Q: Quiet Prayer for Friends Whose Teenage Child Just Stormed Out of the House


Today, a prayer for all those who parent young people who are not easy to love...or who are brothers, sisters, children, nieces, or nephews of adults not easy to love. 

Q: Quiet Prayer for Friends Whose Teenage Child Just Stormed Out of the House

Cursing and spitting and smashing a plate along the way, for effect. Slapped the mother twice as hard as possible and would have slapped the father too except the other child stepped in and hustled the first child out in the yard where there was a tumult and then the first child ran away down the street and the second child came back in the house pale and drawn and furious and afraid.

No one said anything for a few minutes. O God help them tonight and tomorrow and new year.

Ease the savage stab of the insults and screaming and slapping and fear and rage and pain. heal them sometime somehow somewhere with Your mercy.

We have so many of us been in that kitchen with rage and blood and violence in the air. Yes, we have. We don't talk about this much except to You in the dark reaches of the night.

O God help them come through this somehow. I don't see how. But You do, don't You? Don't You?

I am not asking for You to make everything better; I am only asking You to lead them to the strength and humility to reach for each other again somehow sometime and try to build little rickety bridges.

I know how You work; the best in us is another word for You. May they somehow open the bruised treasures of the best of themselves, and reach for each.

I cannot see how they can do that, after what just happened; but You do. Lean toward them today? Please?

And so: amen.

Here's more information on why I chose this focus for the A to Z, and you can read all my 2015 A to Z posts here. I hope you enjoy the celebrations of the miracle and muddle of the ordinary! 

You can buy the book at Brian's favorite local bookstore, Broadway Books, at Powell's Books, or on AmazonBrian's work is used with permission of Ave Maria Press.

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