TRAUMA LIKE BROKEN GLASS

Examining his existence subsequent to the shock

the trauma seemed like so much broken glass

whose crystal shards recurrently cut him deeply inside.

How then to repair and to progress beyond his pain?

He conceded the damage yet integrated it meaningfully into life,

observing it in the context of a greater drama.

Not just some unplanned, terrible event but rather

as a most troubled chapter in his life-giving redemptive story.

How easily that rolls from the keyboard to the screen

for someone later chronicling his story.

What remains unwritten is the unknown narrative of ache

that robbed of sleep and soaked the pillow and screamed at night.

On this hellish excursion, countless deviations

into living nightmares of harm and forfeiture.

So much lost that was priceless and envisioned for a lifetime.

Only God secured his sanity with serenity born from hope.

Longing to know the ending of this somber story’s start

each reader turning the page dreads the words ‘the end,’

can silently sigh relieved and continue the protagonist’s ride,

from his desolate broken heart that could have shattered his faith,

to the evident gentle genius of the mighty hand of God,

Who extracted piercing shards and stemmed the hemorrhage of his soul,

Healing him with pardon and forming vibrant, selfless hope.

This reluctant wounded man becomes the hero to the hurting.

© Ron Unruh, December 2021