Torn and battered, tattered shreds,
Shards of a heart broken;
Bleeding wounds, trials and tears,
Pain of a word ill spoken.
She holds on tight to the broken bits-
Shatters of dreams once hoped for.
Tears wash her cheeks like rivers of rain;
Shoulders sunk ‘neath the weight she’s bore.
She dares not lift her hanging head;
The travelers passing by
Understand not the cry of her heart,
They hurry, unheeding her sigh.
The dusk deepens on, still they march
Unheedingly on their way.
“She’s a mess,” one says to the other.
“I haven’t time. Another day.”
At last one pauses on the onward trek
Stoops low to the fallen one.
A few short words in a whisper low,
“The victory can still be won.”
Then onward again the traveler moves.
“Stop. Stop!” the fallen cries.
“How can you say, when I’ve lost everything!
I’ve fallen, here my fate clearly lies.”
“My life is in shatters. Try as I may
I can’t piece back the pieces.
Yes, for you, victory. For me? Defeat.
You’re not lying here in these ditches.”
The traveler turns and speaks again,
“My friend, you are quite mistaken.
I, too, have lain in the bogging depths,
By all on this road forsaken.”
“I cried in misery, torment, in rage;
The hope within me was shattered.
My heart throbbed in agony, injustices burned,
My endurance worn beyond tattered.”
“No strength to go on, I lay in the mire.
I was broken, myself my foe,
When onward by a workman passed
In his hands a stained-glass window.”
“The sun shone down on that dirt highway,
The glass that light reflected.
The colors shone in the light, distinct;
The shards someone had perfected.”
“I saw those shards and I pondered deep
The beauty in that glass reflected.
Yet each one of those pieces was once a whole,
Shattered to be perfected.”
“My friend, the shatters of your own life
Do not shine at now as a rainbow.
But if you’ll place them all in the Master’s hands
He’ll create that stained glass window.”
