Prayers
To The One Who Doesn’t Anymore
To the one who doesn’t journal, anymore. To the one who doesn’t play piano, anymore. To the one who doesn’t dance, write, shoot, build, garden, cook, bake, sketch, or sing anymore. You are not a failure, and the passion of your past was not fake. That art came to you and came from you for a season. The…
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Shadowlands
Lord, we invite you into the shadowlands of our hearts. Reveal to us the ways in which we continue to turn away from You. Release us from the shame of our betrayals and our perceived failures. Help us run toward Your mercy and repent of our sins. In these holy days, transform us and conform…
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A Prayer for Miscarriage
This prayer for miscarriage is featured in the book Pocket Prayers for Times of Trouble (Twenty-Third Publications, 2014). God of comfort, you who are mother and father of us all, hear my anguish at the loss of my child. My heart and body are broken, wracked with pain and grief. Let me bring you my cries and my confusion, my anger…
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Lord Have Mercy
Lord have mercy. It all feels so hopeless as we talk and talk and posture and debate and namecall and swipe and dehumanize for our own gain and nothing changes. No end in sight as children keep dying and families keep weeping and wailing and grieving… Lord have mercy on us all. Where are our…
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Lord, Help Me Choose Love
Lord, help me choose love. Help me choose love over the need to correct. Help me choose love over the need to educate. When I feel the need to prove my point, help me choose love. Help me choose love when I’m tired or impatient. When I’m angry, when I’m struggling with my mental health,…
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May Flowing Waters Quench The Parched Land
May flowing waters quench the parched land. May tiny tendrils push through the once hardened ground and blossom. May the grip of gloom be loosened to make way for joy. May the smallest spark of light shatter the suffocating darkness. May the tombs be empty and the gardens full. And in the groaning and straining…
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There Is Space For Your Story
There is space for your story. All the good, and all the gold. All the hard, and all the hurt. All the broken, and all the beautiful. There is room for the wreckage, room for the wounds and for figuring out: What went wrong, and who, and how, and what now? There is space for…
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For Days When We Get It All Wrong
God, there are days when I get this all so wrong. I lose my patience, I yell, I cry. I just don’t have the control I wish I had. Not over them, but over myself. I tell myself, “they’re just kids!” And then I battle with the patience I was never shown. I tell myself,…
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How To Hold Your Bones
Here is how to hold your bones, how not to leave the skin you live in how not to forsake the flesh that fails how not to scorn the cells that kill. Here is how to dig yourself out from deepest, darkest grounds and graves: You, the caged bird that you are, will sing and…
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Set Our Hearts On Fire
God Who is Love, When we are weary and empty and find it difficult to love Gently remind us we need not rely on our own power, that we cannot love the way we are called to love on our own strength. Renew us from our exhaustion. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit to overflow,…
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Your Joy Remains
At a local laundromat, I realized something. My mind is constantly racing. There’s not a moment when I don’t have thoughts running through my mind. More often than not, those thoughts are negative. More than I would like. But today I caught myself thinking and feeling something new. I have found joy here. Here, in…
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A Blessing to Begin
God, bless the hopes and anxieties, The joys and the longings Within us as we raise our children. Bless the late nights And the too-early mornings. Bless the daily chaos And the quiet moments, too. Bless the growing hearts and souls And their embodied hope. Bless the future so full of promise, And bless the…
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I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. So when I see a trial an unexpected struggle an unfamiliar season a potentially hard thing anything new anything I’m not used to headed my way and uncomfortably close, when I see it and become tempted to hoard manna I remember: The Bread of life…
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God of new life, In this season of resurrection, help us to look for the little miracles. Shatter our disillusionment when the big miracles fail to materialize before us – Break through with your consolation when our Lazarus isn’t raised from the dead, Break through with Your mercy when our children aren’t healed, Break through…
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For mother-artists, writers, crafters and creators. Know that your work is holy, both in your art and with your family! God, I come to you today With a thousand prayers— For peace, for quiet, For inspiration and motivation, For the chance to meet You In the sacred space of creation. In this time You have…
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Father, Thank You for being the God who sees. The God who knows. The God who cares. Thank You that You see me, Your beloved daughter, in my frailty. Thank You that You know everything about me— including my internal struggles that threaten to strangle the life out of me. Thank You that You care…
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A Song of St. Anselm Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you; you are gentle with us as a mother with her children. Often you weep over our sins and our pride; tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment. You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds; in sickness…
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Again. Again. Again. Again. How long? How long. How long By what we have done And what we have failed to do, We have our children’s blood on our hands. Hear our cry, God of Justice. Heal our wounds, Prince of Peace. Help our brokenness, Spirit of Truth. We cannot live like this.Which is why…
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Lord, when I pray to You as my Father, do not allow my human mind to limit You to my human understanding of what it means to be father or mother. I pray that our limits of human language do not hide who You truly are to every one of Your children. You are Spirit,…
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Whether planned or unplanned, a Caesarean section is a powerful birth experience. The act of surrender into a surgeon’s hands symbolizes the physical sacrifice of motherhood—and invites a new reflection on Jesus’ own words: “This is my body, given for you.” Since it’s normal to face fear or anxiety heading into the operating room, it…
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How long, O Lord? How are we to bear this pain Over and over and over Blood cries out from the ground Again and again and again Met once more with Empty words and violent fists Hearts of stone which fail to see To weep, to lament, to repent How long, O Lord We are…
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Frustrated with your three year-old? Fed up with your teenager? Certain stages of parenting are just plain hard. Here are three prayers for when your child (or you) is throwing an epic fit. And remember: Help me is a whole prayer, too. A short version: God, I am going to lose it. Help me not…
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If they only knew that your love for them hums along in quiet work they cannot see, in love that is relentless, monotonous and nocturnal, hidden in acts of service that guard and keep. Perhaps they do not care how fully you care until the good order they take for granted is missing in action.…
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Inhale: their smoky tempers, all aflame, fiery and persistent in their desire Exhale: calm and firm, consistent boundaries Inhale: their sweaty anxieties, all wrapped up in things they don’t understand Exhale: a peaceful presence, unwavering even in your own misunderstanding Inhale: the taste of rebellion, their wild energy dancing away from you Exhale: grace, the…
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