Not that long ago, I asked my friend Diana (a devout Christian) if it was acceptable to say a prayer for oneself.
It sounded a little selfish to me, but I’d been living with the pain & inflammation from this long covid disorder for over 10 months now, and was feeling pretty desperate for some real relief.
She assured me it was perfectly acceptable to ask God for an end to the suffering.
That night as I lay in bed, I said aloud “God if you’re listening….” I suddenly felt silly, talking to the chief deity in the darkness. I rolled over and went to sleep.
The next day—honestly, not the next week or month, the next day—I went downstairs to get my mail and took a quick glance in the adjoining parcel room where the ‘Free Table’ is.
(It’s a table where tenants in my apartment building leave canned goods, old romance novels, candles, anything & everything.) And that day, the only item there was this brown leather book, “Prayers for Men”.
Of course it was just a coincidence. But when you’re searching for words to say to God and then THIS turns up the next day… at least it gave me something else to think about.
That’s what I’ve been doing these last couple of days, a lot of thinking. Between the long covid which has been making life miserable since January and now the results of this presidential election… I’ve never felt so defeated. I’ve been feeling like a stranger in my own body, today I feel like a stranger in my own country.
I’m not going to share what I think of Trump, I did enough of that several years ago. Nothing he says or does surprises me. I’m just dumbfounded how so many people chose to overlook so much and vote the man to be our president again.
If I do say any prayers in the days ahead, they won’t be just for me.
This morning I got up, came out here into my livingroom and turned on the tv. No news. Not today, not tomorrow. I’m taking a break from all that for awhile. I put on FreeVee, Amazon’s free streaming service where I’ve been watching The Waltons.
(The show ran for 9 seasons, from 1972-1981; I’ve been watching one episode a day this past year.) I’m currently in the final season. It’s the year 1944, where even up on Walton’s Mountain they’ve felt the effects of World War II in Europe.
John Boy is somewhere in France, his brother Jason is fighting Nazis in Germany. But as awful as things were in the world then, much like now, at least our country felt like a beacon of hope.
