A Blessing for The Lives We Didn’t Choose

(Adapted for a communal setting from The Lives We Actually Have, page 188) Blessed are we in the tender place between curiosity and dread,
We who wonder how to be whole,
when dreams have disappeared and part of us with them,
where mastery, control, determination, bootstrapping, and grit,

A blessing for when today already feels like too much
AND TOMORROW DOESN'T LOOK GOOD EITHER I was hoping to be the kind of person by now
who doesn’t tumble, headlong, into the day
falling, falling, falling
from the high board
without nearly enough water below.

God, I swear I didn’t plan it like this.
But here I am, hoping for another miracle.

A blessing for if you are in pain
(because so few people let us talk about it) Blessed are you on this pain-filled day.
When getting out of bed deserves an award.
When you can’t remember what it feels like
not to be so aware of your own body.
When you arrange your weeks
around limitations or side effects.

a blessing for when your family disappoints you
(and admitting that feels terrible)

God, the very people who are supposed to
love 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 home
and the reality of it fills me with a kind of fear.
However big, however small,
this pain feels unforgivable.

I know they’re only human (really, I know),
but their mistakes feel like they echo through me.

A prayer for when you feel invisible (and need someone to see you)

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, barred from the religious institution, rejected by Your very own people.

Blessed are you, friend, sitting among the shards of what could have been. It is broken now, that dream you loved, and it has spilled out all over the ground. Blessed are you, dear one, letting your eyes look around and remember all the hope your dream once contained. All the love. All the beauty.

A Blessing for Loving What Is (instead of what could have been...) from Good Enough.
Now available for Pre-Order.

Blessed are you who are attempting to love
what is here, what is now. You who recognize the wonder and pain
looking at life’s rearview mirror,
at those things that are gone.

The person you were.
The quickness and sharpness
of a body that didn’t tire as quickly.
The relationships and jobs and aspirations.
The people you can’t get back.

a blessing for keeping your heart soft when everything is broken Blessed are you who see it all now.
The terrible, beautiful truth that our world,
our lives seem irreparably broken.
And you can’t unsee it. The hungry kid.
The exhausted mom. The woman who wonders if any of this is worth it. The loneliness and despair.

a blessing when you realize everyone is struggling

blessed are you who have realized that life is hard. and it’s hard for everyone. your awareness came at a cost. you lost something you can’t get back. you were diagnosed with chronic pain or a degenerative disease. your family fell apart and things have never been the same.

A blessing for when you want to change (but not become a self-help perfectibility monster) God, I carry around this incompleteness, this drive for fulfillment that always seems just around the corner.
If only I could get it together and find my true calling,
my real passion, or the right plan.

God, help me, guide me. What am I missing?

for learning to hold on and let go.

let go, let it all go except, of course, when you can’t.

living in the present is nice in theory.
except when you are in pain. so let’s bless that tension,
the push pull of wanting to let go,
sometimes needing to let go,
and also needing to hold on.

God, sometimes it feels like a better person
wouldn’t be like this: tethered to so many hopes.
and fears. and expectations.

blessed are you, who feel the wound of fresh loss.
or of the loss... no matter how fresh...
that still makes your voice crack all these years later. you who are stuck in the impossibility.
frozen in disbelief. how can this be?
it wasn’t supposed to be this way. blessed are you, fumbling around for answers or truths to make this go down easier. who demand answers or are dissatisfied with the shallow theology and trite platitudes.

I feel things big.

And for the longest time, I felt so much shame because of it. I need reminders that my emotions are not bad or good.

They're just information. You feel angry because this is unjust.
You feel sad because this is awful.
You feel tired because this is exhausting.

Your emotions are not wrong or bad
or lying to you or the full truth.
They're giving you a bit of data
that you shouldn't ignore.

a blessing for when you can’t love yourself

God, I don’t love myself, so how can anyone else?

Blessed are we who say, God,
maybe I can borrow some of Your mercy,
as I unfold to You the unloveliness within. Maybe as I hand it all over,
I can borrow some of Your gentleness
and grace to use for myself,
to help me absorb some of the love You have for me,
to metabolize it, so I can breathe freely
in my own company.

Blessing for being scared and grateful at the same time.

God, it’s been a truly scary time.
I’m grateful for help that has come,
but my body still holds the fear.
 
God show me how to process all this.
how frail is humanity! how short is life,
how full of trouble!
Job 14:1 NLT blessed are we, when we decide to make room
for all of it, the fear and the gratitude,
the complexity and the suffering

blessed are we who pour out to You the whole of it—unedited, all the terrible truths and fears and what-ifs.

a blessing for you’re forced to rethink your life

God, this is a time of major rethinking
of all that my life means.
Help me, guide me. This is what the LORD says:
Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is,
and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.
Jer. 6:16 NIV

Here's a blessing for you who lost too much too quickly. Blessed are you sitting among the shards of what could have been. It's broken now, that dream you loved and it spilled out all over the ground.

a blessing when thoughts and prayers are not enough God, i am appalled
at the violence and suffering
that keeps happening.

God, how do i wrap my mind around this?
what can be done?

be angry and do not sin
Eph. 4:26 Literal Standard Version

God have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Spirit have mercy.

a blessing for the courage to do something difficult God, i am struggling to face
the difficult thing i know i should do.

o God, help me.

God have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Spirit have mercy.

We want to tell the truth about the suffering of our world. But here are three things about the intensely URGENT AND APOCALYPTIC culture of Twitter actually prevents me from grappling with the truth about suffering sometimes. (thread) 1. Most people need to manage the amount of suffering they absorb in a day. Twitter seems to demand that you withstand life's terror every day, at all times, or else you are somehow complicit. I wish there were more grace for the way that we need moments of exposure and shelter.

a pandemic blessing when it feels hard to be loving God, we know that we should be loving,
but it feels like this pandemic
has made it so much harder.

o God, give us what we need
to able to love others well in this paradox,
this strange mixture of isolation and closeness,
despair and wanting.