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From the beginning, those first moments when my heart’s pulsating rhythm began within my breast, long before I left the sanctuary of my mother’s womb, my heart was foreordained to be fixed at the core of life’s big adventure.
In my radiant and unconquerable youth, my heart was flush with vitality, healthy and enduring.
By virtue of a childhood intimate with wide open spaces, my heart grew in awe of Nature. My heart validated: every living creature is in the hands of God.
My heart discovered that what one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.
Early on I came to discern the need to guard my heart, aware that out of my heart would flow the very texture of life.
When I became a young man, I gave my heart away “for better or worse.”
In the course of time my heart would experience the inspiriting leap that ushers in the birth of a child. A child my grateful heart could not wait to love forever.
My father’s heart expanded with each new life entrusted to my sheltering and guidance.
Tiny fingerprints, like sunsets, were viewed with wonder; not just because they were beautiful, but because my father’s heart knew they were fleeting.
Growing apart would not change the fact, that for a time, we grew side by side.
No delight could nurture my father’s heart like the mere presence of one whom I profoundly loved. I understood that far too soon, once upon a time becomes until forever after.
Somedays I wish I could pilgrimage back in life, to savor things twice, to linger.
I sing the sonnet of my father’s heart:
“Child, I have loved in untold measure, moments of your life I will always treasure.
Never fear this heart of mine, but know its pleasure … in seeing you, in hearing you, embracing you, in loving you.”
Deep within my father’s heart I hold sacred all I have come to cherish.
My father’s heart resists conforming to the patterns of this world, it resists the bitterness spawned of disillusionment and disappointment; the strain of stress born of fear, the ache of pain born of loss.
My flesh and my heart will one day fail, but God will remain steadfast, upholding the strength of my father’s heart and my portion forever.
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