The Prayer I Never Knew I was Praying

This day, June 10, 2013, Jelani and I have been married for 7 years. But I have been writing poems of love for much longer than I have known him.

My parents left me with a fascination of love at a young age. What made them stick by each other? What made them stay even when they argued? What made them desire to spend so much time together? I never fully understood, but I spent much of my adolescence writing about love anyway.

So yesterday, I surprised Jelani by reading a poem to him in front of our church family. And now I'd like to share it with you. It's rough around the edges because I wrote it in the middle of the night after feeding the baby. I tried to make some edits the next day, but then decided it was better left untouched, so forgive the somewhat rambling nature.

While it has no real title, I like to call it The Mother of All Love Poems, because seriously...like I'm ever going to beat this? :)


God answers prayers,
unspoken and unheard.
Even Jesus tells us,
"Look at the birds."       (Mattew 6:26)

Unspoken it may have been.
Unheard it still may be,
but written time and time again;
the words were always there to see.

I wrote of a love that made me dream,
a love that set me free,
a love that didn't make me blind,
but a love that made me see.

Years of ink poured out on paper
before we ever met
and yet
my unheard word
never prayed;
instead displayed
a love I had yet to know

And so,
future, past, and present collide
where pen and paper
smoothly glide,

as I wrote of love
I never truly knew
'cause every love poem
I ever wrote
was about you.