Kate Bowler has written some amazing resources for when times are tough. She is a Christian lecturer in a US Bible College, a mother and sufferer from stage 4 bowel cancer. I have found her books helpful and challenging in equal measure. Here she offers a prayer of blessing for us when things just don’t go the way we want them to go:
God, I’m fumbling around for answers, reasons, meaning.
I can’t find any purpose in this pain.
Why me?
Why them?
Why now?
I don’t know when this is going to get better.
Or if I will ever feel relief.
Blessed are we who need to be reminded
that there are some things we can fix
…and some things we can’t.
Blessed are we who can say:
my life isn’t always getting better.
Right in the midst of the pain and fear and uncertainty,
may we hunt for beauty and meaning and truth… together.
Not to erase the pain or solve the pain,
(though surely that would be nice),
but to remind us that beauty and sorrow coexist.
And that doesn’t mean we’re broken or have been forgotten.
In our hope. In our disappointment. In our joy. In our pain.
God is here and we are never—were never and will be never—alone.
Through the Storms 