Prayer for the Struggle and Gift of Marriage - 10/3/05
2005 Archive - 2006 Archive

Holy and merciful God,

In your wisdom, you created us as complex and unique beings, and yet you also created us for community. For these two gifts, we give you thanks. Please don’t forget the ever-present struggle that rises to the surface as we live into the paradox of these two incongruencies, especially within the covenant of our marriages.

Give us assurance of your steadfast love of our own createdness, that we may dare to care for another. Give us courage to risk changing our reactions, not out of a sense of personal failure, but rather, out of love for another. Give us peace so that we may release the need to change others.

Give us the wisdom to distinguish between actions that are driven by others’ feelings toward us, and those that arise from feelings of personal inadequacies. Give us the patience to examine the source of our own painful emotions. Give us the confidence to claim legitimacy for our own feelings, and courage to identify the growing edges of our response to those feelings.

In the midst of marital and family interaction, give us a deep rudder and a favorable wind, that we may neither crash into the rock of despair nor stall in the immobility of depression. Let us, O God, sail on; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

© 2005 Todd Jenkins