Prayers – The Lyrical Realist

FB_IMG_1743443187417-EDIT — Our Cat, Creme Pie, in his daily demonstration of rest – Edited in Lumia Selfie

Lord, I rest in You.

I accept myself as a gift from You.

I acknowledge that I can love myself while I work on myself.

I realize improvement is not about becoming someone else, but about growing into my best self.

Thank You for reminding me to rest.

Rest means more than just doing nothing, for our bodies do a lot of vital work while we are asleep, and can’t live without it!

Rest can also mean that something abides within or is built upon another thing. To say of someone, “Their strength lies in their humility does not mean their strength simply lies there doing nothing; it is nourished by and becomes the active outflow of its source.

So, I abide in You, my Love, I sink my roots deep to draw from You, the source of my being, my breath, my uniqueness, and my passions.

I will do through You

as I rest in You.

“The Lord replied, 
‘My Presence will go with you,
and I will give you rest.'"       – Exodus 33:14

 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory,
he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being
with power through his Spirit
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,
as you are being rooted and grounded in love.       – Ephesians 3:16-17

God. Sweet Spirit. I am here with You. Just You. And just me.

Help me to build my identity in these spaces when I am with You, and I know you regard me just as I am. No judgment from people who don’t know the whole story. No contempt and sneering born more out of someone else’s insecurity than out of my failings. No bad advice from ‘the friends of Job,’ given more to make the giver feel important than to help the recipient gain clarity. No comments from uninvested onlookers.

Let self-concept form in these moments when I understand that Your love doesn’t most often look like saccharine antics of affection or sweeping acts of vindication. When I understand that Your love most often looks like . . . a steady gaze.

A gaze that never turns away but looks and keeps on looking. A gaze that never shows surprise or contempt and never seems confused or incredulous. A gaze that never looks right past me or right through me. A gaze that never finds me too small to be seen. A gaze before which I am never hidden by the crowd, nor by the circumstances, nor by the emotional baggage of the onlooker.

Your silent gaze confers dignity. Or does it simply concur with the innate dignity that is a birthright?

(Dignity, a birthright, however contested by mobs of imps–usurpers, who have no jurisdiction to contest dignity or worth, but who parade around practicing law without a license. They con the crowds–we con ourselves–to believe these judgments are valid.)

Before Your clear-eyed gaze . . . I am.

I am never too perplexing to be understood. I am never too infuriating to be countenanced; I am never too embarrassing to be looked in the eye. I am not too far gone, but I am not particularly impressive, either. Nevertheless, I am never such an inconvenience that this Divine parental eye cannot find the time to meet me. When I am with the I Am, I just . . . am.

My New Year’s prayer? Let me grow in the consciousness of this gaze. Let me live more and more in the steadiness of Divine love. I pray, sweet Spirit, that as I contemplate your comprehensive countenance, I will accept your acceptance and stop fighting to be seen and understood. I pray that I will drop my defenses and that, being unafraid, I will look around me to truly see and accept those all around me, who also bear Your image and the light of Your clear-eyed gaze.