When they are broken, they feel as though they will never heal, but hearts do break and hearts do heal. I know because mine has done both. Healing a broken heart is kind of like the healing of a lost limb. Once the wound is healed, there is still something missing.

After Anna died I penned this thought:

"Oh, how I long to touch her and talk to her. There truly is a void in my heart. It's kind of like I'm missing a piece of it and I don't want it filled up with anything else. If Anna can't fill it, it will have to remain empty. But, I wish it would stop hurting so much."

The day that I wrote that, I truly felt as though I was missing a piece of my heart. I never questioned the validity of that thought until a day three years later.

Amy is a friend who is experiencing a broken heart. Her precious seven month old baby Emily was suddenly taken from Amy and her family. She's a writer and like me pens her thoughts to allow a release of her emotions. I read a comment she wrote at the very end of her writing one day and began to ponder these words, "Empty-handed but not empty- hearted."

She had described it accurately, and when I read it, I was reminded of that entry I had penned in my journal three years before. Her words contradicted mine but were true. How could I have felt as though there was a piece of my heart missing if Anna never left my heart (which of course is the case).

I talked to Amy about her words and mine. She said that perhaps it was a difference in personalities or in the way we expressed our hearts. She thought that maybe her perspective was just different than mine. For some reason this was a bit unsettling to me because I knew that Anna never left my heart. I knew that I didn't just dump her out when she died.

I knew Amy wasn't accusing me of anything, she was merely trying to explain how we could describe our broken hearts with such an opposite point of view, but it troubled me. How could I describe it that way? It wasn't that my personality was such that I had decided to rid Anna from my heart and that Amy's personality allowed her to keep her daughter there in hers.

No, that wasn't it at all. We both loved our daughters with the greatest love imaginable. Regardless of our personalities, we had both loved and longed for our daughters. I went to my journal so that I could get a better perspective of where my heart truly was back then. I found these entries as well:

"Lord, you've blessed us so much with special relationships. Even though there were eight of us, when Anna left, I still felt lonely for her. There is a special little spot in my heart just for her, just as there is a special spot for each family member and each friend. A part of me would feel lonely if any one of these special people went away.

"Anna was here for over six years and will be here forever in our hearts and minds."

These words confirmed what my heart and mind already knew; that even through the days of severe grief, Anna had remained in my heart. It was just that the heart injury was so severe it felt as if somebody had carved a piece out and had thrown it away. It was the longing for her that was perceived as emptiness. She wasn't there to respond to that need in my heart. It was her absence that created that longing in my heart...that feeling of loneliness.

In Psalm 143 when David was overwhelmed in his spirit he wrote these words:

"Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness...my spirit is overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate."

He used the word "desolate". The meaning of desolate is this: solitary, lonely, deserted...We know that David's heart wasn't really desolate, but it felt that way to him at the time. That's how it felt to me when Anna died. I was lonely for her. My arms couldn't hold her, my eyes couldn't see her, my lips couldn't kiss her...but it was my heart that longed for those things.

So, I came to the point where I could see that Amy was indeed right. When you lose someone you love, you are "empty-handed but not empty-hearted", but I also came to realize that when you lose somebody you love, the feeling of having a desolate heart is true too. It isn't empty of your sweet loved one, but that part of your heart that is exclusively theirs, is not satisfied without them.

I'm grateful that hearts do heal. The deep pain of loss does eventually subside, but my heart was changed by each one of my children and when Samuel, Josiah and Anna went to Heaven, my heart permanently changed. The place that they hold in my heart will always long for them and will only be satisfied when I hold them again.

November 19th 2005 (The one year anniversary of Anna's death)
"My heart will never be the same. You've imprinted a love for Anna Gabrielle there and that lonely spot won't be satisfied until the day I hold her again."