On brokeness and hope

 Sometimes

Life seems hardly worth the living!

The journey

Through the peaks and valleys of our existence

Is twisted and full of pitfalls

and we

 in our fragility

 often get broken

and

Like bottles tossed carelessly to the side of the road.

we lie

 shattered, in pieces,

irregular fragments glistening in the sun

Raw edges, sharp and tortured,

There are pieces of us scattered along the roads we have traveled,

In our brokeness we are empty,

Joy comes

but cannot be contained.

It seeps through the cracks to disappear.

Love comes,

only to go,

and ;hope, there is no hope

for one so broken.

And yet,

sometimes,

hope comes.

In a smile, in a touch,

in conversations lasting long into the night,

Step by step the metamorphosis begins,

and out of the jagged jumble

the first faint glimmerings of wholeness grow.

a thing of beauty....

how can such a battered creation be beautiful?'

but for all the seams and cracks,

the wonder of what was, and is,

and still might be,

beauty shines through.

and deep in the murky depths love comes

and stays

_________________________________________________

A re-publishing of a poem in honor of all those people

whom I work with who have been battered by life

and work

and husbands or wives

and have come to doubt

themselves

You are beloved children of God

You have value

You have a voice, your own voice

May you know that God is with you and for you

as difficult as that is, at times, to sense, and know, and believe