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prayer poems for you

3 Comments

I’ve been sharing these prayer poems on social media recently. Readers asked if I’d save them so they could send to others. Here they are, for you.

Do we ever stop to consider
that they might be longing for us, too—
the ones we love and miss?
On this side our longing is called grief
and soaked in sorrow,
but their love is called joy—
which wants everyone to join.

They may not count down the chronos we number,
for they know the kairos that is beyond time.
But once in a while when I feel their presence,
I also feel their pulling—
the eagerness to offer to another
the best you have and know.

I wonder about the beatific vision—
if their lives are consumed now by gazing at God,
what space or time could they have
to think of us?
But holy remembering brings full presence
(and I have tasted this truth)
so I wonder if by beholding God
they also get to behold what God loves
(which is us).

If life in death is changed, not ended
and if love cannot die (as the best stories tell us)
then I fear we have short-changed the mystery
by cold, hard words we use:
lost, dead, gone.

One Word whispers another Way
and whenever I quiet down my sad soul to hear it speak,
I rise up and remember—I have only glimpsed God.
The fullness is a different story.
The next act will put this preamble into place.

For who wouldn’t want to press the best book
into the hands of their beloved
and say with joy—here! You really must read this.
I can’t quite put it into words
but it changed
my life.

Copyright © 2021 Laura Kelly Fanucci


Jesus spent most of his time on the planet
doing nothing extraordinary. Thirty years
of normal work and everyday life: eating, drinking,
building, growing, talking, praying.
A son, a brother, a friend, a neighbor.

When the time came for change
and he moved into his ministry—
the three short years that held Extraordinary Everything,
that we are still unpacking 2000 years later—
he transformed each everyday way of being
to become a holy way of meeting him:
food and drink, daily work, prayer and conversation.
He let us draw near to him through
the relationships he knew (and loved).

So when we want God to move in our lives—
powerfully or prayerfully, however we ask—
we would do well to remember the odds
are that God will be found in the ordinary,
dwelling among us, moving through
meals and prayer and work and sleep.

He only healed a handful in the time he had here.
He did not pour miracles on every teeming crowd.
God chose to reveal a different
divine way of being
than the magic-maker we might conjure.

Catch his voice in conversation
or listen for his whisper in work and rest.
Behold him in the boring.
He must have loved the quiet
and the overlooked.

Copyright © 2021 Laura Kelly Fanucci


What if the next day matters more?

After parties have ended,
confetti swept to piles,
adrenaline subsides,
cameras click to black, and
we return to ordinary time—
what if the real work starts then?

Not only dreaming, scheming, planting
but in the building, fixing, growing?

What if history is in the making
not just the marking
of a single day
but countless hours after?

What if despair and hope
loom large under a spotlight
but we are called to dwell in quiet corners,
the place where peace gets made
(and beds and meals and plans)?

What if we set our sights beyond
hoopla’s horizon to a hundred mornings after—
each dawn a silent gift to start again,
the space where dreams get chiseled into stone?

Yes, we need
to stop and celebrate,
mark milestones and moments on the way.
But may we not mistake
the celebration for the culmination.
Becoming will last longer than beginning,
and calendars stand firm on ground
of ordinary hours.

So let today—
another, unremarkable—
remind you of the miracle of mystery,
of much work to be done
and time to do it:
the wonder of a day we won’t recall.

Copyright © 2021 Laura Kelly Fanucci

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Eileen Hedrick says

    5 February 2021 at 6:03 pm

    As with so much of your writing, these poems reached deep into my heart. You have a gift and, clearly, the willingness to work at your craft. You are a channel of the Holy Spirit and you bless all your readers.

    Thank you for making them sharable.

    Reply
  2. Erin Bremer says

    9 February 2021 at 5:34 pm

    Thank you for posting on your blog so I can share with some family who recently had a loved one pass away!

    And for me. My mom passed away 3 years ago at 59 years old. Your poem has been comforting!

    Reply
  3. Amy Anderson says

    3 March 2021 at 9:28 am

    Oh, thank you so much for posting these here. Instagram has basically walled itself off from those of us without social media accounts, so I truly appreciate having a place that I can not only read these words, but return to them again and again. I have prayed for you and your family so much in the last week, I know it was a hard one.

    Reply

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About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

Mother, writer, wonderer.
Seeker of God in chaos & life with kids.
Author of Everyday Sacrament & Grieving Together.
Glimpses of grace & gratitude.

thismessygrace
Woke up tired of tears, ready to move, Psalms in m Woke up tired of tears, ready to move, Psalms in mind. Who’s with me?
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving h I am not resigned to the shutting away
of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be,
for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen,
the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve.
And I am not resigned.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Dirge Without Music.”

