A prayer awareness exercise for grief

Father, lover of all your creation, open me to your love. Jesus, knowing the joys and sorrows of a human life, walk with me. Holy Spirit, giver of gifts, fill me, empower me, use me, even in my brokenness.

Where am I in my grief? . . . . . Am I numb because I need to hold back other feelings which could overwhelm me? . . . . . Do I feel angry with someone? . . . . . Am I lost in a round of completely understandable yet fruitless ‘if only . . .’ thoughts? . . . . . Am I depressed? . . . . . Am I perhaps coming back to life? . . . . . What mix of feelings and thoughts is going on in me? I take a moment to let myself be where I am . . . . . And I let God be with me, just as I am . . . . . If I need to say anything to God I can also do that . . . . . What does God want me to know? . . . . .


Receive this blessing taken from the poem ‘For Grief’, written by John O’Donohue:

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

Father, Son, Spirit, you know me through and through; you love me as I am; you touch my life with healing; you call me to bear fruit. I give my wounded self to you, to be a channel of healing to others, to be a wounded healer, with Christ, who died, and rose, and comes again. Amen.