… to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, 
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness … —Isaiah 61:3 (KJV)

It’s the first day of 2024. I’m sitting in church in a part of town known more for crawfish-by-the-pound than epiphanies, when I’m suddenly overwhelmed with a deep gratitude for all God has done for me. Specifically, I’m thankful for God letting me write poetry again after so many years of being unable to, except for scribbling down some Ashbery imitations every now and then.

I’m not talking about writing as a career or a hobby or a way to feed my poisonous self-esteem. I experienced God’s mercy by being able to write again. It was God’s vehicle to deliver me from persistent serious sin, as well as a panoply of disorders—drinking, anorexia, OCD, depression—and turn my heart back to Christ and my family. 

I started writing poetry in college but gave it up to focus on making money. Lawyers didn’t write poems, Wallace Stevens excepted. Ten years later, I found myself this middle-aged guy with a job that ate my stomach lining regretting that I’d thrown away something beautiful (not that what I wrote was beautiful, but the process of creating was something beautiful). I’m thinking of Kierkegaard’s adage: “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”  Sitting in the dark, rocking my baby daughter, I asked God to please let me be able to write again. 

I started writing poems again almost by accident, jotting down a couple as a cheap anniversary gift. But I felt compelled to keep writing poems, and did so, compulsively. At the same time though, I was drinking until I blacked out and committing serious sin against my marriage (the details are boring as is all sin eventually). 

Two things scared me back:  First, after Hurricane Ida damaged my home, I was looking at provocative videos on YouTube, when the next suggested video was “Prayer for Lost Souls.” I have no real explanation for how that ended up in my feed.  Second, I blacked out while watching my children. I woke up in the middle of the night finding everyone safe in bed and not knowing how they got there. 

So, what does this have to do with poetry? 

Not long after I stopped drinking, I participated in a reading with a group of Christian poets, and the warmth and energy I felt, even over Zoom, was incredible. I had never written about my faith in school (and would probably have been laughed out of the East Coast if I had), but I began to write poems about God’s light, and suddenly, I received God’s light in the midst of my darkness. I felt Christ calling me to know Him in His church, in my writing, and in my family. I felt a joy I had never known before, a joy stronger than the darkness I’d made, and God continued to bless me over and over during the year.

There’s no note of triumphalism here. I write from a position of absolute brokenness. I’m dogged by sin and worn down by anxiety and failure.  Most of what I write is not good. But sometimes, the poems feel like praise. They feel like I’m opening myself to the goodness and warmth only God can give, and they help me a little further along.  Again, this isn’t about “success.” The joy and light of writing poetry again points me to the One Who is joy and light, the One Who cared for me even in the horror show moments of my life, the One Who is alive in every moment I spend with my wife and children. 

I’m sorry I get bogged down by ambition and trying to get published, and forget the love I’ve received, the great undeserved love. I’m only able to put two words together by that love. It may seem a small thing, but it means so much to me. Whatever crosses I have to bear in life, I hope to see that same love behind them as well and carry them with joy.

I pray for anyone kind enough to read this.  May God touch the darkest part of you, the part cobwebbed by regret and pain. May you receive God’s superabundant generosity and light.

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Justin Lacour is the author of Hulk Church (Belle Point, 2023).

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