There is a sparkle in the darkness. I lie in bed after a good night’s sleep, having gotten up to eat some toast and drink some tea. Then I tuck myself back into bed, for the sun is not yet up. At times like this, words come to me that must be written down.

My life has been one long darkness, a sentence in the penitentiary of earth. For this is a planetary kindergarten beset with traps and tests. I have not found solace here. But there is a sparkle in the darkness. It is the light that lies within the broken heart. For an unbroken heart is like an unhatched egg.

A life of introversion is a test in itself. Mine has been beset with anxiety and horror at what I have been asked to live through. But that is changing as the dawn begins to break. As the sunlight of fortitude parts the clouds of inner night.

My little girl lies sleeping in a cemetery far away. My son is faithful to the sparkle, as am I. His life, too, has been a testament to patience in the face of darkness. Both his father and grandfather died of the same cancer at the same age at the same time of year. He has chosen a life of solitude and simplicity. He shuns the limelight and the goodies offered by the false faces of this world. He rides his bike daily, goes out into the wooded trails where he can catch the sunlight on the pines.

My husband lies next to his little girl, our Laurie. The words on her grave marker proclaim, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The inner meaning of her early death sparkles in the darkness of her absence. For “ye are the light of the world.”

I write to you as your tears fall from sleeping eyes. These waters wake them up to the beauty of the inner love you carry. Go forward with it until you recognize yourself in the eyes of another beauty. They are everywhere, asleep and waiting for your touch. They will know you. They will share their light with you and in that way the light will grow.

Out at the edge of darkness the light you carry illuminates the universe. The stars within will never leave you or forsake you. Nothing can put them out. Not even death.

Vicki Woodyard