Blessed are you on this pain-filled day.When getting out of bed deserves an award.When you can’t remember what it feels likenot to be so aware of your own body.When you arrange your weeks around limitations or side effects. Or when you stop telling the truth altogether about how badly it hurts,how scared you are of […]
Blessings
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A Blessing for an Ordinary Day (because something terrible is not happening for once)
Lord, here I am. How strange it is, that some days feel like hurricanesand others like glassy seasand others like nothing much at all. Today is a cosmic shrug. My day planner says,rather conveniently,that I will not need you,cry for you, reach for you. Ordinarily, I might not think of you at all. Except, if […]
A Blessing for when you need to put one foot in front of the other
Oh God,the thought of trying for a new and improved me makes me tired.I am barely getting anywhere,so draw me closer to a different vision,one that sees that I don’t need perfection— I need love. Free me from the expectation that life should always be better.The everyday stressors—the bills, the pressure, the dependents,the existential fears […]
A Blessing for When Your Family Disappoints You
God, the very people who are supposed tolove me and know me best have let me down. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a way forward. I’m losing my sense of homeand the reality of it fills me with a kind of fear.However big, however small,this pain feels unforgivable. I know they’re […]
A Blessing to Take What You Need
The feeder is empty againand no one is claiming that the birds are greedyfor taking what they pleased. Look at how the fat, pink flowersare weighing the end of each branch,sucking nutrients into each velvet petal.How selfish. Nature hungers, takes and needs.God, why can’t I? Blessed are we, learning to take what we need.Sleeping past […]
A Blessing for Easter Sunday
An Easter blessing It is an astonishing thing to behold:That a seed falls, and entombed there in the damp earthit swells and cracks open, unfolding to reveala tender root searching downward,a bright shoot rising upward toward the light,becoming this material wonder we call a plant. Just so, the physical body of Jesus was entombed, hidden […]
A Blessing for Palm Sunday
They ran eagerly, spreading their cloaks on the road as Jesus came, waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” This surely would signal the beginning of their deliverance, and the ending of their oppression, sorrow, and shame. What’s this? No mighty horse or chariot? Only […]
A Blessing for the Body
Blessed is the body that offers soft hugs on hard days. Whose curves fit our pets and our kids and our partners. Whose hands hold another alongside hospital beds and in nursing homes and at the altar and on the first day of school. Whose breasts nurse and legs run to chase littles and whose […]
A blessing for when you don’t feel #blessed
blessed are we who we lose sleep over what troubles us.whose worries keep us watching the clock tick by.who have no energy to do anything but fret.the kingdom of God is here and now. blessed are we drowning in grief.when wave after wave after wave crashes over us.who start to feel okay, then something reminds […]
A prayer for when you feel invisible
Dear God, I always feel like the last one picked. The left out, the unclaimed. It’s hard to miss. My gifts are not welcome. My tears are not seen. My pain is not registered. I feel invisible. Jesus, when You walked among us, You became the one rejected. You were abandoned—even betrayed—by Your best friends, […]