Writing Straight with Broken Lines

The “Heartsong” of Mattie Stepanek.

By: Bob French

If there is someone to whom these Scripture verses would apply more than most, it would have to be Mattie J.T. Stepanek, the best-selling poet who died last year at the age of thirteen. Few people have lived a more fragile existence than Mattie. For every moment of his short life, he was beset by a crippling disease. And yet Mattie realized that he had a great treasure to be shared with everyone: his tremendous faith and courage, and the wisdom that he expressed through the beautiful gift of his writing.

Given how greatly Mattie suffered, it might be hard to believe that he was capable of giving very much. He was born in 1990 with an extremely rare and incurable disease, a form of muscular dystrophy called dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy (DMM). The disease affected his body’s automatic functions, such as heartbeat, respiration, and digestion, making normal life impossible.

Mattie also had to endure much more than physical pain. His three siblings Katie, Stevie, and Jamie all had DMM and eventually died from it. His parents divorced when he was six, and he had to bear the years of poverty that followed.

Yet to his mother, Jeni Stepanek, Mattie’s very existence was a gift. Even when she finally learned (when Mattie was two) that she and all her children had DMM, she did not stop believing, as she always has, that…

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