I just love the following poem. I found it on a message board that I frequent and had to post it here. It speaks to me on so many levels.

If I could mend your heart...

I would weave together
the ragged edges
of your threadbare heart
and soothe your pain
your shock
and disbelief.
I would invite you to
touch your sorrow
and feel your feelings
and not pretend to be strong
or capable
or composed.
I would listen,
without comment,
to all that is unsettled
in your soul
your doubts
your anger
your fears
about the future.
I would heed your cries
and probing questions
What might you have done wrong
or,
what you might not
have done at all.
For more than a single ending,
your loss may spark
other sorrows
other conclusions
good-byes
and
thorny adjustments
in every corner of your soul.

If I could mend your heart…
I would promise not to say,
“Look how well you’re handling things,”
or,
“Cheer up,
God wouldn’t give you
more than you could handle.”
or,
“You’ll be over this soon.”
Instead, I would whisper in your ear,
“We live in a fragile and imperfect world
tinged by brokenness
and cloaked in unanswered questions.
Some things truly aren’t fair.
This is hard.”
I would tell you
“Getting over it” isn’t very helpful
And would ask,
“Can you try to let go of
that idea?”
For I don’t think loss is about
“handling things well,”
or
“keeping it all together.”
But about keeping afloat
in a rising tide of doubt
Asking the silence,
“Why?”
“What is the meaning of this?”
It’s about learning to co-exist with
an unwanted visitor,
with alien thoughts,
and depleted spirits.

If I could mend your heart…
I would draw you a plan and perfect map
to light your path from confusion and despair,
to
a place of new tomorrows
and rewarding journeys.
A place where anger could
release
its grip on understanding,
and anxiousness
might speak to acceptance.

I would
shape for you
a fresh way
of seeing,
through prisms
of sunlight,
That warm
your emptiness
and guide the
way to a new
adventure.

Prisms of sunlight that temper
your pain with compassion
and replace your doubts with faith,
your grief with gratitude,
your fear with trust.

If I could mend your heart…
I would open wide the doors of renewed hope
~ a hope much larger than wishes.
One that waits
patiently,
willingly,
expectantly,
Anticipating future good and
knowing that life is worth living
after all.
This hope that I wish for you
would predict no answers
but invite you
to live the questions.
It would not demand exact outcomes
but ask you to risk letting go
and bid you to move
forward
even in the
face of unease.
This fresh hope I send would
let you step up with courage
to the new day
trusting that even pain
can be
transformed.

If I could mend your heart…
I would lead you by the hand
to this place of healing
so that you might once again
walk your own path
and make memories.
I would share with you a secret
“Joy is not about
music
and dance
and laughter,
but about
the acceptance of Life.
Healing happens only where
fear and love,
joy and sorrow,
tears and smiles,
can forge a
lasting peace.
The healing I speak of lies
not in some safe place along the way,
but in
having made
the journey
stage
by
stage.
Until you reach that place,
a place
you may not now believe
exists,
I will save your space
and watch with confidence
for your smiles yet to be.

By Mary I. Farr