A lament for dark-valley days

The reading:

Psalm 42 

Longing for God and His Help in Distress
To the leader. A Maskil of the Korahites.

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me continually,
‘Where is your God?’

These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God, my rock,
‘Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
because the enemy oppresses me?’
As with a deadly wound in my body,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
‘Where is your God?’

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

My prayer:

How long oh Lord, shall I glide but a ghost through these dark-valley days?

Free me, oh God, for a whole day, I pray, for just an hour, from the cacophonous roller coaster of love and loathing, freedom and fear, faith and faltering that keeps careening around the rickety tracks in my mind.

Rock me to sleep, oh Father, without the howling wind in my soul that whispers sweet lies of only the good and lovely.

Wake me, oh Mother, from a nightmare-free slumber to not only know where I am but prefer where I am.

Quench the fire, oh Brother, that casts distorted shadows of the partner I needed her to be.

Help me, oh Spirit, to gently let go of the past, gratefully live in the present and hopefully build a future.

Amen