A Prayer for Mental Health Awareness Sunday

All Loving God, Living Water 

We pause in care of our community, 

    knowing our neighbors struggle, 

    people we love struggle and we struggle 

        with the health of our minds, bodies and souls. 

We pause in heartbreak and hope, seeking for all to be whole. 

We pause in gratitude for researchers and providers, 

    therapists and doctors, 

    nurses and social workers, 

        advocates and allies that stand in the hard moments 

            and work towards healing, hope and care.

For those diagnosed and those without, 

    for those with access and for those without, 

    for those exhausted in searching for the right care, the right medicine, 

        the right insurance and the right provider that makes their life their own

            we pray. 

For the ways we discount and demonize, the ways we have stigmatized and enflamed fears

    for the moments we have put the diagnose before the person

    for the wounds we have salted with our thoughts and prayers

    for the words and questions that have made what was bad worse

    for all the moments we failed to show up; frozen and caught unaware

we pause for forgiveness and seek to build a new way. 

Draw us beyond our own comfort and our love of cliché 

     from cheap platitudes to real presence

    steel our hearts to be silent when we don’t know what to say

    and open our ears to hear beyond the compulsory ‘fine” we all seek to be.  

Draw us beyond the easy boundaries we make 

    and into the worries that threaten to swallow our neighbors whole, 

    grant us courage to show up and listen until our hearts break, 

    grant us the grit to do what needs to be done, 

        offering phone calls, casseroles and everything in between. 

Draw us to learning and listening, reading and researching, 

    that opens our hearts and our minds and advocates for a world where all can be whole. 

May it be so, Amen