✍️The Box: A Poem Born from Grace and Grit

By Aimée Doyle

When I wrote “The Box,” I wasn’t trying to be poetic.

The poem didn’t start as a standalone work—it grew from a real-life moment, one I captured more fully in a true story I shared here on the blog titled “Blessings in a Box.” If you’ve read that piece, you already know the story behind the box. If you haven’t, I hope you’ll take a moment to read it. The events are real. The names are changed out of respect—but the heart of it is all mine.

In “Blessings in a Box,” I walked to church holding a small cardboard jewelry box—simple, reused, and unremarkable at a glance. Inside were nine miraculous medals meant to be given away. What I didn’t expect was a spiritual ambush before I could complete that mission: a woman I didn’t know stopping me, speaking at me with a strange familiarity, digging at old wounds and trying to rewrite a truth I had lived.

But God met me in that moment. And what I carried—physically and spiritually—became more than just medals. It became a reclaiming.

The poem trailing my short story doesn't walk through Sunday’s events—it echoes the tremors they left inside me. Its first lines struck the chord.

“I carried a box—just paper and thread,

But inside it, the stories the world left unsaid.”

That little box, once a gift I received “unexpectedly”…. “coincidentally”, during my broadcast career, had long symbolized quiet affirmation in a workplace that had unashamedly tried to silence me. I had won it by “chance”…not through favoritism or politics, but simply by showing up—with truth and compassion—when it mattered.

In “The Box,” I wrote:

“A box once gifted by chance, not by scheme,

Had carried more weight than the world ever dreamed.”

That weight wasn’t just emotional. It was spiritual. It had carried the prayers I was too tired to say. And in that church, during a First Communion Mass full of lace and joy, I realized my purpose wasn’t to blend in—it was to quietly bless while being blessed in return.

But there was resistance. A smile too sharp. A conversation too strange. A test I hadn’t expected.

“That morning, an ambush in casual disguise,

A smile too sharp, and too knowing of lies.

But evil’s not clever when heaven has heard,

And truth will unravel in the weight of a word.”

That word, for me, was truth. I spoke it out loud. I asked my priest to bless the medals. I named my purpose in front of witnesses, even as old trauma tried to rise up and choke it back.

And I remembered the words of another priest I once admired:

“I remembered a priest who preached through the fight:

The devil hates you—because you are light.”

That light, I believe, shows up most clearly when we step into the moment we were meant for. When we speak. When we claim our dignity. When we refuse to let shame define the outcome.

“To bless what I carried. To claim what was mine.

To speak when the moment was laden with sign.”

The final lines of the poem return to that transformation—how I left lighter than I came, but carrying something far more eternal than medals in a box:

“I walked from the church, my hands slightly bare,

But my heart was alight with the weight of a prayer.

For I came with a box, and I left with a flame—

A vow in my spirit, and no trace of shame.”

That is the story behind “The Box.” And it is also the story behind so much of my writing—this determination to bear witness to grace, even in the wreckage.

And now, this poem—born in silence, prayer, and deep personal surrender—is being recognized.

I’m humbled to share that “The Box” has been awarded Honorable Mention in the Rhyming Poetry category of the 94th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, selected from nearly 3,800 submissions across 45 countries.

This isn’t just a writing win. It’s a witness.

I didn’t write The Box to win anything. I wrote it because I had to. Because it carried my story, my faith, and the quiet voice that kept whispering: God sees. Even here. Even now.

To be honored for this particular piece is a grace I don’t take lightly. My name and poem will be listed on WritersDigest.com later this fall. And to anyone still carrying heavy boxes—literal or spiritual—please hear me: even the flawed medals can still be miraculous.

If you haven’t yet read Blessings in a Box, the true story that inspired the poem, I invite you to do so. You can find it here on my blog.

Click image to go to my short story, called “Blessings in a Box”.

With deep gratitude and renewed fire,

— Aimée Lee