Prayer published in Getting Ready for the New Life

Lord Jesus Christ, I hurt so bad. Everything is lost. It’s hard to find joy but for a moment, and when it comes, it darts away again, like something sly, not to be trusted. If I laugh I fear you will take away even this brief moment of happiness. If I smile, I wonder if it’s denial. Everything seems so furtive, temporary, unreal.

Sometimes I blame you for it all. You could have spent one more miracle. Sometimes I blame myself, wondering what I should have done differently. How many times I have said, “If only…”

Lord, how I will ever cope with the “might have beens?” I will never stop thinking about the world we dreamed of together, with so many precious events now halted…forever ended. It is too much to bear, and I don’t want to go on. I just want to wake up and turn the clock back and have a second chance at life.

I don’t like the word “cope.” It sounds like crawling, instead of walking. It makes me feel like I’m mentally ill and spiritually sick. I want to be brave and strong, a model of endurance, stoic to the end, but I can’t do it. It isn’t me. It isn’t real.

Lord, this is not self pity. It is pity for the one that’s gone, for what they’re missing, for what they will never have on this earth. There. I said it. I wanted life for them, and well as life with them. If that’s not love, what is?

It is too hard to sing with tears on my cheek and lumps in my throat. But I will listen to the voices of those nearby. I will let them sing for me. I will let them pray for me. I am out of words, out of hope, out of strength to mourn more.

Lord, I need you. I need you to love the one that you gave me as much as I loved them. I need you to tell me that we’ve not seen the last of each other. I need you to give me a faith I don’t feel I have right now. I need you to tell me that you love me too.

Amen.