Thanksgiving Prayer

Dear Creator and Sustainer of this World,

be with those of us who have lost a loved one.

Comfort us in our grief.

Listen to our cries of anger and confusion,

listen to our sobbing,

our rantings of shock and despair.

Sit with us in the many lonely hours to come.

We do not ask you to take our sorrow away. 

We do not seek to be insulated from any experience of living, 

painful though it may be, 

because the pain of sorrow is a sign of love, 

and death is part of life. 

We do not want you to send people to replace the person we lost, 

as much as we want someone, anything, 

to fill the hole that appears before us at every turn,

threatening to swallow us whole. 

People will come when it is time,

 and when we are ready.  

We do not ask you to lessen our grief, 

for grief begins the journey from what has been to what will be. 

Grief encourages us to remember the stories of the person who is gone. 

Grief transforms the chaos of death 

so that one day we will be able to celebrate the beauty and grace 

of the one we loved.

We ask that you be present to us so that we may bear our sorrow. 

We ask that we may stay open to the compassion of others, 

allowing them to care for us in this time of horror. 

We ask for a simple assurance that one day we will feel hope again, 

that one day we will smile again, 

that one day we will laugh and sing and remember with joy 

this person that we loved with all our heart and soul and mind. 

One day we will affirm the great gift of life and all its bounty. 

One day.

Until that day, 

in this time when we may be angry with you, 

when we may feel lost and abandoned, 

when we may not care whether we live or die, 

stay close so that we will never think that we are alone. 

This we ask. 

This we pray.

Selah.