use me, god

so odd

I asked god to use me 
and that’s exactly what 

god did except for some 
reason god looked a lot 

like all the men in power 
in my church/home/life

(@marlataviano, jaded)

*

Writing a book is hard. Promoting it is even harder. Even if I had some great ideas for big flashy things to do, it’s hard to get people’s attention.

So sometimes I’ll just be scrolling through Twitter and I’ll see a tweet and think, “Hey, I have a poem about that.” And I’ll go to my Kindle app, find the poem, take a screenshot, add “@marlataviano, jaded” and tweet it in the thread.

I shared this poem on Twitter yesterday in response to author Kat Armas tweeting: “Contrary to what many might assume, being ‘used’ by God isn’t common in the Bible (besides the verse about humans as vessels for good works, there’s not much) yet we’ve normalized this language, opening the door for rampant abuse of power and burnout.”

The poem resonated with people and got a lot of good responses. If only slipping my poems into relevant Twitter threads could be my full-time job.

Did you, like me, spend YEARS begging God to use you? How did that work out for you?