14:26:34-07:00 Joe Puentes

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This past week I’ve been working on a manuscript of poems about God and nature, I hope will become a book someday. I’m always hesitant to call myself a poet because I have only a few pieces of poetry published outside of the self publishing done on my website and here on Patheos.

Since the poems I wrote this past week are for a manuscript, I cannot share them with you here on Patheos—you’ll just need to wait until the book comes out. Instead, I want to share with you why I believe God has me writing poetry, and how God used poetry to breathe life back into my faith.

I’ve also learned trying new things can disrupt my comfortable life—like writing poetry, and submitting it to contests and publishers. I have done this thirty times and have been rejected twenty-seven times so far. But I’ll keep trying!

Before writing poetry, I was struggling with depression. I attributed this to recovering from my heart attacks and life changes because of my health issues. I was having trouble focusing, and I was struggling with my relationship with God.

I already mentioned I felt it could have been a side effect from having three heart attacks. My cardiologist did tell me I might experience short-term memory loss and symptoms like what I was experiencing, but I knew this feeling was different.

I stopped seeing God in any way that brought me life or vigor—my view of God was dimming.

But then something happened, God threw me a life preserver.

When this was happening and at its crux, I woke up around 3:00am with words swimming around in my head. With Evernote open on my phone and I wrote — and I ended up with a poem.

I wasn’t sure what these words on my phone app meant at first, so I asked a writer friend what they made of it, and they said I had written a poem. I was stunned because I never dreamed I could create something like that with words.

Poetry was uncharted territory for me and my exposure to poetry was minuscule. I might have read maybe three or four poems in my life up to that point — poems were confusing and threatening, so I never paid attention to poetry.

Now poetry has taken over my much of my writing. I am playing catch up in the poetry world — I have no formal training or education in creative writing. I don’t care if I’m not good at it—I am having the time of my life writing it.

Did you know a third of the Bible is written in poetic form. Poetry is a heart language and God uses poetry to convey expressions of himself that extrapolates an unknown about him that we might not otherwise see. God uses poetry to breathe life back into our faith.

I never thought I was a creative person.

My wife was the only person who told me I was a creative, but I didn’t believe her.

Someone taught me at a young age to pursue things like sports instead of the arts, I buried my love of reading and writing deep down inside where no one could see it.

I never acted upon them even though I always had creative tendencies.

Since then I’ve learned to become more than comfortable with how I was knit together in my mother’s womb.

I understand now that God created me to see the world differently than the way I had been viewing it—a way I long ago suppressed and buried.

In poetry, I have found my voice. And what I’ve discovered in writing and reading poetry is that God shows himself in a more clear and articulate way to me. One that is producing life within me and hopefully to others.

Poetry has given me a chance to re-examine myself and give into my inner-self or soul that which was me before I was me—the very inner core that God wove flesh and bone around since the beginning of time. And one that the Holy Spirit shapes and forms as I become more like Jesus.

I want to end with this question:

Is it possible that God is trying to help you see him through a different expression of yourself that you might’ve hidden deep down inside, a long time ago?

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