I saw this tacked onto the bulletin board of the psychiatrist at my previous employer. She is one of the best mentor I’ve ever had, and this is one of the most honest, simple, and beautiful prayers I’ve ever read. I feel it captures my relationship with my Creator more perfectly and more simply than most anything I’ve read (except maybe for this). May this encourage all you weary travelers out there:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen.
from Thomas Merton’s “Thoughts in Solitude”
the long way home 