This past semester of school, my sophomore year of high school, was really tough. I was stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, and, although I wasn't diagnosed, I am pretty sure I was going through depression as well. But this poem, I wrote on the night of May 7, during my last week of classes. I wrote it without much thought to be honest because my mom had told me that I should write about my faith. I wasn't sure at all how to start and I even asked my mom, "what should I write about?" And she just said, "Anything you want. Tell your story of what He means to you, what it means to trust Him, how good He is. Anything that you feel is the message He is telling you this year." So I thought about it a while. I just sat at my desk, thinking. I couldn't think of anything so I just decided to pray. Since, after all, I was going to be writing about God, shouldn't I ask him to tell me what He wants me to say? And, seriously, not even a minute after I ended my prayer, the first two lines of the poem that i have now popped into my head. And after writing those two lines down, everything else just flowed out. 

The stanza that says "the skies were dark / my heart was bare / my soul was sinking" was referring to the beginning of the semester when I just felt so done with life, with everything, and I just wanted to give up. But I felt all of that because I was neglecting God. I had stopped praying, I had stopped doing my Bible time, I had stopped thinking of Him throughout my life with the excuse of always being "too busy." I just always thought "Oh, I don't have enough time right now, I'll do it later." But I realized that I actually needed him, especially then. And the blessings that I received because of that realization are expressed through the stanza after - how he was able to light my world, fill my heart, and calm my soul.

The message of this poem is really personal to me. But despite the fact that its about how God really lifted me up in my time of severe stress and anxiety during the school year, I feel like it doesn't matter what anyone is going through - because God will always be there to lift us up in anything. In everything, God is always here and He helped me see that He was the ultimate peace I needed. And because of that peace, I was able to write this as the last week of classes came around because I know for a fact that He is the reason why I was able to get through it all - He is the reason why I survived.