Dear God, Hear My Prayer

God, hear my prayer:

I have been so distracted. I feel disconnected—from you and from others. My thoughts are disorganized. The more I try to reorganize, the more I try to take inventory, the more overwhelmed I feel. My head feels heavy. My flesh feels heavy. I feel like I am dragging a glacier around with me.

Is it the season? The lack of sun? Is it the cold, dry air that makes me feel like I cannot breathe? Is it the short days that make me feel less than motivated—as if darkness is inevitable? How can I welcome the sun when I don’t believe it will shine?

The path I am on seems to be covered in debris. I have to keep stopping to bend down and remove the logs, the sticks, the mounds of manure and the fallen fences blocking my passage. Twigs, shit, and broken fences—everywhere I look.

My cup runneth over, yet I thirst. My needs are met and more, yet I don’t fully appreciate the abundance in my own life. Why am I so hungry and thirsty when you keep me so well-fed?

My mind seeks what my heart isn’t yearning for, but my heart cannot translate into words what my mind should find peace with. My house—my temple that is my body, mind, spirit—is divided. I have been searching for a way to unite myself.

Everybody keeps telling me that I must figure out my purpose for a meaningful life. But I think that’s bull shit. If I figure out my purpose, what more is there left for me to wonder about? If I actualize the fullest and most meaningful life, what more will I have to learn? If I have it all figured out, then what do I have left to figure out.

How can I limit my purpose, anyway? If today I decide I know what my purpose is, does that mean it won’t change? Can I limit myself to a few words or phrases that define my purpose? If my purpose is the reason that I live, can I narrow that down to just one, two, or three things?

God, I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what my purpose is. And I don’t care. I change my mind far too often to know—you know that! What the hell am I supposed to do with this burden of uncertainty?

God, this heaping pile of crap on my path is too heavy for me to move. My neck is sore from the heavy, drowning weight of the thoughts in my head. My back is crimped and compressed—the stress of trying to please everyone except myself tangles my spine in knots.

Help me to see that I don’t require the qualification of anyone else. Help me to see a purpose in everything I do. Help me to not follow the ideas that lead me away from the inner knowing that I am already complete yet always adding to my completion.

Hear me, God, please know that I am still figuring out how to love myself as I love others. But please let my heart remain open so that others may teach me how to love myself more fully and wholly. I know that I cannot learn to love myself on my own, that’s why you created so many reflections of your goodness and love—so that I might learn from others, by loving them, that I might learn to love myself as you do.

Hear my prayer.