Heart laces

I asked for a heart repair,

stitched together with your endless grace threads,

sewn up piece by broken piece with your careful hands.

I did not ask for something new

or to share the same heart that beat life into man,

but to humbly have the pieces of mine taken from the floor of my soul

and coarsely fit back together with scars exposed.

A yearning for some glimpse of your love found within this human body.

But your ways are surely not my ways.

My requests are like teardrops in your ocean,

spilling large over my eyes but falling tiny upon your abundance.

My prayers for your mercy are bound by my humanity,

but your grace flows out limitless.

Instead of giving as I asked, you gave in the way only you can

placing within me the very heart that healed the sick,

raised the dead and invited little children to come and stay.

I chose your healing over all the rest and you were ready.

With your truth and promises,

you mend the wounds and seal the cracks

rendering empty spaces, once filled with lost hope, now overflowing

and the darkest places of sin now illuminated with its redemption in you.

I feared my heart was a hopeless, broken mess of humanity,

my condition instinctual and my behaviors impossible.

That no matter the strength of my determination

or the drive of my will

I would never see myself right enough for you.

But my eyes distort and disfigure.

The heart you see within me is the one you were so eager to give.

To take and mend. Repair and restore.

And make it the one you’ve seen from the beginning-

the heart of your daughter and the heart of your Son.