The Overwhelmed Parent’s Prayer for Peace

OK. Deep breath…. pray!

Oh Father, Son, Spirit, Three-fold Family from Whom all families are founded…

Help us this day to rejoice in the chaos that is our family. To enter intentionally into the endless mystery of the exhausting energy and tempestuous roller coaster ride of our children’s emotions, all raw and real; primordial mixtures of humanity and divinity, wonder and awe, awful and angry, tender and tactile as newborn bliss breaking into each moment with passion.

Let us abide in this place of grace, touched by greasy hands, constant calls, clinging and crying. For in this place You have placed us, Father and Mother, to mother and father, in patience and with peace, as much as we can gather.

For to You, we, father, mother, are as such, the same: crying, grasping, needing to be clean again; not wanting to be alone, to be filled, fed and led by You, Our Father Who is in Heaven.

So bless our family, these tired hearts and tiny hands, and help us all. Give us this day the daily bread of patience and peace, for this time shall pass, and these little ones and we will be weathered by greater storms than these, and grow wiser we pray, and they will need us, and we each other, even more than now. So we cling to You, Oh Sweet Father, Son, and Spirit of Love.

May we live and breathe and find our being in You, God of the Raw, and Reckless, Blindingly Beautiful Creator of the Universe. May we find You in these Gifts, in this Present, in these miracles, all. May we find Your Peace, not apart from this Holy Hurricane of family life, seeking outside a solitary shelter, but may we dance in the very Center of this Holy Communion of Persons, in the Eye of this Sanctifying Storm, this Holy Place, where saints may be formed, and the dross of our sin and weakness burned away, till only gold remains.