Margaret Susan Fanucci,
2-27-16 - 2-28-16.
Abigail Kathleen Fanucci,
2-27-16 - 2-29-16.

Thank you for walking these days with me. For your love, your kindness, and your generosity.

We will never forget them.
Now you'd be three, I said to myself, seeing a chi Now you'd be three,
I said to myself,
seeing a child born
the same summer as you.

Now you'd be six,
or seven, or ten.
I watched you grow
in foreign bodies.

Leaping into a pool, all laughter,
or frowning over a keyboard,
but mostly just standing,
taller each time.

How splendid your most
mundane action seemed
in these joyful proxies.
I often held back tears.

From "Majority" by Dana Gioia, a poet-father who knows.

2.27.2016.
Always a birthday.
Even when not happy.
I am standing in a fluorescent-lit gym, dingy mesh I am standing in a fluorescent-lit gym, dingy mesh tank top hanging off my scrawny shoulders. I am eleven years old, listening to a grey-haired coach with a whistle round his neck.

"Here is how you pivot," he says, grabbing the ball & crouching down. "Plant your foot, solid like a rock. Don't ever move it."

I am trying to learn, because basketball is cool & I am not. I desperately want to be good at shooting, scoring, stealing, anything. But he is teaching me something I will not forget.

“The power of pivoting is you can turn any way you want. You can move where you need to go. You just have to keep this foot planted."

Today I pivot.

One day between birthdays. 24 slim hours to turn from joy to grief.

Yesterday the bouncing babe turned a whole year old. He has seen all sides of the sun by now. He gets to keep going: an ordinary miracle.

Tomorrow his sisters would have turned 5. A ghost of a birthday, shared by twins, lost to us, held & gone all at once.

All I can do is pivot.

Here is my foot planted firmly in the ground of now. I can turn in any direction I want: from joy to sorrow & back again. This is the only power I have, but it is enough for today.

I will wobble. I will feel the frantic rise in my throat of attack coming at me, blocking my view, trying to steal what I hold. For a few desperate moments I will want to pick up both feet & run far away, run fast as I can from what I never wanted.

But my pivot foot is stronger & steadier. It will stay where I have asked it to stay, from when I learned deeper truth.

Pivoting is still movement, still freedom, still control over a small corner of here. You are the one who decides to stop & plant your foot.

And the pivot is not forever. It is part of a move, not the end point. It is an interim, a passage, a survival strategy.

Part of me is forever awkward & eleven, scrawny & uncertain. But more of me is almost-forty, scarred & stronger. Knowing I can stop when I need to stop & go when I want to go, even in a full court press out of my control.

Today I pivot. I never want to forget the strength here too, the potential to turn between all that comes at me. The power of knowing this is not the end.
One day I’ll tell him the story. How after days One day I’ll tell him the story.

How after days of long labor, sick & scary, heaps of drugs to save both our lives, I stared bleary-eyed at the hospital clock: ten to two, clear as night, & made a decision.

How with no midwives in the room—unknown OBs now, nurses we didn’t know, no familiar face among them—and the clock ticking, I had to do what all those strong women I trusted had taught me to do.

How I decided to midwife my own birth.

How with no strength left, I struggled up through fog & pain, fumbled for my phone, scrolled through the dark until I found the song, & turned it up to rise above the beeping & the monitors & the awful alone sounds of awake at 1:50 am in the hospital.

How I closed my eyes & waited for the beat to come & prayed for the strength. To be my own midwife.

Drop beat. Beat drop. Pause.

The battle of Yorktown. 1781.

I cranked one weary smile. Closed my eyes as the song picked up. Turned my clumsy body to the left side to bring on a contraction.

Gotta meet my son.

Breathed through the pain. Timed it. Heaved to the right side to bring on another wave.

The world turned upside down.

Smiled when the night nurse came to check, surprised. Feigned shock when she raised her eyes that things were changing.

How as soon as she left the room, I glared at the clock, hit repeat, turned to one side, then another, kept contractions coming & coming, coaching my body hour after hour to do what I knew it could do.

History will show that this child was born from pitocin for induction & magnesium sulfate for preeclampsia & a failed epidural or two & eight shots of epinephrine when maternal blood pressure tanked.

But I will know that he was born from sheer grit & the strength of every midwife I’ve loved & the back beat of Hamilton at 1:50 am in a lonely hospital room.

The world turned upside down, then 100 more times in the tumultuous first year of his life.

But I did what I had to do & what I could do & I did it all for love of him. That day & every one that followed.

That is a story worth telling.

His birth. (Mine, too.)

2.25.20
A story and a word of thanks. You are amazing huma A story and a word of thanks. You are amazing humans.
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