Nothing Like the Heart

All things break...
.....but nothing like the heart,
.....the stained glass window of the soul.
Most things mend...
.....but never quite the same
.....though all the parts make up the whole.

Somehow though...
.....through broken panes
.....the morning draws the sun
.....to the darkest corner of our hope
.....and healing is begun.
No one knows
.....how in these times
.....He helps us play our part.
All we know
.....from how we feel
..........is all things break...
...............but nothing like the heart.
© Copyright April, 1995, Tom Kapanka, Patterns of Ink Vol 1
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Five years ago, I posted this poem that I'd written in April,1995. It had begun as a lyric in my head on the ten-hour drive home from my father's funeral. Sometimes the tune comes back to me, but more often just the feeling. It was the deepest grief I had ever experienced. Julie and I were expecting our third child, but she was ten weeks from knowing her grandpa's voice, and has now, for all those years, known him only in photographs and stories.

This past Sunday was the 17th anniversary of my father's death, and oddly enough I had forgotten that fact for most of the day until my daughter, who was the unborn child mentioned above, reminded me of it in the middle of a conversation with four people, two young and two older, that had a sadness all its own for her. It was something short of sorrow but still the kind of hurt that parents hope to ease, and we were honored to have been included in it.  And like grief, the expressed affections and conclusions reminded me that all the joy of what we know of love finds its deepest meaning in what we know of loss.

I am pleased that my daughter is learning these things in ways beyond her years, and I trust that the song she posted on her Facebook page a month or so ago will have even greater meaning to her in the days ahead.

Stained glass is a great example of beauty in brokenness. In the 2nd stanza, if you change the spelling of panes to pains, morning to mourning, and sun to Son, you may find fuller meaning in the imagery. Psalm 34:18