Hi, God,

Today was stressful, and I guess I don't always believe that you hear me, or that prayer will make a real, material difference. You know, it's easy to associate prayer with a monk on some sort of spiritual pilgrimage on the side of a mountain in a brown grass hut in Tibet. But when it comes to practical, day-to-day problems in the midst of a first world white girl's existence where I should have everything together and be fine? Well, I guess my problems don't seem to be important enough to solve or even pay attention to.

But I think all of these doubts are lies.

You do care. You are my daddy (Abba) and you are a good daddy, and not only is your love real, it is strong. And I want to thank you for teaching me about that lately. I am finding that real love has to be very strong.

Because we don't always understand what real strength looks like. We think it is loud and big, when sometimes it is the person who is quietly enduring, day by day, patient and hopeful in affliction, even when the voices in her head say that her afflictions are small or don't matter.

Thank you for a place to write these things down to you in a public way--shouting for all to hear the whisperings of my heart with the hopes that my whisperings sound like other people's unheard whisperings that they also want to speak into the darkness at the end of a tiring day.

Thank you for giving me eyes to see other people's eyes. To notice what they might not be saying, and to care about trying to speak into it, even if I fail or say the wrong thing. And thank you for allowing me to mess up and disappoint myself, so that I can learn what it means to really turn to you.

And thank you for times that are hard and for a computer and for a bed and for teaching me more about people who don't have computers or beds or even enough food or enough love. Please show me how to love them and be part of the healing. Please teach me how to keep hugging my fellow porcupines, even when we hurt each other.

I love you.

Good night.

Love,
Elizabeth