I was honored when I was asked to create this piece for Water Street Mission. WSM is a non-profit in downtown Lancaster, PA that loves on broken people by offering food, shelter, counseling, and life-skills coaching to homeless men, women, and children. This piece will be hung on the walls of WSM and used as a visual in their counseling program to help represent the brokenness of the heart's core longings and the resulting effects of the wounded heart. The core longings shown in the roots of the tree are love, belonging, security, understanding, significance, and purpose. Each core longing is marked by a wound, and in the branches of the tree are shown the harmful things that individuals turn to as a result of those wounds: drugs, codependency, religion, food, sex, work, gambling, and alcohol.

Every heart was made for love, but the enemy is at work in the world, seeking to devour our identity. People are broken. Every good thing that God placed within us is under attack because the enemy fears our life's potential. We can't fight this war on our own. That's why we need to dig our roots deep into the love of God-- into HIS heart. God restores every wound, every broken part of us. Let those roots grow deep into his truth and watch as the bare branches of your life begin to blossom and bear fruit. God offers hope to each heart, and he has purpose for each life-- let him bring you back to life.