Friday Prayer, January 5, 2017

 

Happy New Year, my friends! What’s swirling in your spirits as the new year begins? I hope you are lifting pressure from yourself. I hope you are looking in the mirror at the 2018 you and smiling. I hope you are telling yourself this will be a year of showing grace and love and lots of breathing room – to others and yourself.

 The new year gives a beckoning call to delve deeper – to get to that primal heartbeat and listen for the truest desire within its cadence. To discover – through baby steps – the life-giving rhythms that free and fuel us.

I told my husband the other day one of my intentions this year is to say, “No problem” more – and mean it. Or maybe I’ll add some variety with other good sayings I’ve heard, like “All will be well” or “Plot twist!”

As a person of rigid, “all-or-nothing,” judgmental standards, I will probably say this through gritted teeth at times. But we live and act our way into new forms of feeling and seeing.

This goes for not only what happens to me, but also what I make happen. I’ve been thinking about how I deprive myself and those around me of gifts because it wasn’t the “perfect” way I thought it should be. There is such beauty in an offering simply because it is an offering. You are giving the Spirit room to work.

***

Gracious One,

 

I thank you for holding my hand in this fresh, new year…

Against my inclination and with your help,

I let go of my desire for more control over my life.

My hunger to know what’s coming and to be ready for it.

My expectations to be in charge.

 

Have you not taught me again and again

how the joy is in the flexibility?

How all the unexpected, the unwanted, the unexplained things

coalesce to carve me into

the person I really am and want to be?

 

Even the changes I asked for,

the changes I wanted,

can cause anxiety.

Treading on this shifting soil

calls for a steadiness

beyond my own capabilities.

So I trust your hand to hold mine,

carrying me into this new land –

good but different.

 

You are my Birthing Mother,

always re-creating, always open to change.

You can keep showing me that

while change is eternally constant,

so is your presence.

 

You can help me know in my bones

how hope is born through struggle

and the fresh start brought through

change is an invitation to grow.

 

Whenever something leaves,

something new comes.

Please give me the wisdom of soul, Loving One,

to look for it.

 

For a soft heart open to change,

sensitive to others’ pain,

resilient with hope,

trusting in darkness….

this is the heart for which I pray.

 

Amen.