Sometimes a crisis awakens us to patterns in relationships that no longer meet our highest needs, and have been growing more costly to our health and our soul’s drive to thrive.
Verse one
Every day I get to a point and I think I cannot do this any longer. Caregiving for my loved one has me caring for their (his/her) needs as mine fade into the shadows. Though this has always been our pattern, it now has intensified 100 fold. Their consuming illness has invaded and stolen my most private spaces and now preys on my sanity and my soul. My disintegration garners no notice, even to myself, as I fight daily to stay in kindness and to keep the remnants of my former life in place.
I fear I am not made for this. What frightens me most is the sweet temptation to explode and flee. How did I become so emotionally chaotic, on the brink of dissociating from myself? I fear my emotional discontent might destroy any blissful remains of yesteryear's love stories and dreams, and everything I have built.
Discouraged and resigned, I function in numbness and perseverance.
Dear God,
I pray for change
so that I may stay present
while not sacrificing myself in the process.
May I discern new ways
and roles that balance everyone needs and truths,
starting with mine.
Verse two
I have found my rage.
It is explosive and dark.
I am full of vitriol and volcanic righteousness.
I breathe and expel.
I breathe and convulse.
I breathe and collapse.
I breathe and I shake.
I surrender and I weep.
I slip into a deep psychic crevasse, beyond time.
Everything is falling apart.
My love for you can no longer be passionate, idealistic, hopeful.
I am disillusioned, detached and depleted. Everything has changed. Too quickly for me
to keep up.
While my rage tempts me to burn down all that I know,
I pray for self-love to bring the blessed waters of calming.
I pray to discern how to change from the inside out,
saving myself from possible destruction and annihilation.
Though I Am loyal and dedicated, I must shift my attention from you to myself.
My care is no longer rooted in love, and my resentment creates only toxic sacrifice.
May I stay in this clarity of realizing
that I have my needs
and I must trust their guidance.
Verse three
As I can only be where I Am, and I must move through this, I pray:
May I learn to release control,
and allow frustration and messiness to take up honest space.
Even when what’s unfolding in front of me seems like a shit show,
I release my fear, judgements and projections onto future
outcomes, and of myself.
May I increasingly gain confidence
that listening to my limits and my needs
will carve out a path into the unwritten future
that has brave new structures
securely built in love, integrity, and faith.
May I come to accept that
I Am growing dynamically as I justly trust
choosing myself.
May I allow myself enough space to disentangle
from the diffuse layers of dysfunction,
so that I may find and deploy my brave core
that knows how to delve into my shadowlands.
There, I will encounter my unconscious beliefs
about sacrificing, martyring and people-pleasing.
I will confront, deconstruct and challenge my self-maintained
distortions, such as my belief that my sacrifice saves other loved ones
from shouldering the burdens I feel.
There are a myriad of possibilities when I open myself
to vulnerable, honest collaboration with others.
I promise to own
whatever shows itself in the shadows as mine,
so that I can do my work
of forging a new destiny
with self forgiveness, self-compassion and fierce
determination. Every dark night of the soul
is followed with a brilliant new dawn!
Confronting my limited beliefs:
I expand!
Taking up space with my truth and needs,
I promise myself
with my whole heart and soul that
I will fully possess this space
so that beautiful new solutions can sprout
and blossom into their magnificent new form.
This will be my legacy.
This will be what my future self and future generations will inherit:
ME,
steadfast and bright,
radiating my Northern Star.
And so it is!
You can find this prayer in this book, available for purchase:
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