No Strength Left to Offer

A cry from the ground where God alone still acts

Lord, it is a new day, and I arrive already spent.

The light has not yet done anything to me, and I am tired.

My thoughts feel heavy.

My heart feels hollow.

Desire is thin, almost gone.

I do not come with strength. I come because there is nowhere else to stand.

I do not ask for this day to make sense.

I do not ask to feel different.

I do not ask to be spared the weight I am already carrying.

I only ask that everything in me, even what is broken and unwilling, be turned toward You.

The day has not yet begun and already I feel the ache of emptiness,

the dull fog of uncertainty,

the quiet resistance of a heart that does not want to move.

I bring even this.

I refuse to clean it up for You.

So I call out, again and again, not to manage my life,

not to bend events,

not to feel holy or consoled:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I say it without strategy.

I say it without expectation.

I say it because I have nothing else left to offer.

Let the prayer be my consent, not my solution.

Let it be surrender, not control.

Carry me, Lord.

Carry my scattered thoughts.

Carry my flatness and my fear.

Carry the places in me that no longer want to hope.

Let even my resistance be taken up into Your mercy.

When I cannot breathe toward You, breathe for me.

When I cannot pray, pray within me.

When I am too weak to gather myself, gather me.

Draw everything out of me, even what I keep hidden from myself.

The resentments.

The grief I do not name.

The weariness that feels endless.

The corners of the heart I would rather leave untouched.

I place them before You without editing, without explanation, without excuse.

You already see my poverty.

You already know the measure of my weakness.

You are not surprised by what I am today.

So let humility be my ground.

Let the cry of the Jesus Prayer be my only posture.

Let me fall, unguarded and uncomposed, into Your embrace.

Do with me what You will.

Only do not let me turn away.