December 4, 2024

With so much going on around this season, and my own personal transition period moving quickly into empty nesting, I am finding myself overwhelmed and anxious. I realized it is because I am focusing on my plans and goals and to dos, and those are ever-changing and often out of my control. Yet when I focus on the why – the bigger picture and purpose for my life, and the how – the way I go about living and moving in that why, the less anxious and more free I feel.

Today we will bring attention to what we are paying attention to and when our “what” is in our way and blinds us, and move past the “what” of to-dos and expectations and plans, and surrender into the “why” and “how” of our lives.

Reading today by Thomas Merton

A Prayer

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I can not know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that

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 will I 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.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude.