WOUNDED HEART - FORWARD BEAT

I am not a poet, just someone with a wounded heart,

yet it beats forward still, pain becoming my strength.

Like the morning I woke up in that hospital bed,

tubes and wires mapping my survival,

the doctor saying, “We almost lost you,”

but my heart kept drumming its stubborn song.

Stabbed and shot so many times—

not just by bullets and blades,

but by promises that crumbled like autumn leaves,

by hands that should have held me but let me fall,

by mirrors that reflected back my failures.

Still, nothing can stop me before I reach my time—

onwards I shall move.

This wounded heart, filled with encouragement,

grows stronger through each painful blow.

I remember sitting on my kitchen floor at 3 AM,

broken dishes around me like confetti of rage,

thinking this was how my story ends.

But dawn came anyway,

and I swept up the pieces,

made coffee in a chipped mug,

and chose to begin again.

I am not here to finish what others broke before me;

I move forward with my scars,

carrying them like medals earned in battle.

The scar on my left shoulder tells of the night

I learned that family can be strangers,

the one across my palm speaks of the day

I stopped begging for love from empty wells.

No matter how deep the wounds cut into my soul,

I rise again—like that Tuesday when I couldn’t

get out of bed but did it anyway,

I breathe again—filling lungs that once forgot

how to want tomorrow,

I love again—tentatively, carefully,

but with the fierce tenderness of someone

who knows the cost of a beating heart.

Each scar a story, each pain a lesson learned,

each step forward a victory over what tried to break me.

This heart may be wounded,

but it beats with purpose,

it beats with hope,

it beats with the rhythm of rain on rooftops,

promising that storms pass

and morning always comes.

*This is not a post—this is the church,

where broken souls come to be made whole,

where testimony is written in scars,

and resurrection happens

one heartbeat at a time.*