Grace

If you live long enough, be assured
you will see lives shattered
and never put back together.
There’s a lot of pain
for all of the parties involved:
a test of patience.

God’s grace may be required
to make right such breakage
once it occurs,
having found that love itself’s 
the thing that’s broken,
can’t be repaired.
Maybe love wasn’t there
from the beginning.

We are so easy to fool,
so slow to learn
that sex is not identical with love.
It requires luck,
especially when we are young
and stung
by urges that drive our bodies.

Cost may be high. 

If lucky, trust is thrust upon us.
Trust allows repair,
making possible recapture of love,
usually in the form
of another who is also broken,
needing repair,
and for whom it’s been a long time coming
because of fear
and the lasting pain. 

We may find that grace
enables the commitment we need 
to be resurrected
for a second time and a third,
having previously had experience of love, 
then simply lost it;

so begin again, full of hope, 
even risking death, 
to at last and finally come home
to a welcome and celebration
you have never known
and never to be experienced again
because not needed.