Rebuild

Broken down walls reflect a broken down people
Tattered streets strewn with trash
Bare witness to the tattered hearts
Discarded, displaced
Knee deep in despair




We dig beneath the rubble
Praying for signs of life
We tell them to hold on
To cling to hope
But where is ours?

Is it in man?
Who can only do but so much
Or is it in a God who can do the impossible?

God who within me placed a dream
Not for myself, but for His people
A dream to rebuild the ruined walls
To heal the broken bodies beneath the rubble
To show a cynical world that He is God

So take in hand your weapons and your tools
and complete the work that He has given you to do

© 2011 by Elaine Glover

Heartbreak in Haiti!

Tears flood my eyes as I consider the sight
One child naked clings to her leg with not as much as a diaper or shoes
the other she cradles - a little girl, no more 6 months old
wearing only a onesie.
The little girls legs covered with the scars from old burns,
the result of living in a tent.

Now they have no tent.
Shoeless, homeless, hungry and naked
they sleep in the streets of Port Au Prince.
And their mother - is 19 years old.

My heart breaks as I hear her story.
How she covers her children and self with
a plastic bag as torrential rains pour down.
How she hopes to find food from a kind neighbor
(who also lives in the streets under a tarp or tent)
to feed her son and maybe if there is enough herself.
How at times she has no milk in her breasts to nurse her newborn daughter.

And all at once I feel helpless and ashamed.
I want to changed her situation and give her all I own, but I cannot.
I'm ashamed because I too have been 19 with two small children
and have never known the desperation in her eyes.
I have never slept in a street or begged for food.

I have only two things which separate me from this woman.
The fact that I, myself am no longer 19 and my children no longer small.
And the fact that I was born in America.

While My Heart's Breaking

“If we must part forever, Give me but one kind word to think upon,

And please myself with, while my heart’s breaking.” ~Thomas Otway

This past week has brought so many things I could not have imagined, and while many will take weeks and months to process...I must address the state of my heart.

It is broken. Shattered in pieces too numerous to count, and though there is one who can restore, rebuild and renew...the pain I am feeling is indescribable.

So instead, I will describe the love we shared. It was natural, not forced or put on. I grew closer with every conversation we had, with every moment we shared and it was divine. While I cannot predict the future, my hope and faith lies in him who has never failed me and has foreseen every minute of my life as he himself is the Author of it. Today he holds me a little bit closer as he collects the fragmented pieces of me which lie shattered on the ground. He has promised to rebuild me like he rebuilds his holy city and in him alone I put my faith.

The hardest day yet since we parted...I had today. To see you walking towards me, seemingly whole, seemingly fine...while all within me cried out to you "Why? Why? Was I not enough? Was I too much? Was our love not enough?" All of this emotion causing me to run away, rather than face the facts. I am no longer yours, and you are not mine. This is not FOREVER.

FOREVER is gone.