A Prayer for Usefulness

Dear God,

Here I am. What would you have me do today? Where would you have me go? What would you have me say, and to whom?

I am here. Use me as a tool for Your love.

I give up my need to fix myself. I give up my desire to look and feel perfect before being worthy of Your use. I give up my act, God. Help me give it up again each day as I cling and crave it. Help me forgive the things I have hated about myself for so long. Help me see that it was all a conspiracy to keep me small and separate from You.

Help me return, dear God.

Help me hear the call you have been repeating in each moment. Help me open my eyes and my ears. Help me love All.

Lord, I need Your guiding hand on my life. I feel so afraid of giving up the straws of control I think I’m managing, sorting, standing up on fragile ends to support what I try to build. Help me see that I’m not in control and never have been. Help me see that what I think of as my efforts to direct my life are hurting not helping. Help me relinquish the reins. Help me relax into your love, your river of knowing, your tides of truth.

I want to be done defending the self and the stories I built, dear God. I want to know the simplicity of Truth and laugh the full-belly laugh of Your Buddha. I want to ride on the winds of Your Great Spirit.

Let me know only Your Truth, God. Let me let go of all the desires of the world, even though my greedy claws and scavenging mind may clutch and grasp in fear.

God, here I am in all my pathetic magnificence, in all my worn and shabby beauty. Show me what to do next. Show me who to be.

Teach me how to raise this child to be Yours, to live in courage and release, to feel worthy of Your call, to hear and see only what is True. Let me teach so that I may learn. Let me unlearn so that I may be free.

I am here, God, and I can see that by myself I am lost, afraid, and alone. But help me to remember that I am never alone. I am no longer lost. And I need not fear.

I choose to remember. I choose to be here. I choose to be Yours. Help me know that I need do nothing but listen and obey.

Help me see that forgiveness is the path. Help me know what I used to know before my mind believed I was separate from You.

Help me see the whole, dear God.

Help me know You. Help me know me-in-You so that I can be a tool for love, so I can take my place on the stage of the world and make right what little part I have. Show me my role in the lives of my family, my community and the greater world, dear God. Help me see clearly what I am to offer towards Your plan.

The suffering, the pain, the cries for help from all corners are almost more than I can bear, God, and I am near drowning in feeling so much. Help me to know what to do with this emotion. Help me to know how to use it towards Your great good.

Here I am, God. I am here. Use me as You would.

And so it is.

(Published in the August 29th Warroad Pioneer)

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