Author: jennygracespoetryandcreativewritingtechniques

I am a published poet and short story writer. I have been published in SNHU's the penmen review. https://penmenreview.com/author/jenny-andrews is the link where you can find my poetry and a short story. Currently, I am writing a collection of short stories, and a collection of poetry. I am trying my hand at writing a novel. Well, not a novel, actually. Make that two novels. My passion is writing. My inspiration is Franz Krafka because he managed to see the absurdity of life. Life is all about perspective and who is telling the story. We all see this life through the lens of our experiences. Literature should inspire us to think, to analyze, and to get lost in unfamiliar worlds in which we learn something new about this human existence. It is my hope that my writing challenges the reader to think, and to see a different perspective, as well as be entertained. My faith in Jesus strengthens me and gives me the courage to survive the twists and turns of this life. My faith influences a lot of my writing in that goodness always triumphs over evil, in that love conquers all. I hope you enjoy reading my blog.

Thanksgiving, Everyday

 

 

 

 

 

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Outside my window,  leaves of the pear trees and the oak trees have changed to brilliant hues of orange, gold, and crimson. Robin’s egg blue skies streaked with cottony white clouds remind me of the absolute beauty and wonder of this life. God has made us a perfect world with splendor beyond our comprehension if only we would take the time to just be still and open our eyes and look at what He has created. From the ancient oak branches in my back yard, red cardinals, eastern bluebirds, and clay colored sparrows alight and then wing across the vast expanse of this late November horizon. Cool winds waft through my open window, I watch a gray squirrel scurry down the gray bark of the water oak. The squirrel, like a chameleon, blended almost perfectly with the shades and shadows of the water oak’s bark. Such beauty! Such splendor on this calm morning. For too many years, I failed to take the time to just rest and to just be.

Life presents us with a myriad of twists and turns, wounds and sorrows, joys and victories. A truth that I have learned is that there will always be sorrow, there will always be wounds, but time moves forward and if I just keep moving along with my eyes firmly fixed toward God I will have victory and I will have joy. I have accepted the truth that the world is already perfect; I have accepted the truth that God in His infinite wisdom has placed me exactly where I am supposed to be. I am His child and I am perfect just as I am.

On this Thanksgiving week, I am thankful for another day to sit at my window and watch the splendor and majesty of God’s world unfurl in crimson, gold, and robin’s egg blue. I am thankful that I can feel the sunshine on my skin and that I can feel the coolness of the November winds wafting through my open window. I am thankful that God loves me and that I am never alone.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day and it is a disturbing fact that the holidays are a time of sadness and depression for many people. There is an unrealistic expectation that everyone will be seated around the dinner table with family and friends. Unfortunately this is not always the case. There are plenty of people for whom  the holidays are just a reminder of bad memories. Not everyone has joyous memories of “family.” This is a sad fact, but it is a true one.

This holiday season if you are feeling depressed, please trust that God is forever with you. If your sadness is overwhelming, please reach out to others. Other people do care. Family isn’t necessarily those with whom you share a bloodline. Take a walk in nature. Look up at the blueness of the sky, listen to the song of birds in the tree branches, write down your feelings. Remember that God loves you beyond measure and that you are never alone. You are here in this world for a purpose that God has designed. You are valuable; you are God’s child.

I am thankful everyday for another day to see the beauty of the world around me.

It is a beautiful day.

Copyright 2019, Jenny W. Andrews

Perspective

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This is the first time in about a month that I have sat down and wrote anything.

About five years ago I moved into my new house and left boxes of my old diaries in the garage. Fear of revisiting the past kept me from looking into those pages written so long ago. Almost forty years of my life is documented in those small diaries.

After I celebrated a milestone birthday, I decided to clear out the clutter and organize my diaries by year and put them in pretty photo boxes I bought at a craft store. I labeled the boxes by years. From being a young adult intoxicated by the promise of love to a middle aged woman disappointed by dreams that disintegrated in mid-air, I feel shocked by the power of love, the profound depth of despair, the soul-crushing weight of  betrayal, the mind-numbing repetition of mistakes, and the power of God’s redemption and grace, that have encompassed my existence on this earth.

Why was I so afraid to revisit that long ago world that I had once inhabited?

Fear that I would be reminded of all those dreams that never came true? Fear that I would be reminded of that one love I walked away from and while doing so I knew I would regret it for the rest of my life? Fear that I would be able to connect the dots in that web of deception that my youth had blinded me to? Fear that in retrospect I would hear the whisper of my own voice and get swallowed up by the sorrow over my own voicelessness?

I have spent the past four weeks reading through my diaries. At times, I have cried; at times, I have laughed. I honestly cannot believe that I was that young once. I honestly cannot  believe that I had been so very trusting. I cannot believe the courage that God granted me in the face of the sorrow; I cannot believe the strength that He fortified me with. In retrospect, this life that God has blessed me with is a miracle; it is a miracle that I am still standing after all the sorrow, hurt, loss, and darkness.

Yes, I have taken my diaries and put them in photo boxes and organized them by year. I plan to work on my memoir this coming week. I plan to get back to my writing. I feel in my heart that God has given me the gift of words. He has shown me that I need to extend compassion to myself. He has shown me that the passage of time is a learning experience. He has shown me that His hand is always upon me no matter how dark the night.

Copyright 2019 Jenny W. Andrews

 

 

 

I Stepped Away

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I Stepped Away

Dream, haunting, hunted me down, dark of night.

