My story

There was a little girl who learned to make herself small.

In a room full of voices, she was the quiet one, the timid one, the girl who would rather say nothing at all than risk saying the wrong thing.

She had opinions, of course. She had feelings that ran deep and questions she didn’t know how to ask. But out loud, she chose silence.

To most people, she was easy to overlook. To herself, she often felt invisible.

That girl was me.

What no one could see was that I was never really silent. There was a voice inside my head, steady and honest, and it needed somewhere to go.

At first, it found its home in books.

I was the girl who read everywhere: at the table, in the car, tucked into corners while life carried on around me. I always had a book with me.

Reading was how I learned, how I explored, and how I traveled to places my quiet self would never have dared to go. Every story opened a new world, and in those worlds my imagination was free to wander and grow.

Then, one day, the reader was led to become a writer.

So I picked up a pen.

I began journaling and writing letters to God, putting words to the things I felt and the things I was going through. Where my mouth stayed closed, the page stayed open.

Those letters became a safe place, an honest conversation with the only One who could hear every word.

And from those pages, poems began to flow, holding the notes of my heart: the things I couldn’t say, the things I was still learning to feel, and the things I didn’t yet understand.

Years passed, and the writing never stopped.

Through seasons I still can’t fully explain, through pain and longing, loneliness and joy, through endings and new beginnings, I kept writing. Many of those poems came out raw and spontaneous, written in the middle of the moment rather than after it had passed.

And somewhere in those pages, something changed.

The girl who once felt invisible began to see herself the way God sees her: not overlooked, but known. Not forgotten, but His daughter.

And through it all, I came to know Him as a Father.

The Scenic Route was born from that journey, and in June 2026, it was published.

It is my first book, but it won’t be my last. There are more stories, more poems, and more pages still to come.

It is a collection of poems drawn from my own life, from stories others have trusted me with, and from the world around me. It walks through the familiar themes of an ordinary life: heartbreak and hope, desire and waiting, change and the quiet in between.

I wrote it so that anyone holding it would know that no experience is truly isolated.

Someone else has cried those tears. Someone else has felt that joy. And God’s word still speaks over all of it.

Whether you are walking through loneliness, longing, pain or a season of transition and building, my prayer is that you’ll find a poem that feels like it was written for you, and that it points you back to the Lord Jesus, to remove self and behold Him.

Because the long way around is still a way forward.

Purpose still remains.

And faith is the substance…

any day now.

— Miracle Chikezie