The First Prayer for the Fifth Chapter

Oh my Guiding Light, my intellect and emotion are not only lost in this darkness but often hopelessly separated from one another. Divided deeply in myself, I have struggled for years to reach resolution and wholeness, to be joined together with myself permanently and calcified in that moment. I see that you will not allow me to live safely inside a shell, of my own excretion nor a borrowed house like the hermit crab’s. You lead me into valleys in order to lead me over mountain tops and, again, into valleys. All is chasing after the wind but this is actually good. Even my prayers can be improvised, with no definite ending nor aversion to digression.

My resistance is so deep that I feel as if I were cooperating with you when I am actually resistant. My concessions have been too small both to bring me out of darkness, as I desired, and to pass through this darkness in anticipation of the next and next and next. So, I ask you to be my Guardian with the understanding that I am even less capable than a child, since I learn so slowly ~ I am spiritually handicapped, Momma. I need you to gently take me from dark episode to dark episode, skillfully and lovingly. Hold me in your arms even though I seem sometimes to be unlike the son you created, unlike even the son I imagined that I was. Hold me in your arms for my own sake and the sake of your love. There is no one you have created that is not part of your designs and thus both beloved and important. Break down the exoskeleton of pride around me and help me to appreciate this.

Simultaneously, I have faith that you are teaching me a better way to travel through life – you are giving me the muscles and the gear to persevere in persistence instead of stubbornness. Though I am prone to only try harder for a solution, you will perfect an entire method in and through me. You are ready at every opportunity to continue my evolution; my metamorphosis is not one but a series of chrysalises. So, I will not ask you to lift darkness from my life any longer nor even to give me the flashlight. Instead, I ask that you would dwell with me and join me with the darkness until my eyes have dilated, my ears and nostrils have opened, and every hair stands-up on my body to feel my way. Steady me and make me a denizen of the wilderness I have resisted and, please, bless my life with constant learning, everlasting companions, and a peace that surpasses this world’s understanding.

I want to know you better, Sustainer -- whisper to me,

-Fysh Phoenix