a prayer for today.

Heavenly Father,

Some weeks, you know, they feel like such a slope. And I'm climbing, clawing, misstepping my way up this hill, up this matted down grass that seems almost slick with failures. By the time the sunrise slips through my bedroom windows I already feel behind, already feel like I've lost some grip on my day. I hate that, Lord. I want to conquer my day. I want to own my day. I want to set forth and accomplish and be rewarded, even in the smallest of ways, for my diligence and my successes. I want the world to look in on my efforts and say, look at her go. Look at that woman who can't be stopped. Look at that mother doing it right. Look at all the things she is doing with steady hands and in perfectly straight lines and with many moments to spare.

But instead, Father, instead I am grasping. I am doggie-paddling up this river of my life, getting slapped in the face by waving errant branches, getting pulled under by hidden currents. These branches and currents, I tell you, they are starting to get a girl down. They are so small, too, I know, these things like broken jars of jam on my floor and sick kids and missed deadlines and too much time on a screen but not enough time in running shoes, and all these unspoken letters and messages floating out there because I can't seem to get my shit together and just respond to anything on time, at all, ever.

Doggie-paddling. It's a useless way to swim, I tell you.

So here I am, Lord. In a world filled with people and problems like refugee camps and women who are abused and kids who are not loved; here I am swimming and climbing up and through my own stupid little struggles. Here I am in my humble home with my humble failures and my humble defeat. It's not much of an offering. I know that. But-

You said that You want this offering. That you want my struggles. Because in these kinds of grasping days, you are making me, ME. These moments in my home with my children, these hours with my words and my ideas, these misstepped days of never quite catching up to where I think I ought to be:
You are here.
And You, the Judge, the King, what an eye you seem to have for what is holy and what is not. On your scales, success and defeat are assigned no varying values. Today is today and tomorrow is tomorrow and I hear you whispering it, Lord, on this cloudy morning in the quiet of my home; I hear your whisper to "look for the sacred." In friendships. In duties. In work. In marriage. In sex. In parenting. In sleeping. In loving. In my lukewarm coffee and my bowl of blueberries, the sacred can be discovered. The sacred can be cultivated. The sacred is found and believed.

Because on your scales, success and failure are assigned no varying values. It is in obedience to do right and an awareness of what is good that I find my place beside you. And in my rightful place, I don't have to swim so damn hard. I don't have to climb up that hill, back aching and eyes squinted into the wind. I can rest. In the purposeful sacred, I find rest.

In the cultivation of the sacred, I find my rest.

Thank you, Lord.

And by golly, amen.