No longer afraid of that place, it moves faraway on a fast fall down a tunnel, black hole, slippery hand lets go.

I turn away from the dark; life lights up like the break of day.

I can never be who I used to be. 

Climbed, crawled out of the tunnel-sealed it with a kick. My foot print emblazoned in that dark place at the edge of the abyss.

I stepped away.

Jenny W. Andrews, Copyright 2019. All Rights reserved.

Between Two Bridges

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Between Two Bridges

Like a ghost I haunt these spaces, living here between two bridges.

Boardwalk beneath my feet, sags, cracks.

Been in this space too long, just now I have noticed the grime; jarred awake too late to backtrack my steps.

Spring afternoon, sunlight repeats itself, like me in my weakness.

Trapped, I am between these two bridges.

River moves on, connects endless streams-but, me, I sink back, drown my dreams.

Incapable I am of freeing myself, unable to move on.

Stationary, trapped here like steel girders, the pressure bearing down, pulling me to the bottom.

I look into the currents-the river oblivious to me continue to move.

Trapped, I am between these two bridges.

Like a ghost, I haunt this space, incapable of moving forward.

Like the river.

Jenny W. Andrews Copyright 2019 (Original copyright 2018). All Rights Reserved.

My Psalm

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My Psalm

God has blessed me with the greatest gifts; butterflies’ orange and gold wings fluttering along yellow rose petals against sun dappled days.

Late afternoons, warm breezes refreshing me, reviving me.

God has blessed me with love, with memories like precious jewels that sparkle and remind me of endless October days that God in His Grace has given me one more day.

Another hour, another chance to see the sun rise, split the orange and lavender sky.

God has remembered me with millions of miracles that my human eyes have been unable to see.

He has filled this frail vessel with breath, blood, passion, and a soul that hungers, yearns, fails, succeeds, doubts, believes.

God has laid his hand upon me, called me out of the multitudes, called me back to Him.

He has loved me,

even when I turned and ran from Him.

He has gathered me to Himself like I am a wounded child.

He has known my sorrows. He has seen my darkest hours and He has shone a candle in the shadows.

He has lifted me up and He has restored me.  He has loved me; he has forgiven me.

He has given me one more day to get it right, to enjoy the sunlight peeking through the trees.

God has loved me; he has been good to  me.

He is my God; God of all eternity.

Copyright 2019 Jenny W. Andrews. All rights reserved

Sanctuary

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Sanctuary

That moment, the moment you seeped into my soul like poison,

an injection of you.

You shone like a multifaceted jewel, smooth like velvet spilling into velvety darkness.

I, I needed an anchor in the darkness, and you were what reached for me.

And I knowing better reached back.

Now,

when it feels too late,

I recoil from the sting.

Poisoned,

I am.

Your shadow hovers like impending death.

Trapped,

I am and I don’t know how to free myself.

Copyright 2019 (original copyright 2009). Jenny W. Andrews. All rights reserved.

 

Aunt Mary: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

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Spaces Between Words: A Memoir

Oatmeal raisin cookies, sweet aromatic scent, warm clear steam floating in front of me like a pastry vision. Aunt Mary, brown like her cookies, lifts the plate and moves it away from me, and tells me to eat my dinner, to wait for dessert. Impatiently, I tell her that I had to have a cookie right then. (At four years old I couldn’t wait).

Behind her, I see a train track suspended in the air just beyond her kitchen window. It is in the near distance and I  wonder why the train track is so high up and how in the world anybody or even how the train gets to that lofty spot in the lower half of the sky.

My mind drifts back to the sweet aroma of freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies, Aunt Mary moving them further away from me, and my yearning to touch the bumpy texture with my fingertips, and then to finally lift the sweetness to my tongue. Wild-eyed, I  stare at the retreating plate. “Aunt Mary,”  I gasp. “I have to have one, now!”

It was at that moment she paused. Tall, square shouldered, regally Cherokee, her ebony eyes softened, her words whispered low like a night wind. “Here,” stealthily, she slipped a round warm cookie into the palm of my pale hand. She smelled sweet like her cookies. Like a sacrament, I quietly accepted the special exemption I had been granted.

My cousins passed around me unaware of a wish that had been granted and unaware of a bond that had been forged. My Cherokee Aunt Mary smiles at me in amber hues somewhere down the darkened cavernous road where kinship and bloodlines blur, and I know that she is just as much a part of me as I was of her.

 

2019 Copyright, Jenny W. Andrews

All rights reserved.

Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think.This excerpt is from a rough draft of my memoir. I have been writing on it and reworking it for a couple of years now. Maybe one day I will try to find a literary agent to help me publish it. If anyone knows a reputable literary agent please let me know. Thanks.

-Jenny

 

 

 

 

Second Go ‘Round

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Second Go’Round: A Tale of Two Marriages

I didn’t love you like I loved him.

(I loved you more).

I didn’t trust you like I had trusted him.

(I trusted you less).

You told me I had a wall around my heart.

(He told me I clung to him too much).

You referred to my first marriage as my first-go-’round, accused me of not loving you as much as I had loved him.

(He told me that he had never loved me).

Alone,  I lean against the rail at Knott’s Berry Farm and watch the painted pigs on the merry-go-round go round and round and I think of the both of you.

 

Copyright, Jenny W. Andrews 2019. All rights reserved.